Collections: The Problem with Sci-Fi Body Armor

This week we’re covering the winning topic from the latest ACOUP Senate poll, which is a look at some of the odd designs and mechanics for futuristic science fiction body armor, particularly rigid ‘hardsuits.’ Naturally, this post isn’t going to cover every variety of armor that appears in science fiction, so I want to be clear that I am generally limiting my scope here to rigid non-powered armor. Power (or powered) armor – that is, armor that moves with built-in servos and motors, rather than purely under muscle power – is its own topic that we’ll leave for another day.

(I’m running a bit behind on this one on account of the Thanksgiving Holiday, but I’m going to go ahead and post it, a bit rougher-cut than usual, and hopefully fix any typos or mistakes when I get back home)

Instead, I want to focus on rigid science fiction armors because they offer an interesting lens to consider their design: how to armor a human body in a rigid substance is an exceedingly solved problem: quite a few cultures have tackled this particular problem with a lot of energy and ingenuity, attempting to balance protection, mobility and weight. And the “problem with sci-fi body armor” begins with the fact that most of these futuristic ‘hardsuits’ utilize little of any of the design language of those efforts. Instead, where real armors evolve against threats, fictional armors evolve as a visual language, borrowing the design elements of other fictional armors far more often than they dip into their own historical exemplars, with the result that the whole thing sort of devours itself.

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