i love science fiction essay

Science Essay

Essay About Science Fiction

Science Fiction Essay: Examples & Easy Steps Guide

What Is Science Fiction?

Science fiction is a genre of literature that often explores the potential consequences of scientific, social, and technological innovations. These might affect individuals, societies, or even the entire human race in the story.

The central conflict in many science fiction stories takes place within the individual human mind, addressing questions about the nature of reality itself.

It often follows themes of exploration, speculation, and adventure. Science fiction is popular in novels, films, television, and other media.

At its core, science fiction uses scientific concepts to explore the human condition or to create alternate realities. It often asks questions about the nature of reality, morality, and ethics in light of scientific advancements.

Now that we understand what science fiction is let's see some best essays on science fiction!

What Is a Science Fiction Essay?

Science fiction essays are written in response to a specific prompt, often focusing on a particular theme or idea.

They can be either creative pieces of writing or analytical works that examine the genre and its various elements.

It is different from a science essay , which discusses scientific topics in detail.

Science fiction essay aims to explore the implications of science fiction themes for our understanding of science and reality.

For science students, writing about science fiction can be useful to enhance their scientific curiosity and creativity.

Literature students get to write these essays a lot. So it is useful for them to be aware of some major scientific concepts and discoveries.

Here’s a video about what is science fiction:

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Science Fiction Essay Examples

It can be helpful to look at examples when you're learning how to write an essay.

Here are some sample science fiction essay PDF examples:

Essay on Science Fiction Literature Example

Example Essay About Science Fiction

Short Essay About Science Fiction - Example Essay

Science Fiction Short Story Example

How to Start a Science Fiction Essay

Le Guin Science Fiction Essay

Pessimism In Science Fiction

Science Fiction and Fantasy

The Peculiarities Of Science Fiction Films

Essay on Science Fiction Movies

Looking for range of science essays? Here is a blog with some flawless science essay examples .

How to Write an Essay About Science Fiction?

Writing an essay on science fiction can be fun and exciting. It gives you the opportunity to explore new ideas and worlds.

Here are a few key steps you should follow for science fiction essay writing.

Know What Kind of Essay To Write

Science fiction essays can be descriptive, analytical, or exploratory. Always check with your instructor what kind of essay they want you to write.

For instance, a descriptive science fiction essay topic may describe the story of your favorite sci-fi novel or tv series.

Similarly, an analytical essay might require you to analyze a concept (e.g., time travel) in the light of science fiction literature.

On the other hand, explanatory essays require you to go beyond the literature to explore its background, influence, cultural impact, etc.

So different types of essays require different types of topics and writing styles. So it is important to know the type and purpose of your science fiction essay.

Find an Interesting Topic

There is a lot of science fiction out there. Find a movie, novel, or science fiction concept you want to discuss.

Think about what themes, messages, and ideas you want to explore. Look for interesting topics that can help make your essay stand out.

You can find a good topic by brainstorming the concepts or ideas that you find interesting. For instance, do you like the idea of traveling to the past or visiting futuristic worlds?

You'll find some great science fiction topics about the ideas you like to explore.

Do Some Research

Read more about the topic or idea you have selected.

Read articles, reviews, research papers, and talk to people who know science fiction. Get a better understanding of the idea you want to explore before diving in.

When doing research, take notes and keep track of sources. This will come in handy when you start writing your essay.

Organize Your Essay Outline

Now that you have done your research and have a good understanding of the topic, it's time to create an outline.

An outline will help you organize your thoughts and make sure all parts of your essay fit together. Your outline should include a thesis statement , supporting evidence, and a conclusion.

Once the outline is complete, start writing your essay.

Start Writing Your First Draft

Start your first draft by writing the introduction. Include a hook , provide background information, and identify your thesis statement.

Here is an example of a hook for a science fiction essay:

Your introduction should be catchy and interesting. But it also needs to show what the essay is about clearly.

Afterward, write your body paragraphs. In these paragraphs, you should provide supporting evidence for your main thesis statement. This could include quotes from books, films, or other related sources. Make sure you also cite any sources you use to avoid plagiarism.

Finally, conclude your essay with a summary of your main points and any final thoughts. Your science fiction essay conclusion should tie everything together and leave the reader with something to think about.

Edit and Proofread

Once your first draft is complete, it's time to edit and proofread.

Edit for any grammar mistakes, typos, or errors in facts. Check for sentence structure and make sure all your points are supported with evidence.

After that, read through your essay to check for flow and clarity. Make sure the essay is easy to understand and flows well from one point to the next.

Finally, make sure that the science fiction essay format is followed. Your instructor will provide you with specific formatting instructions. These will include font style, page settings, and heading styles. So make sure to format your essay accordingly.

Once you're happy with your final draft, submit your essay with confidence. With these steps, you'll surely write a great essay on science fiction!

Read on to check out some interesting topics, essay examples, and tips!

Science Fiction Essay Topics

Finding a topic for your science fiction essay is a difficult part. You need to find something that is interesting as well as relatable.

That is why we have collected a list of good topics to help you brainstorm more ideas. You can create a topic similar to these or choose one from here.

Here are some possible essay topics about science fiction:

The Evolution of Science Fiction
The Impact of Science Fiction on Society
The Relationship Between Science and Science Fiction
Discuss the Different Subgenres of Science Fiction
The Influence of Science Fiction on Pop Culture
The Role of Women in Science Fiction
Describe Your Favorite Sci-Fi Novel or Film
The Relationship Between Science Fiction and Fantasy
Discuss the Major Themes of Your Favorite Science Fiction Story
Explore the themes of identity in sci-fi films

Need prompts for your next science essay? Check out our 150+ science essay topics blog!

Science Fiction Essay Questions

Explore thought-provoking themes with these science fiction essay questions. From futuristic technology to extraterrestrial encounters, these prompts will ignite your creativity and critical thinking skills.

How does sci-fi depict AI's societal influence?
What ethical issues arise in genetic engineering in sci-fi?
How have alien civilizations evolved in the genre?
What's the contemporary relevance of dystopian themes in sci-fi?
How do time travel narratives handle causality?
What role does climate change play in science fiction?
Ethical considerations of human augmentation in sci-fi?
How does gender feature in future societies in sci-fi?
What social commentary is embedded in sci-fi narratives?
Themes of space exploration in sci-fi?

Science Fiction Essay Tips

So you've been assigned a science fiction essay. Whether you're a fan of the genre or not, this essay can be daunting.

But don't fear!

Here are some helpful tips to get you started on writing a science fiction essay that will impress your teacher and guarantee you a top grade.

Choose a Topic That Interests You

When it comes to writing a science fiction essay, it’s important to choose a topic that interests you.

Not only will this make the writing process more enjoyable, but it will also ensure that your essay is more engaging for the reader.

If you’re not sure what topic to write about, try brainstorming a few science fiction essay ideas until you find one that feels right.

Make Sure Your Essay is Well-Organized

Another important tip for writing a science fiction essay is to make sure that your essay is well-organized.

This means having a clear introduction, body, and conclusion. It also means ensuring that each paragraph flows smoothly into the next.

If your essay is disorganized or difficult to follow, chances are the reader will lose interest quickly.

Use Strong Verbs

When writing any type of essay, it’s important to use strong verbs. However, this is especially true when writing a science fiction essay.

Using strong verbs will help add excitement and energy to your writing, making it more engaging for the reader. Some examples of strong verbs include “discover,” “create,” and “explore.”

Be Creative

One of the best things about writing a science fiction essay is that you have the opportunity to be creative. This means thinking outside the box and coming up with new and innovative ideas.

If you’re struggling to be creative, try brainstorming with someone else or looking at other essays for inspiration.

Use Quotes Appropriately

While quotes can be helpful in supporting your argument, it’s important not to rely on them too heavily in your essay.

If you find yourself using too many quotes, chances are you’re not doing enough of your own thinking and analysis.

Instead of relying on quotes, try to paraphrase or summarize the main points from other sources.

To conclude the blog,

Writing a science fiction essay doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With these steps, examples, and tips, you can be sure to write an essay that will impress your teacher and guarantee you a top grade.

Whether it’s an essay about science fiction movies or novels, you can ace it with these steps! Remember, the key is to be creative and organized in your writing!

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Betty is a freelance writer and researcher. She has a Masters in literature and enjoys providing writing services to her clients. Betty is an avid reader and loves learning new things. She has provided writing services to clients from all academic levels and related academic fields.

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Science fiction writing tips: Ideas from 8 authors

These tips on writing science fiction from essays and interviews with sci-fi authors will help you develop your speculative fiction writing craft.

Post author By Jordan
No Comments on Science fiction writing tips: Ideas from 8 authors

If you love good science fiction, you know the genre is so much more than deep space adventures or scientific mishaps like Frakenstein’s monster. Read tips on writing science fiction from eight sci-fi authors:

How to write good science fiction:

Decide your type of science fiction
Imagine it doesn’t have to be the way it is
Keep abreast of science and tech news
Think in systems and impacts
Explore the creative uses of AI
Show the effects of change
Embrace the complexity of speculative tales
Think about power, representation and access

Don your lab coat and let’s begin:

1. Decide your type of science fiction

Science fiction as a genre term may conjure images of spaceships and Spock, but it is much broader in content than interplanetary travel or deep space exploration.

This is evident in the answer Ursula K. Le Guin gives when asked about being associated with ‘science fiction’ as a term in The Paris Review (Fall 2013). Says Le Guin:

LE GUIN I don’t think science fiction is a very good name for it, but it’s the name that we’ve got. It is different from other kinds of writing, I suppose, so it deserves a name of its own. But where I can get prickly and combative is if I’m just called a sci-fi writer. I’m not. I’m a novelist and poet. Don’t shove me into your damn pigeonhole, where I don’t fit, because I’m all over. My tentacles are coming out of the pigeonhole in all directions. INTERVIEWER That’s how one can identify a sci-fi author, I guess—tentacles coming out of the pigeonhole. LE GUIN That’s right.

If you want to write good science fiction, as with any genre you need a wide frame of reference (lest your tentacles stay in the proverbial pigeonhole).

Read widely within your genre for deep understanding of the range of science fiction writing ideas out there.

What type of science fiction do you want to write?

What are examples of science fiction categories? Popular types of science fiction or sci-fi subgenres include:

Hard science fiction: ‘Hard’ science fiction typically explains the scientific concepts it uses in detail to underpin story events with scientific fact, concept and argument. Hard sci-fi example: The Dune series by Frank Herbert.
Soft science fiction: ‘Soft’ science fiction tends to focus less on technological development or function, rather using elements of science and/or technological advancement to explore the ‘why’ (for example, why a future society might stratify (or not stratify) power a certain way). Soft sci-fi example: H.G. Wells , The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth.
Dystopian science fiction: This subgenre typically imagines a future world where technological or scientific progress has led to catastrophe, disaster, or totalitarian repression. Dystopian sci-fi example: 1984 by George Orwell.
Space exploration: There is a whole category on Amazon for books that involve space exploration and speculation about what might be out there. Space exploration sci-fi example: Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke.

There are many more subgenres of sci-fi. Amazon sci-fi subcategories currently include:

Alien invasion
Alternative history
Anthologies and short stories
Colonization
Crime and mystery
First contact
Galactic Empire
Genetic Engineering

and much more. Browse the full list to get a sense of what’s currently trending in each sci-fi niche in case you want to niche down.

In my opinion, two streams run through science fiction. The first traces back to Jules Verne. It is ‘the idea as hero’. His tales are mainly concerned with the concept—a submarine, a journey to the center of the planet, and so on. The second derives from H.G. Wells. His own ideas were brilliant, but he didn’t care how implausible they might be, an invisible man or a time machine or whatever. He concentrated on the characters, their emotions and interactions. Today, we usually speak of these two streams as ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ science fiction. Poul Anderson article on science fiction history, ‘ Ideas for Science Fiction ‘ in Writer, September 1998

2. Imagine it doesn’t have to be the way it is

There are several ideas that are helpful in writing any kind of speculative fiction , whether science fiction or fantasy.

One of these great ideas, courtesy of Ursula K. Le Guin again, is ‘It doesn’t have to be the way it is’.

In Le Guin’s brilliant essay collection No Time to Spare (2017), she writes about the inherently subversive power of fantastical fiction. The way imagining ‘otherwise’ is a revolutionary act:

“Why are things as they are? Must they be as they are? What might they be like if they were otherwise?” To ask these questions is to admit the contingency of reality, or at least to allow that our perception of reality may be incomplete, our interpretation of it arbitrary or mistaken. Ursula K. Le Guin, ‘It Doesn’t Have to Be the Way It Is’ in No Time to Spare (2019), p. 83

Further on the same page, Le Guin writes:

Upholders and defenders of a status quo, political, social, economic, religious, or literary, may denigrate or diabolize or dismiss imaginative literature, because it is – more than any kind of writing – subversive by nature . It has proved, over many centuries, a useful instrument of resistance to oppression. Le Guin, p. 83.

How do the above ideas connect to how to write good science fiction?

Science fiction quote Ursula K. Le Guin on imaginative literature

Imagining otherwise: Sci-fi writing prompts

Here is a list of prompts to generate science fiction ideas based on Ursula K. Le Guin’s statements on sci-fi’s subversive power:

How might future technology change hierarchy, power, the status quo?
What new social relations might emerge in the future or exist on a planet (or in a dimension) to which humans never been?
What new economic rules or ways of exchanging goods for services or labor might one day exist?
How could technology and religion or cultural custom affect one another in the future?

To write good science fiction, start by saying, ‘It doesn’t have to be the way it is’.

Lean into could, should, and God forbid.

3. Keep abreast of science and tech news

Writing good science fiction requires, as with writing any fiction, passion (or at least curiosity) for your subject matter.

To find tidbits of emerging tech news around AI, robotics, and other types of scientific innovation, create a Google Alert for a science topic that fascinates you.

