Lasers generate beams of divine light capable of reading images, transmitting information, burning wood, cutting metal or welding, melting plastic, and blasting holes through armor, flesh, and bone.
Pulsars are ancient predecessors to blasters. They use a train of microsecond-length pulses of coherent light to cause a cascade of explosions that flay flesh and vaporize armor.
Sonic weapons emit intense, precisely tuned acoustic energy to affect a target physiologically. Effects range from nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and discomfort to intense pain and deafness.
Directed energy weapons (DEWs) are weaponized beams of energy - usually highly focused electromagnetic energy - that flay flesh from bone with the explosive application of heat and radiation.
Blasters emit a train of dozens of nanosecond-duration pulses as a single shot that drill through matter with a series of rapid explosions.
X-ray lasers, sometimes called "x-blasters" or "xasers" in pop media, are blasters that operate in soft-xray wavelengths.