"In a galaxy consumed by conflict, weapons are a dangerous but necessary fact of life. The most common sidearm is the high energy laser/particle beam weapon commonly called a blaster."

In Star Wars, the laser weapons are not really laser weapons at all. These weapons, called blasters, actually shoot excited gas coupled with light, which is focused by prismatic crystals and by passing down the length of the barrel. Here's all the gory details: When a blaster is fired, a small amount of high energy blaster gass is moved from the gas chamber to the gas conversion enabler (better known as the XCiter. Get it, XCiter, exciter? Ha, ha!). There the gas is excited by energy from the weapons power source, which is usually what is called a powerpack, or a removable snap-in energy pack. For larger weapons this is a reactor or generator. The excited (or XCited, if you will) gas then passes into the actual blasting module, where it is processed into a beam comprised of intense energy particles coupled with light (I can't find out where the light comes from for sure -- probably a tiny flashlight powered by the powerpack or something of the sort). The prismatic crystal housing focuses the beam, which is focused, or "galvenned", even more as it passes down the blaster's barrel. The final laser/particle beam, or "bolt", contains high-energy particles that cause tremendous damage to anything they hit. the visible light seen by us is a harmless by-product of this reaction. In Star Wars, many blaster have a low-powered "stun" setting that can render a person unconscious. Most blasters are semiautomatic, firing once each time the trigger is pulled.

As in most SciFi series, there is always a way to protect yourself from these weapons. Most commonly seen on starfighters and capital ships, energy shields protect a person or object from blaster fire. They usually are able to recharge, given time, but will not stay up under a sustained volley of blaster fire. The amount of energy a shield can take is limited only by the amount of power that can be pumped into it. Capital ships like Star Destroyers are able to pump much more energy into their shields, because there is so much more room to store generators. In the current Star Wars book, Lando Calrissian is developing a method for capital ships to transfer their power to the shields of their starfighters. Although it does not work perfectly yet, it holds great promise and will help the New Republic immensly when it becomes fully developed.