Weapons In Science Fiction: Lucy

Weapons in Science Fiction: Lucy

In Lucy, a science fiction film, the title character acquires the ability to fully utilize her brain, and ultimately control matter, time, and space. The change enables her to manage energy and matter in a manner that serves as a potent weapon, like creation of noxious forces like telekinesis, destruction of opponents, as well as travel through time. All these powers are exciting, although they are based on speculative science and have yet to be proven as real.

Energy is convertible into mass, which derives its basis within Einstein’s theory of relativity (Fraknoi et al., 2022). However, Lucy goes too far by implying that a human being is capable of controlling such exchanges using only their thoughts. According to thermodynamics, conversions of energy would be limited in any case and therefore, high-tech weapons would also be affected by the physical laws like entropy and energy conservation.

Science fiction frequently ignores such limits with weapons. As another example, in Lucy, the character produces energy fields and controls gravity without any external source of power and technological assistance (Heffernan, 2025). Although there is no prejudice against using real-life weapons with electromagnetic energy, plasma, or (artificial) AI, humankind has yet to prove that human physiology can use and control energy similarly to Lucy (Del Monte, 2021). Moreover, asteroid impact defense systems like establishing networks of existing asteroids related to the preservation of the population do not require the unregulated manipulation of energy. Nevertheless, science fiction tends to encourage innovation in the real world. Drones or facial recognition, previously a work of fiction, are now a reality.

Question

Would you say that energy-based weapons, such as the ones portrayed by Lucy, have a chance of ever realizing them because of some scientific invention in the future? Or are they always beyond the perimeters of bodily law?

References

Del Monte, L. A. (2021). War at the speed of light: Directed-energy weapons and the future of twenty-first-century warfare. University of Nebraska Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1f70m1m

Fraknoi, A., Morrison, D., & Wolff, S. (2022). Astronomy (2nd ed.). OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/astronomy-2e/pages/16-2-mass-energy-and-the-theory-of-relativity

Heffernan, T. (2025). Autonomous weapons in fiction and the fiction of autonomous weapons. In The Realities of Autonomous Weapons (pp. 96–119). Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/10.51952/9781529237191.ch005

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