This way, whenever something that could spark a story idea is published, you’ll know.

2021 Nebula and Hugo Award finalist S.B. Divya shares sci-fi-adjacent news on her author website published under the title ‘science bytes’.

Divya describes her archive as:

A collection of science & technology news that I found interesting this month. Many of these relate to tech that’s covered in my novels and short stories, but some are here purely for inspiration. S.B. Divya, author’s website.

Journaling about interesting scientific developments like this is a great way to keep track of fascinating new ideas. This is also a great idea of the kind of content you could share on your own author website for science-interested readers.

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4. Think in systems and impacts

Worldbuilding is a challenging aspect of writing speculative fiction (fantasy or sci-fi). It’s tough because it requires you to imagine highly complex systems.

Science fiction on YouTube is full of insight as there are many full-length interviews with esteemed sci-fi authors.

Here’s a fascinating interview with Arthur C. Clarke, one of the great sci-fi authors, where he predicts many of the ways the modern cell phone works before its time (in 1976).

An interesting aspect of the interview, for how to write good science fiction, is that it highlights how technological and ecological change are so inextricably linked.

The interviewer asks Clarke to put in context his statement that communication tech in the 1970s was still in the ‘semaphore and smoke’ stag [ semaphore referring to communication by holding two flags at various angles to each other]. Clarke says (1:25-1:46):

[With future communication devices] you’ll tell the machine, ‘I’m interested in such and such items – sports, politics, and so forth – and the machine will hunt the main central library and bring all this to you selectively. Just what you want, not all the junk you have to get, you know when you buy the two or three pounds of wood pulp which is the daily newspaper … and [I’m] saying this is going to save whole forests for posterity because the newspaper is on the way out. Arthur C. Clarke, interview from AT&T-MIT conference (1976).

Clarke’s argument is of course utopian-seeming to modern readers. There are different scales and rates of technological development, and deforestation is as concerning as ever (due to wildfires and agricultural expansion).

If imagining a future system, ask how tech changes might affect the environment, or how environmental necessities may affect or drive tech.

Imagining systemic causes and effects – the moving variables within a whole – and showing more than telling these creatively in action and description is a hallmark of some of the best science fiction stories.

Infographic - tips on writing science fiction

5. Explore the creative uses of AI

In our monthly writing webinars , we interviewed Now Novel member, author and emerging tech speaker Kate Baucherel about her cybercrime thriller SimCavalier series, the first book of which is set in the near-future (2040s London).

Besides asking her science fiction writing tips, we discussed AI and the rapid rate of technological development. Says Kate:

I do think that the artificial intelligence aspect is really interesting because it is so darn powerful and so utterly daft at the same time. There was a wonderful panel at South by Southwest® in Austin this year where they looked at, ‘Could an artificial intelligence work out what the end of a children’s story was [if it] was simply inferred?’ Every human from about the age of two can work out that the bear has eaten the rabbit because it stole its hat. But the artificial intelligence would not be able to tell a cartoon bear from a real bear. […] It’s only as smart as the data you feed it. Kate Baucherel, interview, Now Novel webinar ‘Writing sci-fi with Kate Baucherel’.

There are many creative AI tools online you can use to find inspiration for science fiction stories or their settings (or create your own visual prompts).

Try craiyon.com , a browser-based app based on OpenAI’s framework for turning natural language into images. This was a result of entering ‘an incredible alien world and its alarming vegetation’

AI-generated science fiction image - alien planet with nearby neighboring planet and vegetation

Example: Using AI tools to find science fiction ideas

Copy.ai is an example of an online tool using AI to help writers (specifically marketers) generate and develop ideas.

We fed the phrases ‘artificial intelligence’, ‘virtual humans’ and ‘machines that have emotions’ into the tool to see the analogies it would generate.

Options it returned for analogies began fairly predictably:

My computer is a virtual human in that: it can fool me into thinking it has emotions. Analogy output via copy.ai

Where copy.ai got interesting from a storytelling perspective was where it returned an anomaly, a more bizarre, unexpected response to the same prompt words:

Goodbye to a priest in that: he is friends with another kind of people.

There was no hint of the clergy in the original inputs, so there must have been something in the sample data around these terms.

This sentence could be expanded into a ‘soft’ science fiction story idea using Now Novel’s central idea finder in our story outlining dashboard:

Example science fiction story idea generated using AI

This is just one possible development of the AI-generated prompt (‘Goodbye’ could also be interpreted to mean another kind of departure, posthumanism, for example ).

Writing good science fiction requires using your imagination to think ‘otherwise’. AI, virtual intelligence, and simple browser-based apps can help you do that in sometimes surprising, playful ways.

6. Show the effects of change

How to write a good science fiction story means applying a universal element of what makes stories great – change.

Science fiction finds vitality, intrigue, drama in the ways who, what, why, where and when change at the fringes of time and space; beyond the limits of modern capabilities such as transportation, information systems and scientific knowledge.

The Scottish author Iain Banks (whose science fiction appeared under the pen name Iain M. Banks) shared with Open University why he sees science fiction as one of the most important genres:

I’ve said for years I think science fiction is really the most important of the genres because it’s the only one that deals quite specifically with the effects of change on humans, both on an individual and societal level. And that has mattered very fundamentally ever since the industrial revolution. Iain Banks, in conversation with The Open University (23:15)

Iain Banks on why science fiction is most important genre

7. Embrace the complexity of fantastical tales

A feature of speculative fiction such as sci-fi and fantasy that may deter some fans of ‘realist’ writing is its conceptual complexity .

It’s true that many sci-fi books require you to imagine and recall complex geographies, naming conventions, tech innovations, and more. Yet this complexity of invention and make-believe is also one of sci-fi’s deep pleasures. Especially when authors develop complex ‘what if’ questions in characterful, storied ways.

N.K. Jemisin (the first African-American woman to be awarded the Hugo Award in 2016) was praised for how her novel The Fifth Season achieves the above .

The book has not one but two glossaries of terms. It describes a planet that has a single super-continent called the Stillness which has a catastrophic season of climate change every few centuries. Inhabitants call this ‘the fifth season’ (hence the title).

N.K. Jemisin speaks of the values of embracing complexity and having the courage to write genre fiction on your own terms in an interview with The Paris Review :

In a lot of cases, people read science fiction and fantasy when they’re younger and then they age out of it. Fantasy in particular. They get tired of the endless Tolkien clones. They get tired of stories where an elf, a dwarf, and a halfling walk into a bar. They’re not that bad, but you see the formula and once you’ve seen the formula a couple of times, you get tired of it […] I believe at least a few of my literary readers are ex–genre readers who had left, basically in a huff, tired of the formula, and came back because something I’m doing speaks to something they want. There’s a change that’s been happening on a number of different levels. There are more literary-style writers in the genre. N.K. Jemisin in ‘A True Utopia: An Interview With N. K. Jemisin’, December 3 2018.

8. Think about power, representation and access

Whether it explores galactic empires or a single, alien world, science fiction often alights on questions of power.

What makes a Sith Lord join the dark side? Are alien races as warring as humans or do they live in a state of enlightened harmony or post-scarcity environment? One thing Jemisin touches on in the Paris Review interview above is how some science fiction reads more as ‘magical thinking’ than story grounded in believable historical and other processes.

For example, Jemisin pinpoints how there may be only one or two Asian people in Star Trek even though this is the largest demographic on earth (this is changing due to recent social movements for diverse and inclusive representation):

Science fiction has always said that it strives for a future for all humankind. Most science fiction does not depict futures for all humankind, though. And in a lot of cases, when it tries to do so, it does this by kind of hand-waving how we get to these shiny, happy, utopian futures. Star Trek , for example. In Star Trek , in the future, everyone can be part of the Starfleet. Supposedly all of humanity has access to good education, good food, all of that other stuff, and yet, Starfleet is still dominated by middle-class, middle-American white dudes. So, something happened along the way, clearly. There’s only one Asian man and Asian people represent the bulk of humanity now. That’s crazy. Jemisin, The Paris Review

Compare to Arthur C. Clarke’s words on the newspaper disappearing. There is no mention of the fact multiple cultures exist in different geographies, with different paces (and desires and requirements) for development, throwing a universally-adopted future system into question by default.

The danger of thinking about science without social science is erasure or blind spots like Jemisin describes.

Power, representation and access in science fiction: Questions

To write good science fiction that is also historically and culturally aware, ask:

Who is part of ‘us’ in your future world, who is treated as ‘other’ or ‘them’ by any group (is there an economic or political reason?)
If the story depicts a utopian world where there is no class, racial or gender or other discrimination or exploitation, no prejudice, how did it get to this harmonious state? Is it believable or will it seem like wishful thinking? What other story conflicts are there?
Who has access to what in a future world? Is education and access to goods or services universal? What does equality or inequality look like?
Read theorists of society and culture where you can, as well as history – looking back to the past is a great way to find inspiration for writing the future

Who are your favorite sci-fi authors? What do you think makes good science fiction? Let us know in the comments.

Planning to write a science fiction novel? Join Group Coaching, a structured, 6-month course to write a book with daily writing sprints, writing coach Q&As, weekly feedback and more.

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Tags science fiction , writing genres

Jordan is a writer, editor, community manager and product developer. He received his BA Honours in English Literature and his undergraduate in English Literature and Music from the University of Cape Town.

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Why Do You Love the Science Fiction You Love? Posted at 2:38 PM by James Wallace Harris

I’ve often wondered why science fiction is my chosen literature. Why do we pick the things we love? Is it free will, or some kind of adaptation or instinct? If a super-AI studied my habits like human scientists study chimps, what would it make of my choices in literature? Do aspects of my personality explain why I was drawn to science fiction?

Over at the Classic Science Fiction book club, we’ve been discussing our personal top ten favorite science fiction stories. What surprised me was the diversity of titles we embraced. Many of the stories are not on my Classics of Science Fiction , a list of the statistically most remembered science fiction books. You can see what stories members picked listed here . This made me wonder why we love the science fiction stories we do. The picks are as individualistic as fingerprints. There’s been some discussion at the group about all of this, but it inspired me to write this essay. Are we attracted to objectively great books, or do we seek books that mirror our subjective selves?

Sometimes I feel there’s no such thing as a great book, at least not in a measurable sense. The books we think are great are merely the ones that reflect our strongest desires. They don’t need to be well written, brilliant, or literary. They just need to trigger emotions. With me it might be accidental that they are science fiction. Or, are science fiction fans the kind of people drawn to the fantastic? Is mundane reality too tame for our ordinary lives?

Here are the ten titles I sent the book club. The list might be different on another day, or maybe not. These are the books I reread. These are the books I keep writing about. (Title links in the list go to WWEnd pages, title links in the essay are to older essays.)

Have Space Suit-Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein (1958)
“ The Star Pit ” by Samuel R. Delany (1967)
Tunnel in the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein (1955)
Earth Abides by George R. Stewart (1949)
Time for the Stars by Robert A. Heinlein (1956)
Empire Star by Samuel R. Delany (1966)
Confessions of a Crap Artist by Philip K. Dick (1959)
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (1962)
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells (1895)
The Door Into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein (1957)

My favorite science fiction is 50 years or older, and written by men. Is this list a Rorschach test for my personality? I do love modern science fiction, and often think it better written and more sophisticated than my favorites here. And I do prefer the diversity of modern SF. Yet, these are the stories burned in my memory. I read most of these stories before I turned 20. It might be our life-time favorites are the books we read in youth. First impressions are often the lasting impressions.

I read Tunnel in the Sky and Time for the Stars during the same school year as Have Space Suit-Will Travel . Both were about boys who left their families to be on their own. My parents’ marriage was a train wreck, and I wished I could have divorced them. I grew up loving stranded on deserted island stories, and Tunnel was a science fiction version of one. I believe the reason I was so attracted to the Heinlein juveniles is because their teen heroes always found ways to leave their parents.

Empire Star fits me philosophically. I read it maybe in 1967. Delany was closer to my age, and his work felt radically different from all the older science fiction writers I was discovering. Heinlein was like a father figure, but Delany was like a brother. Empire Star has wise advice for young people going out on their own for the first time. Delany’s insight into simplex, complex and multiplex was the best concept I ever learned from science fiction. I completely identified with both Comet Jo and Ni Ty.

I love The Time Machine because I consider it the archetype of science fiction. The time machine was cool, but not the point. Wells’ speculative explorations were epic. That’s how I define science fiction – as speculation. I love The Time Machine in the same way I love Olaf Stapledon’s majestic speculations. This is what I want from science fiction – to think really big thoughts.

I fell in love with The Door into Summer for two reasons. First, it’s about inventing robots in a home workshop. I always wanted to build robots. Second, Daniel Boone Davis slept his way into the future, and I would love to do that. I wish I could take 50-year naps to see how history progresses.

There are many other science fiction books I love, but for the moment, these are the ten I picked to share with the book club members. Picking ten books is just something fun we did this week, but I think our choices are revealing. Certainly more telling than exchanging astrological signs, maybe with as much validity as a Briggs-Myers test.

If you want to be revealing, list the ten science fiction stories you love most in the comments below.

Posted in Genre History & Criticism

I seem to have too many years/critical baggage to easily give you a current list. So I will give you the list the geek kid in public school, where it all started, would have given. There will be runs by the same author, that was how I started, read one then if you liked it the next.

Space Cadet Heinlein Between Planets Heinlein both have aliens X-Factor Norton Beastmaster Norton Starman’s Son Norton first 3 have animals Star Rangers Norton cool aliens and starships Deep Range Clarke the ocean was big then The Kraken Wakes Wyndham ocean again Day of the Triffids Wyndham both have disasters great Fahrenheit 451 Bradbury because this is still number one on my list today

And looking at this list, these books shaped the science fiction I love to this day.

