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== Literature ==
* ''[[Duumvirate]]'' is loaded with
* ''[[Discworld]]'':
** Largely free of firearms, as the Disc is, the trope still shows up in the form of the massive 900 kg ballista siege weapon carried by Sergeant Detritus (an enormous troll made of rock) [[Automatic Crossbows|as a crossbow]], "The Piecemaker." It is called this because the iron stone-piercing spear it used to fire was replaced with a bundle of arrows, which was presumably supposed to allow it to operated as an area weapon but unintentionally results in the arrows disintegrating into an expanding cone of burning wood fragments when fired, making it more like a (very inaccurate) shotgun that can blow holes through walls, doors, and presumably people.
** When the Piecemaker is first used, it uses a ballista bolt. The results were so horrifying (And probably expensive) that they just tied a bunch of bolts together instead. The results were even more horrifying. The scene in ''[[Discworld/Night Watch|Night Watch]]'' where it is fired - as a ''warning shot''! - at an assassin is perhaps the most hilarous (and most destructive) scene in all of Discworld. Yes, this even includes the exploding cabbages.▼
*** In fact, when Vimes mentions seeing it tested, apparently the target vanished so did the two targets on either side, and a flock of seaguls who happened to be in the wrong place. I.E. right above Detritus. It's the only weapon that can open both front and back doors simultaneously.▼
▲When the Piecemaker is first used, it uses a ballista bolt. The results were so horrifying (And probably expensive) that they just tied a bunch of bolts together instead. The results were even more horrifying. The scene in ''[[Discworld/Night Watch|Night Watch]]'' where it is fired - as a ''warning shot''! - at an assassin is perhaps the most hilarous (and most destructive) scene in all of Discworld. Yes, this even includes the exploding cabbages.
** In ''[[Discworld/The Fifth Elephant|The Fifth Elephant]]'', its destructive power was so terrifying that Vimes actually threatened an inanimate secret trapdoor into opening just by pointing it in roughly the general direction he thought it was in. Later, when Detritus used it to open the front door of an enemy castle, Vimes labelled it as a national emergency rather than a weapon. Several paragraphs later:▼
▲In fact, when Vimes mentions seeing it tested, apparently the target vanished so did the two targets on either side, and a flock of seaguls who happened to be in the wrong place. I.E. right above Detritus. It's the only weapon that can open both front and back doors simultaneously.
▲In ''[[Discworld/The Fifth Elephant|The Fifth Elephant]]'', its destructive power was so terrifying that Vimes actually threatened an inanimate secret trapdoor into opening just by pointing it in roughly the general direction he thought it was in. Later, when Detritus used it to open the front door of an enemy castle, Vimes labelled it as a national emergency rather than a weapon. Several paragraphs later:
{{quote|'''Vimes''': Detritus, you can't fire that off in here! This is an enclosed building!
'''Detritus''': Only till I pull dis trigger, sir. }}
** The Gonne in ''[[Discworld/Men At Arms|Men At Arms]]'' is one of the more powerful devices in the ''Discworld'' setting (it actually wounded the aforementioned Sergeant Detritus), and is usually depicted as huge-bore semi-automatic rifle using a horizontal rack of six chambers.
** A [[Real Life]] Big Freaking Gun was briefly alluded to in ''Pyramids''. The "puntbow" used by Pteppic's ibis-poacher tutor is a low-tech equivalent of the massive boat-mounted shotguns once used by commercial hunters to shoot entire flocks of waterfowl.
* Neal Stephenson's novel ''[[Snow Crash]]'' features "Reason,", a gatling gun firing depleted-uranium slivers at incredibly high velocities. It's a little hard to move around because its nuclear power supply, utilizing radiothermal isotopes, uses an outboard heat-disperser that drops into the ocean. [[
* Neal Stephenson also features a Vickers machine gun in the World War II timeline of ''Cryptonomicon'', which is less futuristic than Reason because of the lower-tech setting, but noteworthy because of the (characteristic) pages-long description of its badassery.
* [[Lock and Load Montage|Piling up plasma cannons and other big guns]] in [[The Culture|Iain M. Banks's]] ''Use of Weapons'', Cheradinine Zakalwe says he'll need "FYT" weapons for a mission. His Culture handler says she doesn't recognise the term; it stands for "Fuck You Too".
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