More-or-less exactly what the title says – 1001 (actually, a handful more) science fiction weapons for D20, including stats for D20M. The weapons range from basic laser pistols to planet-busters, from realistic extrapolations of firearm technology to utterly ridiculous devices such as lethal yo-yos and the backpack mounted atomic ray. Whether you need aramament for a squad of late 21st century cyberpunks in the mean streets or gizmos to outfit the lab of Emperor Krule of Mongor, you will find them in this book.

The book assumes no technological progression. It provides a sample chart of likely technology paths, but this isn't incorporated into the rules in any way. Each class of weapons is generally assumed to stand alone, though many are compared to other classes in terms of likely use and efficiency.

The breadth of imagination is staggering. The melee weapons include the basic "Advanced Alloy" weapons (weapons simply made of new materials so they are lighter and stronger than their medieval counterparts), Hyper-ice weapons (weapons where the blade is formed from super-cold ice of incredible hardness; the hilt contains the water and the freezer unit), radioactive weapons – the author notes "There are many good ways to use futuristic technology to enhance the power of a melee weapon. Making the weapon radioactive is not one of them.", hypersharp (monofilament edged) weapons, superheated weapons, and on and on. Whatever technology your campaign uses, or whatever level of silliness, it is likely you'll find some category of weapons which suits it.

Furthermore, for what could be an amazingly dry tome, the book is surprisingly readable. The author has the chatty, conversational, style familiar to those of us old fogies who grew up on Gygax and Hargrave, directly addressing the reader as if they were sitting together at the gaming table. There is also considerable humour – among the hypersharp weapons is the "Deck of Many Wounds", for example. The weapon description flavor text also contains diamonds of levity hidden in the mud of functionality – the "Electro-Demolisher", we learn, is favored by "Space-Barbarians and heavy metal bassists".

I don’t want to give the impression this a comedy book, though it is written with the same grisly humour that the old Rolemaster critical tables used. The vast bulk of the weapons are “serious”, including many different evolutionary paths of the humble gunpowder weapon, lasers, blasters, gamma-lasers, and all the other usual suspects. The lethal yo-yos and mad scientist shrink rays do not form the entirety of the text. Nonetheless, they do make the book stand out from most of the other gun lover fetish catalogs that populate most gamers shelves.

For each type of weapon, a relatvely good sampling of weapons of that type is provided – enough so that, if you want to include hyper-ice weapons in your game, you have enough to work with, but not so many that it seems the author padded his weapon count by simply adding "hyper-ice" in front of every single weapon in the PHB. There's certainly a lot of repetition, but one benefit of this is that each stat-block is complete in itself; there's none of the space-saving, but annoying, problem of "This weapons is just like some other weapon 10 pages back, except it does +1 damage. Go back 10 pages to find the rest of the stats."

Mechanically, the book seems sound, though the wide range of damage and special properties mean each GM must carefully decide which weapon types are suited for his campaign.

Opening to any random page (and with a book this thick, reading it cover-to-cover is unlikely), is likely to produce either a smile or a "Cool!" or both. On one page, "Idiot Guns" – mass produced, ultra-simple weapons (only Simple Weapon proficiency required) which are designed to be given to expendable troops who are hurled into the meatgrinder en masse; on another, the quip that "The future of explosives is a bright and happy one. If the past five hundred years are any indication, humanity will have an ever-growing need to blast things into tiny little bits--a need which science will be happy to fulfill. So as the future unfolds, we will see larger and larger things blown into smaller and smaller bits (a prospect which has many of us wild with eager anticipation)."; on another, the Self-Assembling Howitzer(!)

If the book has a mechanical weakness, it is in that the D20 system doesn't support a lot of the granularity needed to make many of these weapons more distinctive mechanically. Most of the hand weapons end up being very close to equivalent to each other in actual combat, with the slight differences in stats washing out. If the author feels a need to exercise his muse more, a supplementary volume of more detailed rules for firearms would be a good start.

Graphically, the book is purely functional – some clip are, some crude 3-D computer graphics, and that's about it. The layout is spartan and functional. It comes in a display version and a 'printer friendly' version, but, sadly, no real 'screen' (landscape) version.

Lastly, this quote sums up the attitude of the book well.

"There are so many weapons in this book that at least one of them is bound to seem dorky to you. In some cases it’s intentional—the Freeze Cannon and the Atomic Ray are intended for a particular style of BMovie camp SF. With others it’s more a question of taste. If the Vibro-Claws or the Flying Buzzsaw Blade seem goofy to you, what can I say? I assure you, there’s some guy out there in a Slayer tee-shirt who thinks they’re the best thing I’ve come up with, and I want him to enjoy this book, too."

Twenty years ago, I WAS the kid in the Slayer – well, Jethro Tull – T-shirt, and this book sings to that part of me. If you were never him, you might still find it very useful, but if you were him, you will love it.

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