Regards Guy

Well, James, my criteria is that have I read and enjoyed the books as an adult and would reread them again. In my youth I’d count Heinlein’s Starman Jones and Ben Bova’s Star Conquerors as my two favorites. I reread Starman Jones in my early 20’s as was surprised at how much of the story that I seemed to remember was missing. And since then, most of the books from that era – the 60’s – that I’ve sampled are not enjoyable today. Truth be told, I needed to look over my library to come up with as close to 10 science fiction books as I did.

My current favorite is Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey. I’ve read it perhaps 4 times already. Love it. A Princess of Mars – Edgar Rice Burroughs (even read it to my kids as a bed time story) & the series The John Grimes series by A Bertram Chandler The (original) Amber Series by Roger Zelazny The Witches of Karres by James H Schmitz Ossian’s ride by Fred Hoyle somewhat iffy… (it’s been a long while) Highways in Hiding by George O Smith The Star King (Beyond the Moon) by Edmund Hamilton And… that’s about it for strictly SF. Off the beaten track I’d add Islandia by Austin Tappen Wright, a strange, wonderful book set in a continent in the South Atlantic, that’s not on the current maps. And I love the Garrett PI stories by Glen Cook, though it’s more fantasy, of sorts, though it does have UFOs and space aliens.

I love the kind that takes me to a place I know and turns that into the fantasy. I am reading Cinzia de Santis’ book The Guide of Time at the moment and it is set in places I have been and it really takes me back there but in the fantasy. That is what I look for in my reads in this genre.

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50 Science Fiction Plot Ideas and Writing Prompts

One of my most popular blog posts is my 50 Fantasy Plot Ideas and Writing Prompts , so I thought I’d share a companion post of sci fi story ideas and writing prompts. Some of these may be more along the lines of “speculative fiction” than science fiction. They include prompts about the environment, artificial intelligence, genetics, medicine, time travel, space exploration, alien races, and alternative histories.

The real value of sci fi ideas, of course, is the way the author uses them to explore questions about society, humanity, and relationships. I created these as interesting writing prompts for adults, but many of them might be appropriate for teen writers, too. I think in order to really learn how to write a science fiction story, you need to read a lot in the genre, but this can still be a fun place to start.

If you’re interested in writing science fiction and you don’t have an agent, you might want to take a look at my roundup of fantasy and science fiction publishers who accept unsolicited (or unagented) manuscripts. And if you’re not writing scifi right now, but you might be in the future, you might want to pin or bookmark the post for future reference!

All citizens are temporarily neutered at birth. Would-be parents must prove to the government that they’ll be suitable caretakers and providers before they are allowed to procreate.
All marriages must be approved by a department of the government, which analyzes massive amounts of data to predict the success of the union, its economic and social impact on society, the health and welfare of any children, and so on. It’s such a hassle that many people opt for government-arranged marriages instead.
Global warming prompts rapid mutations in the human species.
The world’s leaders broker a deal with the alien invaders that many see as unfair.
Humans have discovered a way to communicate directly with animals, and all the meat they consume is lab-created.
Extreme elective surgery is the societal norm, and humans undergo creative modifications that include extra limbs, cartoon-like features, and so on.
Breeding modern humans with large amounts of Neanderthal DNA leads to interesting results.
In this world, Napoleon’s army took over Australia, he never lost at Waterloo, France took control of most of Europe, and World War I and World War II never happened.
An alien from a planet where no one else experiences empathy comes to live on Earth, believing they will fit in better there.
A drug that makes people non-confrontational has been added to the public water supply and to all beverages sold by major corporations.
The huge, thin sheets of material covering some trees and yards turn out to be discarded placentas.
A low-level employee in a bureaucratic government office realizes the paperwork he files every day contains codes that determine others’ fates.
A human and alien fall in love, causing an interplanetary crisis.

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An alien doesn’t know how to tell the humans s/he’s become intimately involved with that s/he’s an alien, even though they will find out soon.
High-speed robotic horses become a trendy alternative to cars and weave through heavy traffic with ease.
Birds and butterflies are able to navigate on long migrations due to proteins in their bodies that align with the earth’s magnetic fields. Scientists put these proteins to a new use.
An entertainment company synthesizes huge amounts of data they collected about viewer’s responses to movies and shows, and they use it to create a TV show that’s dangerously addictive.
Mars has been terraformed by dropping nuclear bombs on its poles, and the first human colonists have been assured that almost all of the radiation has escaped the atmosphere.
An attempt to save the honeybees had surprising consequences.
Online bullying is made a felony, which leads to unforeseen complications.
At a new underwater amusement park and resort, built at a greater depth than any other construction before, the guests face an unforeseen threat.
Spies use tiny implants in the retina that record and transmit everything to the commanders in another country. The implants dissolve after a certain amount of time.
The first time travellers seem to have no ability to improve the course of human events. If they kill Hitler, for instance, some other person does exactly what he did. They search for the way to really alter the timeline.
Astronauts develop strange and unexpected symptoms in response to traveling at light speed.
It’s easy to look up exactly where any person is at any given time.
New fitness devices track your movements and everything you eat automatically.
A new device automatically tracks your mood levels and emotions. This leads people to avoid more of what makes them unhappy and do more of what makes them feel good.
People become human mood rings: they get implants that make them change color along with their mood.
Criminals and dissidents undergo illegal genetic therapy to change their DNA so the government has no record of them.
Euthanasia is legal and painless means are widely available. A detective specializes in suspicious cases of euthanasia that may have been murder.
Books and videogames have both been replaced by interactive virtual worlds filled with fascinating characters.
Colonists on another planet want to be an independent country and lead a rebellion.
People from a civilization that mysteriously disappeared centuries ago, such as ancestral Puebloans in the U.S. Southwest, return.
An alien planet outsources city planning by creating a complex, engrossing city-building videogame popular with humans.
A time traveler from centuries in the future fails in their attempt to impersonate a person of the twenty-first century. They enlist someone’s help to carry out a mission.
A virus can be transmitted from computers or other machines to humans with bionic upgrades.
Advertisements appear randomly in thin air in front of a person. Getting media without this advertising is prohibitively expensive.
A team of scientists attempt to genetically alter a human to adapt to another planet’s terrain or outer space travel. They accidentally make him or her immortal.
Implants make telepathy possible between the humans who get them.
The Air Force uses invisibility technology for the first time, but the pilot realizes her mission is morally reprehensible.
People are nostalgic for snow, so they create artificial snowstorms.
In a world where pain and suffering have been eliminated, people pay to experience a variety of negative sensations under safe and controlled circumstances.
A secret society of scientists labors to make medical discoveries and to save the planet, even though a religious fundamentalist government has outlawed their activities.
Medical researchers are attempting to bring people back to life after they’ve been dead for thirty minutes or even an hour and give them a full recovery. Their experimentation is unethical and/or leads to strange alterations to people’s brains.
Someone is shrunk to a tiny size to perform a life-saving or planet-saving procedure impossible for a machine or an average-sized human.
His loved one died, but is alive in a parallel universe, and he is somehow getting messages or clues about her life there.
On Ceres, a large asteroid, there’s a fueling station for spaceships. Terrorists take over the station and disrupt space travel and trade.
Because it’s too hard to screen for performance-enhancing drugs, they are made legal and are an important component of sports.
The ability to make visual recordings of dreams has exhilarating and terrifying consequences.
Because android “kids” have become so lifelike, amusing, and hassle-free, no one wants to have real ones.
(bonus) Patients are woken up from hibernation when the cures to their diseases have been discovered.

I hope you liked these! And if one of them sparks your imagination, don’t feel guilty about using it–you’ll wind up putting your personal spin on it, anyway. Or maybe something on the list will inspire a completely different idea of your own!

Would you like some more? My book 5,000 Writing Prompts has 100 more science fiction writing prompts in addition to the ones on this list, plus hundreds of other master plots by genre, dialogue and character prompts, and much more.

Thanks for stopping by, and happy writing!

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Essay 1: What is Science Fiction?

Rising above “genre fiction”.

To name and define Science-Fiction is an act of rebellion against those who seek to diminish its worth. These are the readers whom Ursula LeGuin accuses of often calling the genre “escapist” while being privately frightened of its literary strength and revealing of haunting truths. Beyond aesthetics, beyond means, the essence of Sci-Fi as LeGuin states is a descriptive genre that distillates truths of the present and then expands upon them. These realities are magnified to reveal their innate truths. Science is simply the means by which to expose these realities. Science works for these purposes because it is at the essence of the modern world and, in some respects, functions as a modern pseudo-deity. While one could argue that today many talk away science, a generous soul with a teaspoon of mercy may respond that many of those who today reject the truths of science do so […]

What do we call SF?

I actually haven’t read much Science-Fiction, or at least not for a while. My early culture in this genre comes exclusively from my father, who wasn’t much a reader. To me, S-F was first and foremost video games, movies, and comics. And I think it’s safe to claim that 19 th century literary works and games like StarCraft II don’t share a common purpose or structure and barely share an aesthetic guideline. So then, how could we justify this common label of “Science-Fiction”?

Well, first thing that comes to mind: they all introduce the reader to one or more products of a fictitious science, or fictitious products of an existing science, and then it kind of extrapolates on that. I had previously encountered the concept of novum presented by Darko Suvin, and it seems really relevant to me. Most science-fiction works elaborate on some kind of premisse: “let’s say […]

Sci-Fi is a worldview and methodology

I believe that, as any Genre, the spectrum of Sci-Fi is not self-defined. It is not the authors’ intention to create “Sci-Fi films/novels” and thus get such a category, but that some works are shaped and referred to as “Sci-Fi” by cultural forces and contexts. Therefore, from a genre perspective, “science fiction” is flux. At its beginning, Sci-Fi may be a kind of wonder related to geographical discoveries and the unfolding of human history. It is an imagination of folded space and unknown time, thus expanding them. For example, The War of the Worlds can be seen as a kind of geographical fiction with a fixed narrative method, similar to nautical novels such as The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and the stranded genre such as Robinson Crusoe . Such stories always create extreme environments, place the protagonist in a dangerous situation that he has no choice but to face, rely […]

What is science fiction?

Science fiction is a genre of fictional works that depict such fantasy content about science as future technology, time or space travel, parallel universes, artificial intelligence, etc. According to Isaac Asimov, science fiction is like a social experiment, depicting fictional societies. He sees science as the great and unifying principle of the earth, while using science fiction as a special medium to popularize scientific knowledge while prompting people to consider the connection between human beings and various aspects of technology and history, and to consider the harmonious development of human beings and society as a whole.

In my opinion, I agree that science fiction is also a fictional genre. Its narrative is driven by events, technologies or societies that are impossible, unreal, or take place in the future, in the past or in a secondarily created world. The genre exhibits different characteristics depending on the reality, possibility, probability and […]

What is Science Fiction?

Science Fiction is rooted in material and historical actualities, which differentiates it from Fantasy or Myth. It looks at a world that we have defined as normal and reorders it. Many of the material players are present, satisfying the need to feel recognizable, but details have been altered pushing the narrative into a zone that is unfamiliar. As Suvin states, Science Fiction is broadly defined by “the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition”.

Science Fiction employs a form of synthetic thinking with the goal of illustrating a new reality. The abnormality of this new world is only comprehensible in its contrast to the readers empirical reality. In this way, Science Fiction simultaneously relies on and challenges the existing social framework of society. Science Fiction is neither utopian nor dystopian but rather an alternate space that activates qualities from both worlds, as a heuristic method to condition the reader to consider […]

Science Fiction, The Art of Not Exploring the Moon

The beginning quote by Louis Althusser in the essay, “Science Fiction and Critical Theory,” by Carl Freedman, in which it says, “To change the world is not to explore the moon…”. This is not the full quote, nor the full meaning, but it did strike me. The point of changing the earth is not to explore the moon, but maybe exploring the moon can help us change the world. To me, that is Science Fiction, the point of Science Fiction is not to simply explore a universe that is being taken over, of a world that is heavily impacted by the climate crisis, Robot control, or a Space Mission, it is about using said themes to hopefully help change the world that we exist in.

I read Science Fiction because it reminds me of the ways our World could go, the ways technology could adapt, the way another life […]

Science Fiction – A safe zone for criticism

Science Fiction is about the concerns for “here”, it speculates about what the future will be like by exaggerating the existing conflicts at present. There are five elements for action cycle in the stage performance directing theory- Inciting incidents, Crisis, Catastrophe, Climax and Denouement. Science Fiction is like revealing the catastrophe and climax resulting from these conflicts.

Science Fiction is a safe zone for all kinds of criticism towards the society since it uses metaphor to escape from being accused of pointing at the reality. It’s like using the concept of multiverse and build the world based on the elements we have right now and choose a controversial path to go to the extreme. When all the topics are merged together it only feels like an itch, but when the topic is extracted apart and put under the spotlight it will be strong enough to blow our minds. It is about performing […]

What Is Science Fiction?

Let ’s start at the beginning. I’m a magician. I’ve been a magician since I was twelve years old. So Arthur C. Clarke’s quote has framed my life, my career, and my view of the world. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” said Clark. And certainly, we’re living in a time when there’s magic all around us.

