Geek Culture, Writing and Other Junk from Writer C. A. Wilke
 
Flying Killer Discs from Planet AOL

Flying Killer Discs from Planet AOL

Flying Killer Discs from Planet AOLScience fiction is full of weird technology. Sometimes it’s super-Swiss-Army-Knife weapons like the Zorg ZF-1 Pod Weapon from Fifth Element, and sometimes it’s just something off the wall like the Weirding Way from David Lynch’s Dune movie. Sometimes, it’s something completely ridiculous like…well, half of everything in the Hitchhiker’s Guide stories.

But if you mix 80’s Hollywood with weird scifi tech, you get things like the flying killer CD in that classically bad (okay, just bad) Dolph Lundgren movie, I Come in Peace (Dark Angel outside of the U.S.). At the time, CDs were fairly common, if not the standard just yet. I remember later getting AOL and NetZero computer CDs in the mail every week starting around the mid-90’s, and if you think I didn’t throw more than a few at the trashcan like it was some kind of shuriken, then clearly I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Now, I was an adult by the time the Internet became a “thing,” but I can imagine that if I was a kid when those discs hit mailboxes, you can bet my friends and I would have used them for laser-disc wars. We would have gone to the empty lot and chucked these at each other exactly like we were in that movie. We would have littered that field with the silvery rainbow dead remains of that reflective film that flakes off after years of sitting on a shelf unused.

Actually, I’ve always had a thing for this movie. I imagine that some Hollywood scriptwriter was probably a lot like me in his/her fascination with throwing these things. Imagine, if you will, some struggling writer searching his/her soul for the next great Star Wars idea. They thought, “Hey, lightsabers are cool. You know what’s also cool? Spinning rainbows when I throw this shitty CD across the room. That’s it!”

Later, when pitching the idea to an agent, I think the conversation went something like this:  “So,  you know how cool it looks when you throw a CD across the room? With all those spinning rainbows and shit? What if you could use it like a frickin’ Chinese Star?”

I’m fairly certain that exact conversation happened. In fact, I’d even say that the discussion didn’t end there. Someone else in the room, probably a special effects person, had to have said, “And, and, and… what if the bad guy could control it with his mind? We could put a spinning disc right in front of the camera then zip it around to kill a bunch of people in one shot!”

The crazy thing is, with the rise of miniature drones and stuff, I could see this as actually being some kind of weapon in the future. Think of it like this, two counter-rotating blades, the outer of which is razor sharp. Granted, this is a one-shot kind of deal, since any impact would destroy any flight mechanics. And, I don’t know if you could make it do enough damage, but it’s an interesting idea.

Shit, now I have a new idea for a story. Oh well, off I go again.

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