Re:Stone Burner as sf/sci-fi über weapon??
LOL, you gotta love Adams!
I’m afraid to go see the movie…
Another uber weapon: From a Year’s Best Science Fiction I once read, there was a short recounting the story of scientists on a moon base receiving a powerful lasered transmission from a distant galaxy (don’t laugh!). It contains insane amounts of data, all of the super science of a grouping of intelligent races in said galaxy.
The aliens destroyed hundreds of core suns in a giant supernovae chain reaction jut to produce the laser transmission.
Now what’s interesting is that hidden as but a footnote in all that data is a bit of info saying that the universe’s vacuum state is in a false equilibrium, and then goes on mentionning how one can go around to bringing the false vacuum to its true least-energy state.
The effect is that a sphere of vacuum-transfomed space expands at the speed of light from the point where the transformation was initiated: everything within the sphere looses its strucure since the very underlying surface on which its based gets changed.
The aliens freaked out when they discovered that tidbit and killed themselves, sure that their very existence as inquisitive intelligent beings would one day result in some lunatic manipulating the vacuum and destroying the universe.
Sending that laser pulse to our galaxy was meant as a warning, although the lunar scientists also freak out at the implications of the info on the vacuum, and murder ensues amongst the scientists between those who are scared and those who are fasninated.