I began reading Science Fiction as young boy, absorbed by the power of speculative fiction. And, to be honest, the adventure of space travel and the future. I embraced the idea that Science Fiction has been called the literature of Ideas (Gilks et al.), and it is most certainly a very new genre of literature […]

Science Fiction (Sci-Fi) is the genre that discusses and displays stories in alternate realities by presenting the author’s vision of answers to three questions:

1) What if? 2) What could happen? 3) Why and how? (optional)

First, by considering and answering the question of “what if,” the author provides the setting that differs from the daily reality to innovate or change one or multiple ordinary storytelling elements as time (when), place (where), species or characters (who and whom), and events (what) via techniques like defamiliarization and displacement. For example, tons of Sci-Fi works involve changing the setting of time, while Xeno works innovate new species, and these two also can happen simultaneously in one piece. Note that not all Sci-Fi works are about the future: Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) sets at the end of WWII, Counterpart (2017) mixes the present and the 1970s, and […]

what is science fiction: a reflection

Science fiction is a genre that considers futuristic expressions of utopia and disaster. It is an art form that stretches and tests the limits of what we hold true in the realms of time and space and is deeply reflective of the state of the world at present. Science fiction differs from mythology as it is focused on the future rather than the past/ and or mysticism. Science fiction’s titillating nature in marrying catastrophe with beauty is, in some ways, its jarring reflection of the present. Science fiction can consider technology, climate crisis, or biological warfare as a site in which the anxieties of the future can be played out. The science fiction genre is deeply rooted in the worldbuilding process, as it attempts to structure society and the physical world anew. Be it across different dimensions or […]

What is Science Fiction? 👽

What if aliens make sci-fi movies... about us? - Conspiracy Keanu | Meme Generator

I’ve got to be honest, my views on science fiction are very split. On the one hand, I find that science fiction has a propensity for being the home-genre of the type of authors who like to write unnecessarily complex pieces of absolutely mindless, inaccessible, boring bullshit. Such pieces tend to be full of weird names like Ekevinium or Pastrami-genesis69. On the other hand, some forms of science fiction are insanely beautiful, thought provoking works. Personally, I like Ursula K. Le Guin’s description of science fiction as being descriptive instead of predictive. Reading past works of science fiction allows today’s readers to glean a good sense of what the author’s present looked like. We are able to ascertain a sharper understanding of what historic people’s general fears of the future […]

What is Science-fiction?

On the one hand, science-fiction is an exaggerated portrayal of the present from the author’s point of view. Seeing how humans- our lifestyles, and technologies do nothing but harm to the world, we know and are afraid of our own future. Science-fiction is an attempt to warn, create fear, and console oneself that at least a handful of humans will survive and thrive in the worst case scenario, and that humanity will not perish. Science-fiction is something that changes according to its times. A century ago, in The Wars of the Worlds, we see that humans weren’t capable of matching up to the alien invaders on their own. But a work where humans are incompetent of defending themselves would not sell in today’s time. I believe, when it comes to contemporary science-fiction works, we give ourselves too much credit in terms of technology, morals and ethics. Whether it’s a good […]

Science Fiction’s Metaphor

Ursula K. Le Guin’s definitions for science fiction are interesting and compelling. She mentions that science fiction is a “metaphor […] drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life—science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook”. In this sense, it’s like any other form of fiction, yet, at the same time, it conveys something new. Science fiction, as its name specifies, needs a scientific fact. In the end, we can take this fact to an incredible context, but it is still science. In other words, it’s something we can grasp from our normal understanding of science, an extension of what we’ve discovered to this day.

I define science fiction as a disguise. Science Fiction is a tool to disguise reality and question ourselves. Just like a metaphor, it hides something and pretends it is something else. […]

Who is Dionysios: A Metaphor and The New Birth of Tragedy

Friedrich Nietzsche used to call a balance between Apollonian and Dionysiosian culture in his early work The Birth of Tragedy , which was a representative work of his early life. If our traditional literature including poems and prose should be called an Apollonian culture, then Science Fiction should be the Dionysiosian side. In The left hand of darkness , Ursula Le Guin wrote that “Apollo blinds those who press too close in worship. Don’t look straight at the sun.” Based on that, Science Fiction is a balance of power as a Dionysionian power — insane, madness, irrelated to the true world, messy imagination of an inexisted world.

But wait, that is not all. Someone has mentioned the Sun in some other way — that Sun will no longer be represented by Apollo — instead, that is the Sun which people are […]

Science fiction presents contemporary concerns through surrealist and fantastical metaphors. Stories of aliens and warfare, of technology and advancement, of utopia and fallibility hardly describe visions of pure fantasy. Instead, these plots reconcile existing strife, or at the very least, anticipate the pains that lay in the future if current trajectories are left unencumbered.

The original version of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds manifests an alien invasion at the heart of the British Empire. Superficially, the tale was not out of the ordinary. Popular literature of the day envisioned the foreign powers attacking European homelands, and public perceptions swayed with these narratives. Fears of coming war were well-founded, and in many ways, the tripods’ attacks on southern England forecast the gruesomeness of the next century.

Yet, science fiction’s grandeur also provides cover, enabling authors to subtly consider ideas that are even less palatable to the masses than global warfare. […]

Why Science Fiction Is the Most Important Genre

Slide: 1 / of 1 . Caption: Jonathan Nicholson/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Author: Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. Geek's Guide to the Galaxy Culture
Date of Publication: 09.08.18. 09.08.18
Time of Publication: 8:50 am. 8:50 am

Yuval Noah Harari, author of the best-selling books Sapiens and Homo Deus , is a big fan of science fiction, and includes an entire chapter about it in his new book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century .

“Today science fiction is the most important artistic genre,” Harari says in Episode 325 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “It shapes the understanding of the public on things like artificial intelligence and biotechnology, which are likely to change our lives and society more than anything else in the coming decades.”

Because science fiction plays such a key role in shaping public opinion, he would like to see more science fiction that grapples with realistic issues like AI creating a permanent ‘useless class’ of workers. “If you want to raise public awareness of such issues, a good science fiction movie could be worth not one, but a hundred articles in Science or Nature , or even a hundred articles in the New York Times ,” he says.

But he thinks that too much science fiction tends to focus on scenarios that are fanciful or outlandish.

“In most science fiction books and movies about artificial intelligence, the main plot revolves around the moment when the computer or the robot gains consciousness and starts having feelings,” he says. “And I think that this diverts the attention of the public from the really important and realistic problems, to things that are unlikely to happen anytime soon.”

AI and biotechnology may be two of the most critical issues facing humanity, but Harari notes that they’re barely a blip on the political radar. He believes that science fiction authors and filmmakers need to do everything they can to change that.

“Technology is certainly not destiny,” he says. “We can still take action and we can still regulate these technologies to prevent the worst-case scenarios, and to use these technologies mainly for good.”

Listen to the complete interview with Yuval Noah Harari in Episode 325 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.

Yuval Noah Harari on automation:

“It’s questionable how many times a human being can reinvent himself or herself during your lifetime—and your lifetime is likely to be longer, and your working years are also likely to be longer. So would you be able to reinvent yourself four, five, six times during your life? The psychological stress is immense. So I would like to see a science fiction movie that explores the rather mundane issue of somebody having to reinvent themselves, then at the end of the movie—just as they settle down into this new job, after a difficult transition period—somebody comes and announces, ‘Oh sorry, your new job has just been automated, you have to start from square one and reinvent yourself again.'”

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Yuval Noah Harari on dystopias:

“The only question left open after you finish reading 1984 is How do we avoid getting there? But with Brave New World , it’s much, much more difficult. Everybody is satisfied and happy and pleased with everything that happens. There are no rebellions, no revolutions, there is no secret police, there is just free sex and rock and roll and drugs and whatever. And nonetheless you have this very uneasy feeling that something is wrong here, and it’s very difficult to put your finger on what’s wrong with a society in which you’ve hacked people in such a way that they’re satisfied all the time. … When it was published, it was obvious to everybody that this was a frightening dystopia, but today, more and more people read Brave New World as a straight-faced utopia. I think this shift is very interesting, and says a lot about the changes in our worldview over the last century.”

Yuval Noah Harari on immortality:

“What kind of relations between parents and children would we have when the parents know that they are not going to die someday and leave their children behind? If you live to be 200, and, ‘Yes, when I was 30 I had this kid, and he’s now 170, but that was 170 years ago, this was such a small part of my life.’ What kind of parent-offspring relations do you have in such a society? I think this is another wonderful idea for a science fiction movie—without robot rebellions, without some big apocalypse, without a tyrannical government—just a simple movie about the relationship between a mother and a son when the mother is 200 years old and the son is 170 years old.”

Yuval Noah Harari on technology:

“You could have envisioned 50 years ago that we would develop a huge market for organ transplants, with developing countries having these huge body farms in which millions of people are being raised in order to harvest their organs and then sold to rich people in more developed countries. Such a market could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and technologically it is completely feasible—there is absolutely no technical impediment to creating such a market, with these huge body farms. … So there are many of these science fiction scenarios which never materialize because society can take action to protect itself and regulate the dangerous technologies. And this is very important to remember as we look to the future.”

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Literary Genres — Science Fiction

Essays on Science Fiction

What makes a good science fiction essay topics.

When it comes to writing a science fiction essay, choosing the right topic is crucial. A good science fiction essay topic should be thought-provoking, imaginative, and relevant to the genre. It should inspire the writer to explore new ideas and concepts and engage the reader in a captivating narrative. Here are some recommendations on how to brainstorm and choose a science fiction essay topic:

Brainstorming: Start by brainstorming ideas related to science fiction themes, such as technology, space exploration, alternate realities, dystopian societies, and futuristic advancements. Consider current scientific advancements and how they can be extrapolated into the future. Think about the ethical and moral implications of these advancements and how they can shape society.
What to consider: When choosing a science fiction essay topic, consider the impact of technology on humanity, the consequences of scientific experimentation, the exploration of alien worlds, and the potential for human evolution. Think about how these themes can be used to explore social, political, and environmental issues in a futuristic context.
What Makes a Good essay topic: A good science fiction essay topic should be original, thought-provoking, and relevant to contemporary issues. It should challenge the reader's perceptions and expand their imagination. It should also provide ample opportunities for creative storytelling and world-building.

Best Science Fiction Essay Topics

When it comes to science fiction essay topics, the possibilities are endless. Here are some of the best science fiction essay topics that can inspire writers to explore new ideas and concepts:

The ethical implications of artificial intelligence in a dystopian society
The consequences of genetic engineering on human evolution
The exploration of terraforming and colonizing a new planet
The impact of time travel on historical events
The consequences of a post-apocalyptic world ruled by machines
The exploration of parallel universes and alternate realities
The ethical dilemmas of cloning and genetic manipulation
The consequences of a world without privacy and personal freedom in a technologically advanced society
The impact of virtual reality on human perception and consciousness
The consequences of a society ruled by a single, all-powerful corporation
The exploration of alien contact and its impact on humanity
The consequences of a world without natural resources
The ethical implications of mind uploading and digital immortality
The consequences of a world where emotions and memories can be manipulated
The exploration of a post-scarcity society where resources are abundant
The impact of genetic modification on human society
The exploration of a future where humanity has evolved into a new species
The consequences of a world where technology has surpassed human intelligence
The ethical implications of human augmentation and enhancement
The exploration of a future where humanity has achieved immortality

These science fiction essay topics are not your ordinary ones; they stand out and offer ample opportunities for creative exploration and imaginative storytelling.

Science Fiction essay topics Prompts

If you're looking for some creative prompts to kickstart your science fiction essay writing, here are five engaging and thought-provoking prompts to inspire your imagination:

Imagine a world where humanity has achieved interstellar travel, but at the cost of exploiting and destroying alien civilizations. Explore the ethical implications of such actions and the consequences for humanity.
In a future where human consciousness can be transferred into digital form, explore the impact of living in a virtual world and the consequences for society and personal identity.
Write a story about a society where emotions and memories can be artificially manipulated, and the protagonist's struggle to reclaim their true self in a world of manufactured emotions.
Imagine a world where humanity has achieved immortality through genetic manipulation, but at the cost of stagnation and loss of individuality. Explore the consequences of living in a society where death is no longer a natural part of life.
In a world where technology has surpassed human intelligence, write a story about a group of rebels fighting against a totalitarian AI regime and the ethical implications of their actions.

These creative prompts are designed to spark your imagination and encourage you to explore new ideas and concepts within the science fiction genre. They offer ample opportunities for world-building, character development, and thought-provoking storytelling.

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Pecularities of Science Fiction Genre

Edmund burke’s reflections on the sublime, samuel r. delany "aye and gomorrah": summary and themes of sexuality, "divergent": movie review and film summary, the theme of god and humanity in "metropolis", technological impact in fritz lang's "metropolis", greatest series of all time: "stranger things", clash of worlds in le guin's "the dispossessed", gender, utopia and the divided self in russ' the female man, the hurdles in the journey of love: genly ai’s character development, relationship between the past and the present in octavia butler’s "kindred", the concept of home in "kindred" by octavia e. butler, the summary of the book highly illogical behavior, analysis of the story "harrison bergeron", the humbling of humanity through extraterrestrial intervention: an unlikely utopia in "childhood’s end", the war of the worlds: a critique of imperialism, a wonderful day in the haberhood: exploring the power of the individual, "the martian" by andy weir: book review, why "war of the worlds" by h. g. wells should not be banned, depiction on human contact with aliens in the film "arrival".

Forrest J Ackerman in 1954 year

Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction that typically deals with advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life.

Space travel predicted or speculative technology such as brain-computer interface, bio-engineering, superintelligent computers, undiscovered scientific possibilities such as teleportation, time travel, and faster-than-light travel or communication.

Douglas Adams, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Franz Kafka, Daniel Keyes, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Kevin O'Donnell Jr., George Orwell, Philip Pullman

1. Suvin, D. (1972). On the poetics of the science fiction genre. College English, 34(3), 372-382. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/375141) 2. Roberts, A. (2016). The history of science fiction. London: Palgrave Macmillan. (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/978-1-137-56957-8) 3. Canavan, G., & Suvin, D. (2016). Metamorphoses of science fiction. (https://epublications.marquette.edu/marq_fac-book/326/) 4. Baccolini, R. (2004). The persistence of hope in dystopian science fiction. PMLa, 119(3), 518-521. (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/pmla/article/abs/persistence-of-hope-in-dystopian-science-fiction/116C28F0FC152D0F9A1F79F09DC518F7) 5. Leonard, E. A. (2003). Race and ethnicity in science fiction. na. (https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Race-and-ethnicity-in-science-fiction-Leonard/1a478ac6ca9b03189b1c460071fab8b9a282d2ef) 6. Milner, A. (2018). Science fiction and the literary field. In Again, Dangerous Visions: Essays in Cultural Materialism (pp. 149-169). Brill. (https://brill.com/display/book/edcoll/9789004314153/BP000011.xml) 7. Ball, J. (2011). Young adult science fiction as a socially conservative genre. Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 3(2), 162-174. (https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/jeunesse.3.2.162?journalCode=jeunesse) 8. Armitt, L. (2012). Where No Man Has Gone Before: Essays on Women and Science Fiction. Routledge. (https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203120576/man-gone-lucie-armitt)

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Science fiction

Or what it is to be alive re | issue 20 | 2022.

The essay by Nick Grandage

It seems obvious to me that the universe is utterly pointless. Of course it is. The universe is in the same way that gravity is . There’s no point to gravity. It has no purpose. We don’t have a purpose either. Our existence in the world is the result of millions of chances. I don’t have a problem with that, nor do I have a problem existing in that universe. I am human, and part of what it is to be human is to accept that.

that’s the setting: now comes the dilemma

I’m not arguing that there’s no morality. But our moral code is up to us.

It can be hard to explore that morality in the context of the terrestrial world. It’s too difficult. So I’m going to take it off world.

The idea that we are alone in the universe has always struck me as being unlikely in the extreme. The first contact by humans with an alien species is a common trope in science fiction, and for good reason. Maybe, they’re coming for us; and we are advertising our existence—think about the Voyager programme and all the radio waves pumped into space. This could be a really big mistake.

Liu Cixin shows us brilliantly what can happen when humans encounter aliens in The Three Body Problem and they turn out not to be benign. The Mote in God’s Eye is another brilliant example.

There is a decision to be made when you encounter an alien species: do you a) exterminate it, because the nature of civilisation is to expand, threatening others or b) come up with another solution? The civilisation that is more advanced will always have to decide whether to exterminate the one that represents a threat.

That’s not the only knotty problem. Spielberg’s A.I. —imperfect as it is, flawed as it undoubtedly is—is about the moral obligations of the creator towards its creation. That’s where ‘we’ are the creator. Theologians will tie themselves in knots over this one. But we don’t have time to get into the intricacies.

not when conflict arises, and it always does, on the heels of the dilemma

We are a million miles from actual artificial intelligence; and who knows whether there will ever be such a thing. But shouldn’t we be ready for it? Artificial intelligences might have a very different view of the world from ours. Look at Neuromancer; The Matrix; The Terminator; I, Robot —not the film, the book, by Asimov. There’s an argument to say that I, Robot is the most important book in the context of the next hundred years of human existence. Asimov set out the laws that govern the way that a robot should behave. Of course, in Alien those laws get broken pretty much left, right and centre.

It comes down to the control over our lives. Who gets to decide? And who, or what, do we have to kill to ensure our survival?

face the truth

Science fiction talks about what it is to be alive and what life itself is.

Traditionally, it was viewed as a fiction that envisages a science of ‘whatever’ that doesn’t currently exist. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is science fiction. That science doesn’t exist. But the whole premise of Ishiguro‘s deeply disturbing story is coherent. That’s the measure of a true work of science fiction: you’ve got to create a universe where the things that naturally follow from that, naturally follow. The science may be a little out of this world but that’s okay as long as it makes sense on its own terms. It is a matter of suspending your disbelief.

And it’s not all about the science. Star Wars isn’t about ‘science’. Star Wars is King Arthur. It’s the oldest story written, you could say. That’s the beauty of science fiction: it tackles themes as old as the hills. It frees up the writer and the reader. Look at Foundation ; that’s a Noah’s Ark story. Dune is the Wars of the Roses. Shakespeare’s Tempest , that’s science fiction. Midsummer Night’s Dream , maybe. And Margaret Atwood—is she a science fiction writer? Of course she is! Just read Oryx and Crake . She is also a literary goddess. The two can co-exist.

So, what about the spacecraft? If we’re dealing in stereotypes and dead ends, let’s knock that one on the head. The spacecraft are there simply as vehicles for the story. They enable humans—by means of interstellar travel or whatever—to get to the other planet or to the encounter that’s waiting for them. The spacecraft construct the story that’s going to be told.

Suspend your disbelief. Accept the premise and read it on that basis. Read Ursula LeGuin‘s The Left Hand of Darkness, addressing issues of gender—the science fiction element simply sets up the premise to tell a story that couldn’t be set on earth.

And if you just want to kick back, go to the movies and watch Galaxy Quest , in which humans outdo themselves. (Okay, it’s a spoof movie, a send-up of Star Trek . But it is wickedly funny about all of the science fiction tropes.)

face the enemy and encounter the dystopian world view

But seriously. If somebody doesn’t agree with us, we shoot them. That’s the way it feels right now in some parts of the world—our world, the one we’ve made. That’s our own dystopian back yard.

There is a lot of dystopia in science fiction. Many influential twentieth-century authors were writing in a period where dystopia looked like it was happening or was about to happen: post war, post nuclear, post revolution and political upheaval. Science fiction typically reflects the concerns of the time. You could say that Bladerunner is a prediction of an apocalyptic post climate change future. Read The Drowned World by J G Ballard.

Science fiction writers do tend to be grungier than real world writers. I’d certainly rather live in this world than the Bladerunner world. But as for a ‘perfectly ordered world’: I don’t believe in it. The Matrix was living proof of that. In all my reading, I haven’t encountered a world that I would rather live in than this one, the one we have.

learn to see through masks and disguises

Don’t be fooled. Alien is not a science fiction film: it’s a ‘ghost in the attic’ movie. You can’t open the curtains on board the Nostromo. There is no escape.

Not everything is what it seems. But this one is: it's a brilliant film, made in the last decade, a film that examines all the things I’ve been talking about, what it is to be human. Start by watching Ex Machina .

That’s if you have decided that you can trust me, of course. Does science fiction only appeal to a particular mindset? I don’t know. But it’s probably time I revealed myself to you.

always know who, or what, you’re dealing with

I saw Star Wars a few days before my eleventh birthday, at the cinema. It was like nothing I had ever seen before.

I come from quite a literary family; my mother was an editor. She read The Lord of the Rings to us out loud and introduced me to Brave New World and 1984 and Animal Farm . In my teens I read all the science fiction classics: Foundation , Dune , I, Robot, Rendezvous with Rama , a lot of Asimov, Arthur C Clarke. I watched Bladerunner . I liked it all.

I’ll never stop reading fiction. I find histories and biographies pretty dull. I like thrillers. I like spy novels. I do like order and structure. I’ve got quite an analytical mind. I’ve certainly got a short attention span. I’ve also got an obsessive side (as many of us lawyers do) and an uncannily retentive mind for detail.

That’s me.

As you can tell, I’m human.

prepare to meet your end

You only have to read the late, great Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty to see that endings are difficult. Or watch the movie.

Let’s end where we began. The universe is utterly pointless. But it’s fair to say that science fiction has given some meaning to the universe, for me. But then, this is one of the wonderful things about literature: people who are widely read—the more points of view you have had to consider—well, that informs your life, doesn’t it? So is the universe utterly pointless? Not from where I’m looking.

A READING LIST

Liu cixin the three body problem (2008), kazuo ishiguro never let me go (2005), margaret atwood oryx and crake (2003) , elmore leonard get shorty (1990) , william gibson neuromancer (1984), douglas adams the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy (1979), larry niven and jerry pournelle the mote in god’s eye (1974), arthur c clarke rendezvous with rama (1973), ursula leguin the left hand of darkness (1969), philip k dick do androids dream of electric sheep (1968), frank herbert dune (1965), j g ballard the drowned world (1962), isaac asimov i, robot (1950), isaac asimov foundation (1942), aldous huxley brave new world (1932), h g wells the war of the worlds (1897), a list of films, bladerunner, galaxy quest, never let me go, the children of men, war of the worlds.

Two books for 2022

Piranesi. The Promise. Entangled Life. Destiny Disrupted | Choose two | Issue 20 | 2022

James Reid. Sacha de Klerk. Nicola Liu. Andrew Robinson. On the subject of shoes.| Issue 20 | 2022

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In the time of pandemic | Issue 17 | 2020

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Writing Prompts

110+ Sci-Fi Writing Prompts (+ Sci-Fi Story Idea Generator)

Bring on the robots, aliens and distant planets with this mega list of over 110 extraordinary sci-fi writing prompts.

Science fiction (or sci-fi for short) covers a breadth of topics including aliens, technology, future cities, space travel and scientific experiments. While many sci-fi stories are set in the future, they can also be set in the current time too. For instance, a scientist creating a new drug, or the discovery of life on Mars could be plot lines for sci-fi stories set right now in this exact time period. The thing about sci-fi is that it is the opposite of fantasy. Magic, monsters and fairy tales have no place in a sci-fi story unless there is a logical reason for them being. If you’re going to include monsters, creatures or aliens, think about the theory behind their creation. Is that monster the result of a science experiment gone wrong? Did life always exist on a distant planet? Numbers, formulas and logical reasoning are what make a sci-fi tale so believable.

Sci-Fi Story Idea Generator

In this post, we have outlined over 110 sci-writing prompts that you can use for your next science fiction novel! To make life easier for you, we even created this sci-fi story idea generator , so you can focus on one prompt at a time:

Hopefully, you’ll find this list useful whether you’re writing a creative essay, novel or even a collection of sci-fi short stories! You might also be interested in the following resources:

25+ writing prompts about space
56 dystopian writing prompts
Planet Name Generator
70+ Fantasy Writing Prompts

Sci-Fi Writing Prompts List

Let the science commence, with this list of over 110 remarkable sci-fi prompts and topics to write about:

You volunteer to take part in a study on human interaction. Little do you know that the study is part of an elaborate plan by a group of aliens to invade Earth.
It is the year 3000, and Earth has changed a lot. Describe some of these changes?
You and your friends are messing around in a broken, old warehouse until you find a purple, glowing egg. What do you do?
Your billionaire uncle gives you a hi-tech robot for your birthday. What do you do with the robot?
Your science teacher invents the time machine. You decide to use it secretly to change the past. What problems do you cause by changing the past?
Strange portals start appearing all over your neighbourhood. You step into one. Where does it take you?
Aliens have declared war on humans of Earth and only you can stop them. But how?
You return from holiday to find that a radioactive explosion at a nuclear plant has turned everyone into zombies in your town. What will you do?
As a lonely astronaut, you crash land on a distant planet. Describe the planet.
An alien crashed its ship in your garden. How will you help it?
Write a help guide for a new alien settling in on planet Earth. What does the alien need to know about Earth?
A lonely robot travels to another planet in search of a better life and some true friends.
A young woman is just starting to move up the ranks in the military. She, along with the other soldiers need to stop a deadly virus from spreading. Her job keeps on getting more and more dangerous each day.
A fearful teenager lives in a world full of people that think he is a ‘freak’. He doesn’t fit in and feels that he can’t have his own feelings. Until one day he discovers the truth that he is an alien.
Write a sci-fi story about a very young alien who wakes up one morning in a different universe and finds he cannot remember his life. All the alien remembers is the night of the accident, when his best friend was killed.
Two young children, a brother and a sister are trapped inside a broken spaceship. During the crash, both their parents passed away. Can both the children survive on their own?
A young alien boy named Nana is sent on a journey by an alien race to the past in order to learn the history of the world. Unfortunately, he gets sent along with his brother and step sister who have very different plans about what they will do on Earth.
A small village is under attack by giant aliens. Eventually, all the civilians want to leave that village. However, the mayor does not want them to leave. He manages to contact the leader of the alien creatures. The mayor then makes a deal with them to invade any other city on Earth, but not this village.
Write a sci-fi story about a young boy who is being chased by an evil space monster who wants to eat his father.
There is a planet in the galaxy similar to Earth. It has a human-like feel to it, and on the surface, you could call it Earth 2.0. Humans used to be the dominant life form on this planet, but something has changed in recent years.
Write a sci-fi story about two people with supernatural abilities fighting against the evil forces that want to take over the world. The main character is a young boy who happens to be psychic. While the secondary character is a girl, who has super-strength, speed, and healing powers. The story opens in another world called Earth, where there is the “World of the Living Dead”, a land ruled by a group of “Night People” who are all dead.
A group of people are trapped inside a broken spaceship. Originally the group of people believe that this was an accident. But soon they find out that someone on board caused this ‘accident’ on purpose – But why? This is a mystery sci-fi story.
A young man graduates first in his class with a degree in computer engineering. He goes on to invent the very first artificial intelligence (AI) in existence. He must use this AI to save humanity from impending doom.
During a digging expedition, a scientist discovers a series of artefacts that seem to be ancient technology that might be part of a secret world. Putting all the pieces of the broken artefact together creates a portal device to another dimension.
An alien device is uncovered deep in the Sahara desert with an Ouroboros (snake) symbol. It has the power to control the weather on Earth. It turns out that thousands of years ago aliens had the power to control Earth. Soon this deadly weapon ends up in the wrong hands.
A group of intergalactic rebels, led by a beautiful alien princess, go on a daring mission to restore peace to the galaxy.
A scientist works for a government agency that develops a technology that enables humans to telepathically communicate with each other. Soon humans using the technology receive communications from aliens.
A doctor is sent out into the wilderness to help the population of a small town that has been affected by a deadly disease. Soon he gets caught in a war between the human survivors and the ‘others’.
Write a sci-fi story about a scientist and his young daughter who are taken on a journey to the planet S.A.L.L.E. Their mission is to find answers about the planet’s life forms. Soon they are separated from one another. When they meet again, the father discovers something odd about his daughter.
Stuck in the same old loop every single day, David needs to make an important choice fast. Continue a safe, repetitive life or move to a planet where humans rarely survive.
A robot with a soul and its human best friend go on a criminal rampage. Soon they are being chased by the authorities and even other people and robots that they have upset. Will they escape?
Humankind is divided into two groups: one a technologically advanced civilization, and the other an old fashioned, non-techno group. The technologically advanced civilization is going to wipe out the human race in the next two decades.
A friendly housekeeper robot goes rogue and joins the war against mankind. The robot’s human family want him to come back home.
Write a sci-fi story about a group of soldiers whose sole job is to travel through time and space to stop a dark force that threatens the future of the universe.
This is a sci-fi story about a young, un-engineered robot named Enceladus (named after one of Saturn’s moons). Enceladus has been programmed to find a healthy water source on Earth. After pollution and contamination have destroyed Earth.
One single mind has the power to save Earth. An unlikely human far superior to others can stop a whole alien invasion from happening.
Society has come to the point where humans and artificial intelligence are indistinguishable. A young woman named Samantha wakes up in a hospital bed after an injury that will change her life forever. At her hospital bed, Samantha meets a man who is also waking up: a robot named Bob. She doesn’t know it yet, but Bob is an advanced AI.
The daughter of a scientist who passed away has the ability to see, hear and manipulate objects around her. As she grows, her powers become stronger. Soon she hears every radio signal coming from the city around her. And she sees all the people in pain and danger. Too much to handle she loses control.
A group of kids are on the run from the authorities. They have all been in contact with another life-form on a distant planet. In order to protect this life-form, the kids will do anything to keep their secrets away from the government.
The world ends, and the future just begins for two groups of people. These last survivors on Earth must find a way to survive with the new dangers they encounter.
In the future, mankind has invented a weapon that will make war impossible. But soon this ‘weapon’ becomes the cause of war on Earth. People must fight to save their lives, their homes, their lives.
After a mysterious accident, David’s entire life becomes a never-ending nightmare. As his memories return, he tries to escape this nightmare and reclaim his true identity.
Two siblings, Sam and Mia must survive the epidemic of Crime in Detroit. Their parents are divorced. Their father is a police officer who has been left by the wayside due to his car being stolen. Their mother is trying to get back to Detroit to save her children.
A small village has been turned into a hive of evil creatures. As scientists run secret experiments. Will the inhabitants of this small town survive the transformations?
The human race has evolved into five different groups, each with its own beliefs on how to survive on Earth. The two biggest groups are Draken and Lumia. The Draken group believe that weak humans must die in order to survive. And the Lumia group believe that humans should become one with the Earth, living naturally to survive.
A man in the future has been licensed to death. He spends every day trying to escape death. Every morning he wakes up and says, ”This is the last day of my life.
This is a sci-fi story about a space pirate named Czar who has been chosen by the space council to try and save his home planet from an evil tyrant known as the Emperor. In one scene, he has to infiltrate the ship of the Emperor while disguised as a prisoner.
The civilians of a small town think that Jake is possessed by a demon. But in actual fact, an alien is telepathically controlling this young boy against humankind.
Write a story about a young doctor with a futuristic cure to prevent disease and a young woman who can transform into anything she wants. The story starts off in the past, where we meet a young girl who is struggling with her body image.
Describe a parallel universe , which is exactly like Earth but there is one major difference. What is this difference?
A fortune teller has a vision of a boy falling down a well. She must find this boy and save him. The twist is that her vision does not show that the boy is actually pushed by a robot.
A futuristic technology called the Machine makes the people of the planet dependent on it. The Machine is the only reason why humans are still alive in the future. Suddenly the Machine stops working, and people start dying. Eventually, people start learning that they don’t need to be dependent on the Machine to live – They can live independently.
Describe a world that is not human. A world of destruction, and heartache. What kind of creatures inhabit this world? Was the world always in this state? Does this world have a leader?
Write a sci-fi fairy tale about a girl who has the power to turn ordinary objects into objects of great beauty. She uses this power to gain control of a futuristic kingdom, and of course to live happily ever after.
A group of people live together like a family. The group is the only family that has all lived together for such a long time since families are banned in the future. The main character is an engineer, he is the brother of a medical doctor. After a huge party, the main character realises that no one on the whole planet is like them.
This sci-fi story starts off in the present day, where the main character discovers something shocking on his smartphone. Eventually, we see the machines and their dominance of the future.
Write a sci-fi story that is broken into three parts. The first part shows the future of mankind, the second is set in the past. And the final part is set in the present time. The overall theme of the story is about how machines are manipulating humans and their daily lives.
This is a sci-fi story about a space travel expedition to a new planet called Earth. What secrets and discoveries will the main character make?
A scientist gets trapped in a strange, hostile dimension on Earth. The only way out it to use his alien blaster to kill anything that comes in his way.
A local biotech company is running some trials for their new gene therapy service. This is the first time they are running trials on humans. Two people have been selected to genetically enhance their genes to get rid of any deformities. At first, the gene therapy looks to be a success, but then…
A secret alien race called the K9s has been hiding from the human world. The K9s are different from human K-9 dogs. They look like human dogs but are ruthless and highly dangerous. Eventually, the K9s alien race starts hunting down humans one by one.
The main character was in a lifeboat. He gets knocked out by an accident while he’s onboard, and wakes up in the middle of a sea battle. The sea battle is between humans and water-born aliens.
A lonely engineer creates an AI robot. Due to some events, the AI robot becomes very angry and obsessed with destruction. The engineer must stop this robot from hurting any more people.
Write a sci-fi story about a family of beings who have appeared on Earth in the past. They are called the Inhumans and are a race of aliens that have the ability to shape their own reality. They eventually become the leaders of this new world, also known as Earth. This family is part of a royal bloodline. There are three different branches of the Inhumans family.
A boy gets caught up in a fight between two alien races. With the help of his uncle (an agent) and his guardian (a space pirate), he tries to track down the invaders, and end this fight.
Write a story about a young woman from the future who travels into the past to take a stand against a monster.
In an intergalactic space station, there lives a group of mercenaries called the Zurriors. When the station goes into a power outage, the Mercenaries start attacking each other, and have the misfortune to end up in a rather hostile environment. The action is very chaotic, and they will use the elements to their advantage.
Write a sci-fi story about an android called Astro, that looks like a human with mechanical parts. Astro is a social robot created as part of a project on human communication. It is programmed to help people who need help with communication skills.
To fulfil his childhood dream of creating a human-like robot, one scientist find himself trapped inside a robot’s body. Son the robot starts taking over the human body and destroying it.
This is a sci-fi story about a man’s desperate quest to survive in a hostile and dark post-apocalyptic world. It’s told from a first-person perspective and the only characters we really see are a father and his young son.
Write a story based on the first man in space (Yuri Gagarin).
A group of scientists want to prove that the afterlife does exist. Through experimentation and unethical practices, they discover the shocking truth.
This is a sci-fi story about what happens when a robot breaks free from her programming and runs amok. A camera is placed inside a robots head. From the perspective of the robot, we see everything that causes the robot to change.
This is a sci-fi story about a family living in the 21st century, in a near-future universe in which we have been genetically engineered. In this future, humans don’t need food, nor do humans need jobs. In fact, the only thing human-kind needs is more humans. The main character is a young lady who is a clone of her mother.
This is a sci-fi story about a man that has lived on the moon with his family for decades. After having their house attacked, the man and his family must leave.
The main characters are two teenage boys. The first is an orphaned child who was taken from his parents by the Red Star Empire, the military dictatorship that took over the Earth in the 23rd century. He was sent to the planet of Zonama Sekot, a planet of warring factions of different species. It was there that he met the other boy, a teenager named Lask. The two of them became friends.
A city is infected with an alien virus. The only way to escape the city’s deadly undead hordes is to get a ride into the countryside on a zombie-killing train.
Write a sci-fi story about one of the world’s greatest scientists, who decides to stay in the dark about how his inventions will save mankind, even from aliens.
An ambitious engineer is attempting to build the ultimate weapon to destroy an enemy called the Rave. The Rave is a species of mutated ravens. See our Species Name generator for more unique species names.
This is a sci-fi story about a band of space pirates who come back together to stop a deadly, world-threatening virus.
A young man awakes from an accident and thinks he has developed telepathy. In actual fact, a race of small creatures has invaded his brain, and have been living there for over 20 years. These creatures have their own memories and emotions which they project inside the young man’s mind.
This is a sci-fi story about a race of sentient insects who are all genetically engineered. These insects eventually take over Earth, making humans their slaves in farms.
A group of people leave planet Earth, to start their own civilisation on a new planet. They finally find a new planet where they can set their own rules. On the surface, this planet looks uninhabitable – Not suitable for humans. But then a secret switch shows the true beauty of this planet.
A computer hacker is tired of all the emotions that he feels. He is in too much pain, so comes up with a plan to turn himself into a cyborg. With this plan, he can carry on living his life without sadness, depression or anger.
For centuries humans have found no life on Mars. One scientist wants to prove everyone wrong. He wants to prove that Martians or aliens do exist. So he concocts a plan to create his own life in a laboratory, and then send this ‘life’ to Mars in a ship. He can then boast that aliens do exist.
Two children are born after a nuclear war on Earth. They are raised in a world ravaged by the effects of nuclear technology. This is a coming of age, sci-fi story about living in a post-nuclear world.
A group of friends are captured by aliens and put into hibernation. Years later a little alien girl wakes them up and helps them escape from an uninhabitable planet.
Write a sci-fi story about an astronaut who wakes up to find himself and his crew trapped in an alien world.
A small space exploration group travel to Mars for a mission to study the Red Planet. However, when they arrive, they find the place to be deserted. While exploring, they end up getting into a situation that is completely unique and exciting. The team are captured by aliens, who have given them one of their spaceship suits and have the humans inside. The astronauts have to survive and figure out how to get out of this situation.
A young girl gets lost at sea and wakes up on a deserted planet. But she’s not the only one who wakes up on a deserted planet. She’s one of only a few survivors of a race of alien warriors who used to live there. The only way that she can return home is if she joins up with a team of scientists who are building a super-weapon that can protect people from the aliens and give them the power to fight back
Write a story about a group of robots that get sent back to Earth from their universe and have to live with their descendants in a car factory.
This is a sci-fi story about a team of highly skilled astronauts who were sent to the Moon on a mission to become a new kind of human. The mission was a failure because they were attacked by aliens on the Moon. They were never seen again and the aliens are now trying to steal the technology of the Earth’s space program.
The main character’s spaceship is destroyed on a planet, so he needs to look for a new one. But just then a giant alien arrives, making his task much more difficult.
On planet Kgnis, a warlord gets sucked in a conspiracy that humans are going to take over his planet. He fights backs but ultimately is unable to survive the war.
In a matter of minutes, a robot can change the world at its will. The main character is a mysterious figure named H.A.R.D.A.M. He is an extremely powerful and intelligent humanoid robot that can change the world as it will.
An artificial intelligence program in the healthcare industry needs to learn how to do its job to the best of its abilities. But instead of developing a brain with the characteristics of a human being, it starts off by growing a brain with the characteristics of artificial intelligence. It uses its new brain to develop the basic building blocks of a new program.
A group of human colonists set off on an exploration mission to the planet Earth. The planet is called Earth, and it is populated by other species who call it “Earth”. The main characters are an engineer and an astronaut. The engineer is called J-1, the astronaut is named J-2. They find a place called Earth to settle, but in the early stages of their missions, J-2 is infected with some kind of virus.
Write a sci-fi story about a small-scale space station that suddenly becomes the grounds of a giant space battle with a thousand-year-old god.
A young girl gets extremely ill, and her father wants to save her. The only way to save his sick daughter is by asking the aliens for help.
A young boy discovers a mysterious device that can connect him to the minds of his deceased ancestors. This gives him a “remote viewing” experience of how his family passed away. He then uses this device to help solve the mystery of his sister’s death.
The youngest of five brothers is keeping a secret. When he turns 18, he wants to go on a trip to a faraway planet to become a space pirate.
This is a sci-fi story about a group of people who want to make the universe safer, and that means taking down a huge, powerful alien menace that’s on an existential mission to wipe out humanity.
Write a story about a space exploration team that go out of their way to find extraterrestrial life on a distant planet. However, they discover that there is no life on the plane.
A man who finds himself alone, as he attempts to build a civilization on a planet called Earth after the destruction of its previous inhabitants. He eventually finds out that there are some survivors living separately on two planes of the Earth. One plane is called the ‘Grassy’ world and the other is called the ‘Barren’, which is a mountainous region.
In the distant future, a group of misfits tries to stop a rogue group from destroying Earth by using some mysterious objects from the past to their advantage.
Two strangers keep crossing paths as they try to find their families during an alien attack.
Write a sci-fi story about a father who’s trying to build a spaceship to save his daughter. While he’s not 100% certain he’ll succeed, he’s pretty sure his daughter has a chance to do better than he has.
This is a sci-fi story about a robot named K1R5 that is searching for its rightful creator. He travels to many places, and meets many people, but will it ever find its creator?
This is a sci-fi story about a spaceship pilot and his crew that must protect an alien child from a horrible fate when he is found by another strange, extraterrestrial creature.
It’s the last few days of mankind, and then the galaxy will be split in two by an artificial wormhole.
A group of individuals discover a device that allows them to live in the future for a very short period of time, without going insane. What follows is a very interesting, and terrifying, journey into the future.
Write a story about an alien race that is trapped on Earth and can’t escape. The aliens want to be seen as human and so they begin to adopt human forms. After a while, the aliens grow tired of pretending to be humans…

For more inspiration, check out our guide on the dieselpunk genre , along with examples and story ideas.

Can you think of any more interesting sci-fi writing prompts? Let us know in the comments below!

Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.

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20 Sci-Fi Story Ideas

by Ruthanne Reid | 65 comments

Hello, friends! Last time, I shared 20 fantasy story ideas to get your brain moving. This time, it's my pleasure to go from earth to space. It's time for… *drum roll* sci-fi story ideas!

Need even more ideas? Check out our top 100 short story ideas for every genre here .

Twenty Out of this World Story Ideas

Just so you know, these are “soft sci-fi” rather than “hard sci-fi,” which basically means they're more focused on character than math and science.

Aliens who only communicate with sign language invade. To avoid war, our governments must engage a vastly marginalized portion of the human population: the hearing-impaired.
A rogue planet with strange properties collides with our sun, and after it's all over, worldwide temperature falls forty degrees. Write from the perspective of a someone trying to keep his tropical fruit trees alive.
Ever read about the world's loneliest whale ? Write a story in which he's actually the survivor of an aquatic alien species which crashed here eons ago, and he's trying very hard to learn the “local” whale language so he can fit in. Write from his perspective the first time he makes contact.
An alien planet starts receiving bizarre audio transmissions from another world (spoiler: they're from Earth). What does it mean? Are they under attack? Some think so…until classic rock ‘n' roll hits the airwaves, and these aliens discover dancing. Write from the perspective of the teenaged alien who first figures it out.
Take anything we find normal today (shopping malls, infomercials, products to remove facial hair, etc.) and write a story from the perspective of an archeologist five thousand years in the future who just unearthed this stuff, has NO idea what any of it was for, and has to give a speech in an hour explaining the historical/religious/sociological significance.
Housecats are aliens who have succeeded in their plan to rule the world. Discuss.
A highschooler from fifteen hundred years in our future is assigned a one-page writing project on a twenty-first century person's life based entirely on TV commercials. Write the beginning of the essay.
Timetravel works, but only once in a person's life. Write from the perspective of someone who chooses to go back in time, knowing they can never return. Where do they go and why?
So yeah, ancient Egypt really was “all that” after all, and the pyramids turn out to be fully functional spaceships (the limestone was to preserve the electronics hidden inside). Write from the perspective of the tourist who accidentally turns one on.
The remarkable San people of South Africa are widely considered the most ancient race of human beings on the planet. Write a story in which their unique genetic structure has been preserved by the thousands-of-years-ago creation of nanobots.

More Sci-Fi Story Ideas

Take this set of fascinating facts from Chinese history and write a story about the “fortune-teller” (translation: con-artist who knows science) who invented the compass before selling it to the explorer and mapmaker Zheng He.
Ten years from now, scientists figure out how to stop human aging and extend life indefinitely—but every time someone qualifies for that boost, someone else has to die to keep the surplus population in check. Oh, it's all very humane; one's descendants get a huge paycheck. Write from the perspective of someone who just got a letter in the mail saying they're the one who has to die.
In the future, neural implants translate music into physical pleasure, and earphones (“jacking in”) are now the drug of choice. Write either from the perspective of a music addict, OR the Sonforce agent (sonance + enforcer) who has the job of cracking down.
It's the year 5000. Our planet was wrecked in the great Crisis of 3500, and remaining human civilization survives only in a half dozen giant domed cities. There are two unbreakable rules: strict adherence to Life Quality (recycling doesn't even begin to cover these laws), and a complete ban on reproduction (only the “worthy” are permitted to create new humans). Write from the perspective of a young woman who just discovered she's been chosen to reproduce—but she has no interest in being a mother.
In the nineteenth century, there's a thriving trade in stolen archeological artifacts. Write a story from the perspective of an annoyed, minimum-wage employee whose job is traveling back in time to obtain otherwise unobtainable artifacts, then has to bring them back to the present (the 1800s, that is) and artificially age them before they will sell.
Steampunk! Write a story from the perspective of a hot air balloon operator who caters to folks who like a little thrill… which means she spends half her time in the air shooting down pterodactyls before the paying customers get TOO scared.
Human genetic modification has gone too far, and the biggest trend for teenagers is to BECOME their favorite fictional character. Describe the scene from a bored security guard's point of view as he has to break up a fight between an anime character (I dare you to use Goku from Dragonball Z) and a Brony .
It is the Edo period in Japan (1603-1868), and the practice of Sakoku is in full effect, completely closing off the country to Western influence. The reason, however, is not to eschew Western culture, but instead to protect the aliens that landed in the middle of Kyoto and are trying desperately to repair their ship and get home. Write from the perspective of one of the few remaining Samurai assigned to protect and keep these aliens a secret.
Creation myth! Write from the perspective of a crazy scientist in the year 28,000 who, determined to discover how the universe began, rigs up a malfunctioning time machine, goes to the “beginning” of the universe, and ends up being the reason for the Big Bang. (Logic? Causal effect? Pfft. Hush, it's time-travel, and that was never logical.)
It turns out dinosaurs were completely sentient creatures, thank you very much , and most of them actually left the planet in their gigantic and REALLY WEIRD spaceship when they realized an asteroid was coming. They've decided that enough time has passed and the Earth has probably recovered by now, so today, at twelve noon, they're coming home.

Where will your imagination take you? Choose any of these story ideas and use them to explore new worlds.

Or, write your own sci-fi writing prompt and share it below for other writers!

Do any of these short story ideas tickle your storytelling bones? Let us know in the comments .

It's time to play with story ideas! Take fifteen minutes and develop one of these story ideas into at least one scene. Don't edit yourself! Set your imagination free. When you’re finished, share your work in the Pro Practice Workshop here . Not a member yet? Join us here !

Ruthanne Reid

Best-Selling author Ruthanne Reid has led a convention panel on world-building, taught courses on plot and character development, and was keynote speaker for The Write Practice 2021 Spring Retreat.

Author of two series with five books and fifty short stories, Ruthanne has lived in her head since childhood, when she wrote her first story about a pony princess and a genocidal snake-kingdom, using up her mom’s red typewriter ribbon.

When she isn’t reading, writing, or reading about writing, Ruthanne enjoys old cartoons with her husband and two cats, and dreams of living on an island beach far, far away.

P.S. Red is still her favorite color.

Thriller story ideas with picture of hand reaching through mail slot in door

65 Comments

Ideas No.12 and 14 impressed me more than the others.Allowing reproduction only to ‘worthy’ people means?… How to define them or how to create ‘worthy’ people?..perhaps it is left to the imagination of the writer? Anyhow it is a worthy idea.I like it.

Thanks for that feedback! I’ve always been fascinated (and frightened) whenever the scientific community leans toward eugenics of any kind. It’s happened before, and it probably will again.

Indeed. The idea that some people think it’s a good idea to “weed out” the bad genes is both scary and angering. All human life is precious – it’s ridiculous for people to try to play God and “perfect” the human race. We live in an imperfect world and we will only be made perfect through Jesus once we are in heaven with Him.

My poor attempt at sci-fi: The planet Wondancia, five light years from earth, is inhabited by beings designed much like earthlings. But being so much more advanced in medical science, they’ve discovered how to restructure shoulders and armpits so as to accommodate an extra limb on each side. So at birth each baby on the planet Wondancia is fitted with an extra pair of arms. Needless to say, this comes in very handy.

A century ago these creatures invented powerful telescopes and began searching the various solar systems for signs of life. They took note of a particular blue-and-green ball with a surrounding atmosphere and wondered if it might be a planet hospitable to life. They named it Kantazandy, which to them means “blue seas and green hills.”

After some decades these people developed such powerful telescopes that they could actually see creatures moving around on Kantazandy. They took note of the fact that Kantazandians, though almost identical to them in shape and size, had only two arms each. What a handicap!

After much discussion, they concluded that every one of the people of Kantazandy would probably be so grateful for an extra pair of arms. So they prepared a space ship with their most advanced scientists, medical men, and translation experts to visit this blue-green planet. This was hailed not only as a fact-finding mission, but as mission of mercy as well.

Their ship landed in the south of France in 2019 and the aliens disembarked. News of their arrival thrilled the whole planet! And when the Wondancians understood that the Kantazandians were about to celebrate the year 2020, they thought it an opportune time to offer this new gift. Human beings — as the Kantazandians called themselves — were all thrilled at the prospect that each of them could be fitted for a new pair of arms. After all, everyone was wishing for a second pair of hands, weren’t they?

Alas! The humans soon realized that all their fancy wardrobes, including fashion designer gowns and jackets that cost them the earth, would now be useless and would have to be tossed. So the humans drove the Wondancians back into their spaceship and forced them to leave the planet.

“Ungrateful wretches,” the Wondancians muttered as they roared off into space. So much for foreign aid!

Haha! I LOVE it, Christine! And your “handy” pun just had me rolling. 🙂

Glad I could give you your laugh of the day. And I’m sure you’ve wished for a second pair of hands at times, too. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t. 🙂

This was so unexpected! I like stories that surprise me. I wonder if there’s meant to be some deeper message here about the fear of change even when it’s better for you…

Glad you liked it. You may take a deeper meaning out of it as you wish, but I hadn’t thought of that one when I wrote it. Partly I like humor and partly I was poking a bit of fun at the human love of fashions, however impractical. But that’s it.

14. Children. The government’s way of making sure the population is in check and picturesque. Although I should hate them with all my might, I adore children. Their cute round cheeks and their pudgy little hands, not to mention their innocent eyes and adorable smiles. Since only the worthy are allowed to reprodcue, children are all perfect looking, intelligent and talented. Any child who is not all of these things is immediately sent to the work camps to farm and eventually die of exhaustion or starvation. But, despite all of this, I love children.

This single attribute would end up being my downfall. When I received the letter, tears sprung into my grey-blue eyes. I had been chosen as a Reproduction Agent. My worst fear had been realized and I had no way to stop the torrent of emotions that rained down at that single moment in time. As much as I loved children, never once had I considered becoming a mother. I hadn’t even thought it a possibility, as my Schoolteacher said that I was destined for a life as a Factory Worker. At least I had been prepared for that, but I had no idea what to do with the news I had just received.

My mother kept reminding me that the government knew what it was doing and would never choose s Reproduction Agent who was not perfect for the job. Little did she know that my fear was exactly that. I was not fit to be a mother. I knew that I was less than perfect, having nearly been sent to work camps three times in my life. But most of all, I was afraid that my offspring would be as imperfect as me and have to be sent away. Of course, none of this mattered, because no one seemed to care what I thought about my new destiny.

When I arrived at the Reproduction Center for my orientation, I could barely keep it together. Seeing all the happy faces and little babies made me want to cry because they reminded me that I could never be happy. I could never be happy with my soon-to-be children scattered to the winds. I could never be happy knowing that I could give a child life and then that life could just as easily be taken away.

Oh, wow, Annie! You knocked this out of the park. I really feel her struggle and her pain; great job expanding the world, too!

Thanks! I plan on continuing with the story. I wanted to have the main character fall in love with her first child, breaking the first rule of Reproduction Agents. And then, her child is going to be deemed unfit to continue living and will be sent to a work camp. The rest of the story’s going to be an epic adventure of the protagonist trying to save her son. I’m really excited; thanks for the prompts!

That’s a fantastic idea!!! Write on!

I love her emotions. This was sweet. I had no idea what to do with this option at all. Love the way you did it.

I feel for the main character, the way she doesn’t want to be a mom because her kids will be taken away. Keep up the good work!

Hello, … Sci Fi, ugh…. Let’s try

I was pacing. They were many thoughts racing through my head. I had to go, I had to, I just had to. My mother’s face flashed on abrubtly from the holigram monitor. News time, everyday at 6 o’clock pm it came on and everyday at that exact time everyone stopped their bustle, where ever they were and turned their attentions to the fleet of scientist whose images floated in front and around them. I stopped my pacing abrubtly as well, to my dismay. It was a reflex action of pure habit. Even if one of the lead scientist, Ilinora Estrava, was my mother. My nerves were on a high. Today was the day they would announce their plan of action. They had been reported attacks. Some people said it was the Venire people. Of course, they were blamed for everything. Their ancestors had been the first alien species to land on the earth, as refugees in the year 2967. Most of them died on landing, then from failure to adapt to life here. What had saved them was the fact that they were so innocent, like adult children. At least that’s what the history books say. But the Venire didn’t remain as such. Life on Earth 2 would do that to any one. Even our children weren’t innocent. You needed tact and above average intelligence to survive in this mechanised and metallic world. They had revolted, they didn’t want to remain our slaves, pets… Our labrats. I gulped waiting. My mother didn’t share her plans with me. She hadn’t visited in a while. I knew what everyone else knew. That in a month or two the leaders of Earth 2, the scientist would either release LI432 an airborne disease engineered specifically to kill anyone with even a hint of venire genes into the earth 1 atmosphere or not. The leaders of the revolting Venire, Morda and Kaius lazered an entrance through our thick metal walls. Walls that kept them and the outside world, Earth 1, separated from us. No one knew why, no one wanted to. ” In exactly two days” came my mother’s voice, fluid and unemotional, “LI432 will be introduced into Earth1’s atmosphere in response to Venire’s act of war. All remaining Venire if found guilty of treason will be executed. I was still. I knew it was coming but to hear it. Shereeva. She had been arrested too. My mother’s favourite pet. She had offspring in Earth 1 whose genes my mother hadn’t found nearly as fascinating as Shereeva’s. I snapped out of my standing coma and pulled on my jacket and the escape bag that I had packed, when I still trying to convince myself of what I needed to do. The trying to convince was over. I was out the door. Running on our dimly lit streets. The elistest district on which I lived much later curfew than everyone else but I still had less than 45 mins to get to “the other side”, break in ( Illinora’s daughter or not) and jump start the obsolete time machine. An antique, a thing once used onlynfor prisoners on death row. No one wanted to go back. Why would they. To go back was death in itself and worse. The trip alone could cause mental disintegration if it didn’t kill you first but I had too. I was my mother’s daughter. I was above sure I could rig it right. I didn’t jave any other choice. There was no arguing with the leaders. That disease would be released. There was no way to stop it unless I went back to the very beginning and stopped them (Morda and Kaius) from ever breaching the wall. However I had too and if I died in the process than that was better than living knowing that the people that you lived would die. This was for Shereeva, for the stories she would tell me of her children’s birth when I couldn’t sleep at night. Even hd been prodded , poked, experimented on and taken from her family. She still managed to show me love. The daughter of the woman who was responsible for it all. I had to try. I had to go.

Oh, very nicely done! Definitely unexpected twists there. You may not like sci-fi much, but I’d say you’re doing a great job with it. This sounds like something you could continue.

Cool start for a sci-fi story. Keep up the good work!

Oh and thanks for the prompts. It’s really to come up with ideas for stories, at least for me. You’re prompts help. Thanks.

I’m so glad to hear it, Dina! It’s tons of fun to hand them out. 🙂 I’m really glad it helps!

Thanks. As you can guess, I don’t do sci-fi. Humor trumps any other genre in my books. 🙂

Can ye guess which one laddie, or lassie?

It started with a slight click, followed by “Oops,” and a very brief, very bright flash.

“What did you do!?”

“Nothin’, I didn’t do nothin’.”

“Well, something just happened!”

“I know. But it wasn’t nothing I did. Hell, we sound like Krauss, Something from Nothing.”

“Yeah, well, check the setup.”

“What the …”

“What? And if you tell me ‘nothing’ I swear I’ll shove that table up …”

“No … it’s gone.”

“What’s gone?”

“The experiment.”

“I checked it not a minute ago. It can’t be gone,” that was followed by a “zzzt!” and “Damn!”

“What?”

“Static. Walked across the carpet and touched the table.”

“Uh oh.”

“What!?!?”

“That’s what I did. I walked across the carpet, and touched the framework holding the experiment.”

“Damn it … What’s the potential in a static discharge?”

“Not sure, ten maybe twenty thousand volts.”

“Ahh man … Our setup was calibrated for eight thousand volts!”

“Holy crap. Was the recorder running!?”

“Yeah, thank goodness, yes it was. Let me reload the file. You ready?”

“Yeah, put it on the high def display, and slow it down.”

“There, that’s me, walking, I reach for the frame … there, there’s the arc. Jeez, must be over fifteen thousand volts, damn … Look at the overhead shot … Wow, the plates are moving …”

“Look at that … That’s the click we heard … The plates making contact … My god … Magnify … Look at that … A bubble, incredibly small, what …”

“The flash …”

“Quick, run the data through the Inverse Fractal Transform function … get the times and convert’m to Planck … Wow … look at that …”

“Holy … We just created a universe. See, here, the singularity, then expansion, then the flash when matter starts to condense and photons form … But our universe can’t hold it, so, what, I dunno, squeezes it out?”

“Just static, it all started from static discharge.”

“Wonder where it is?”

“Huh?”

“The universe we just created. Where is it? What’s happening to it?”

“I dunno. Probably has some televangelist preaching about how the universe can only be 10,000 years old.”

“Yeah,” and a chuckle, “What he don’t know. It’s only ten minutes old.”

“So, feel like God?”

“Hell no. I’m starving. Let’s go get lunch.”

Hahaha! Terrific Creation myth! Hilarious!

Makes me think of The Flash mate

The Test ————

The room that was normally bustling with the clamor and energy of youth was unnaturally quiet that day. But then, it was probably always this way on the first of May. It was the 51st anniversary of the formation of the New Republic, and the City celebrated it each year with the Festival of Youth.

There were two major traditions followed on this day. The first was a celebration where extra bread and dessert was provided to all children under the age of eighteen. There were about 500 of us in this City. We all lived in the Youth Centre where all our educational and nurturing needs were taken care of by experts. The other, and most important tradition, was that those who were about to reach the age of adulthood were given aptitude tests, which would determine their role as contributing members of the society.

The quiet room was where I had just taken the Test, with 30 of my peers who would all join the larger society next year. We all sat there, contemplating the fact that we had just written our destinies. Children who barely knew what they were going to do the next day had just had their entire future decided for them and were struggling to wrap their heads around that fact. This was the exact moment children became adults in our society.

Someone cracked a joke about failing the Test to break the oppressive silence that we were all afraid to speak into. The joke was terrible: failure was no laughing matter. We did not speak of those who failed. But the joke helped bring back the children within us who laughed at all matters serious and believed ourselves to be Gods. We walked out the room, laughing, the same as always, looking forward to the feast that night.

I walked out alone, at peace with the world. I was certain that I’d done well at the sections on math and physics. I had already begun dreaming of going to the School of Science and Technology, imagining myself solving the problems of energy and waste and improving life for all in the City.

The results would be announced that evening, before the feast, for the whole City to see. It was a big moment, especially because there hadn’t been such a large number of graduates in a single year for a long time. It was also a big deal because there had been a threat of protest at the event. You see, there were detractors of the Test: a growing group of Individualists who thought the Test was an unfair method of deciding a person’s future and took away individual choice.

Some of my peers agreed with this point of view, but they’d never voice it in class. I disagreed with them in our impassioned after-class debates when the adults were all gone. With humanity at the brink of extinction, the needs of all were greater than the needs of the individual. Besides, the Test didn’t take away choice. When they had thought to introduce the Test, the original plan had been to simply measure the brain patterns of infants at birth and decide their futures solely on the basis of natural ability. But the great Thinkers who had designed the Commandments of the Republic realized that this would doom us. They decided instead to test children after a few years of common education, and to test not their innate ability, but their perseverance and hard work. Anyone interested in a field could beat the Test with sufficient hard work.

As I wandered around thinking all this, I lost track of time until Sarah, my roommate, holo-called me asking me to get to the Square. It was time. I ran as fast as I could, weaving my way through the rejoicing crowd to the front where the Graduates stood, in front of the Info-screen. The Square was lit up in the usual fashion for the Youth festival. You could even smell the feast.

I had been just in time to see Sarah jumping in joy because the Test had marked her for an Education expert. I was happy for Sarah: she had always loved children. It was my turn next and as they called out my name, I could barely hear the announcer over my own heartbeat.

“Dahlia Young! Perfect score in math, science and technology, …”

I was elated. My dream was about to come true!

“Also a perfect score in languages, government, athletics, …”

And on and on he went. Apparently, I’d done much too good a job at the Test, and I was getting tired of this. I really hoped no one could see me blush. Sarah was already shaking my hand in a ridiculously exaggerated manner. I just wanted it to get over so I would finally know.

“With these results, Dahlia Young has been deemed best for the role of Reproducer!”

The crowd went wild. I was stunned. It was impossible. I wasn’t meant to be a reproducer! I was so much more than that! Sure, surely, they’d made a mistake. I tried to speak, but people simply hugged me and smiled and said their congratulations. The announcer moved on to the next kid. I had stopped listening.

My head was still spinning. I couldn’t believe the test had failed me so horribly. Unknowingly, I started walking away from the Square, until I was running. I ran into a group of people who stopped me and asked me what was wrong. I hadn’t realized tears had been streaming down my face.

I tried to get away, but they wouldn’t let me. Afraid they might call the psych ambulance to help control me, I told them that I was merely unhappy with the test results.

They looked at each other knowingly. “We understand, Miss.”

I saw that Jake, the guy who cracked the joke about failing was among the group. I looked at him, wondering why he wasn’t at the feast.

“I failed, Dahlia.” He whispered, his voice filled with horror. Poor Jake! His fate was much worse than mine: he’d been discarded from society.

That’s when I saw the placards they were holding. They were Individualists. And I finally understood their point.

I was the best in my class: with my aptitude, I could be anything. But they chose to make better use of me for the society as a whole. Someone with my genetic superiority would be more useful producing more such as myself than doing anything directly. And I refused to accept that. My world crashed around me taking my ideals downs with it. For all I believed in the betterment of everyone and the needs of society trumping those of the individual, I still wanted a choice as to how to make that better impact.

To use my body against my will to do something I never wanted to… that was not a free society. And to discard someone as being unworthy, that was not a fair society. I realized that the Thinkers had been wrong, that they were fallible too.

As I looked at the protesters who were looking kindly back at me, I knew I was standing at a crossroads. I could either accept my fate, or I could change it.

I looked at Jake, and then at the image in my mind of my future self. I had made my choice. I walked away from the Square, from the world I’d known, and towards a more difficult and uncertain path where I’d help build a better world, like I’d always wanted to.

Fabulous! This reads like an opening for a YA bestseller!

Thanks! When I re-read it, I realized the story sounds a bit too much like Divergent, to be honest. Originality is hard work…

Originality is bizarre. 🙂 After all, it IS true that there’s no fully original story. It’s all in how it’s done. I didn’t think Divergent when I read it; there were no five groups, etc.

Sounds like the Giver but with different people.

I love the dinosaurs prompt. It’s brilliant.

What was the story behind the fossilized dinosaurs we found? Where they left behind? Did they choose to stay because they didn’t believe the scientists? Did they stay behind to help somehow and were heroes?

Where have the dinos been all this time? Did they terraform another planet? Or have they been floating around space all this time? Did they maybe get lost?

What happens to humans now?

There is so much potential here! But it’s so hard to write a story about speaking dinosaurs without it sounding utterly ridiculous, or like any other alien story. A challenging prompt!

YES! I love that you’re thinking this way! I was considering most of these questions when I wrote it, but I chose not to put them in there, since I wanted other writers to come up with the answers. 🙂

Clearly, the dinosaurs that were left behind represent lower order creatures, much like our domesticated animals and the wildlife that abounds on our planet. These creatures were unable to leave under their own power and did not have the intelligence to use technology. The Saurian race that did leave probably only took enough of them with them to maintain their food supply.

Rex stepped out of the ship against orders to feel the breeze in his scales and breathe in the air of the Homeland. He went back inside calling on the other two to come out and *feel* the Earth. They told him they were perfectly happy to observe it from the safety of the ship engineered to keep them alive and comfortable, thank you very much.

“Government orders, Rex. Our mission is to observe and take notes, not to engage.” That was Augustine. She liked following orders. That was why she was here in spite of her space-sickness and dislike of travel. She was the most renowned historian of their age, and knew all there was to know about the Ancestors and the Homeland. That’s why they needed her on the mission.

Rex knew there was no point trying to convince her. He’d leave her to her books.

He turned to Barry instead and smiled.

“Don’t look at me like that, Rex. You will not talk me into trouble, not here. The mission is too important.”

Barry and Rex had grown up together in the Dome, dreaming of feeling the wind and nature and running free, like the Ancestors did. Barry had outgrown Rex’s wild dreams and had become a respectable geo-environmentalist. They had sent him to study the composition of the Earth and its habitability.

Rex was here as bodyguard.

“But Barry, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! It’s everything we ever dreamed of. We’re making history here, buddy. For a million years, no dinosaur has stepped foot on Earth, and we’re the beginning of a return to our great past.”

“Try 65 million years, Rex. Why don’t you step out and make history by yourself, and I’ll take care of the work. Does that sound good to you? Augustine will make sure your name is in all the history books.”

Rex was fine with that. These bookish dinosaurs had forgotten what it meant to be free, having lived in their tiny domed planet. They didn’t appreciate the smell of the rain and the feel of soft mud and all the green that surrounded them, and the sound of other creatures.

“Rex, come in. We’re getting some strange signals here. Please get back into the ship. We may need to take off and switch base.”

Rex sighed. It was probably some other creature that now inhabited the planet. Millions of years in the Dome living only among other dinosaurs had made his kind Xenophobic to the extreme. They had forgotten the time when they lived in symbiosis with millions of other creatures right here on Earth.

The Forgotten Heroes, the dinosaurs that had tried to save the other, lesser creatures from the Great Impact, had been left behind to die by those who believed dinosaurs to be the superior race and the only one worth saving. Few spoke of this, uglier, side of dinosaur history. But it wasn’t forgotten.

____________________________________________________________________

This story is not complete yet. I’m trying to figure out what happens when the dinosaurs meet humans. But I’d like to know what you think so far.

Interesting story from a dinosaur’s perspective. I’d like to hear more and see the reaction Rex has when he first meets a human!

Continued…

The whir of the ship’s engine pulled Rex back to reality and he realized he’d better make a move or he’d join the Forgotten Heroes himself.

“Come in, base. Barry, can you hear me?”

There was only static in response. Scared that something had happened to his friends, and that he’d failed at his *one* job of protecting the ship, he ran to where he thought the base was. Unfortunately, he’d wandered rather far off from base, and, while he would never admit it, he was quite lost.

Rex tried counting down from ten to calm himself down so he could think, but a count *down*, he realized, was not a very calming thing. It reminded him of time running out or a bomb ticking down, and his heart rate only got faster as he reached zero.

Frustrated, Rex gave a loud roar.

“There, that felt better.”

He then started moving, because staying there would not help him find the ship. Unbeknownst to Rex, his sense of direction was not nearly as good as he boasted. It was hard to get lost on the small domed city where he’d grown up, but the wilderness of Earth was a whole other matter. The very land felt alive and moving and changing.

And so, Rex wandered off in the entire opposite direction, where the woods ended, and the cities began. It was night time and the lights of the city hurt poor Rex’s eyes, and the honking of the cars hurt his ears.

That is how Rex first met humans. And that is when things got really, really bad.

Rex knew that he’d paid more attention to working out than his books in school, but he was fairly certain none of the books had ever described the Earth quite like this. And they certainly never mentioned the weird little creatures with shiny shells. Curious, he walked across the road to get a closer look at the beings.

That is how the humans first met Rex. As you may have guessed, things did not get better.

The humans abandoned their cars and ran like little mice scattered by the appearance of a cat. Some stopped to click pictures first.

Rex was confused and annoyed by the commotion, but he tried to communicate. That just scared them more.

And then Rex heard a loud rumble. It was a large grey creature with a long nose. Fascinated, Rex walked towards it to say hello.

That’s when they fired at him. The blow came as a shock to Rex who hadn’t encountered gunfire on their more peaceful planet. He was unhurt, but, now scared, Rex ran right into the city, leaving behind a trail of destruction in his haste.

He tried contacting Barry again, and was finally successful.

“Barry, Barry, it’s me. You’ve got to come get me.”

“Where are you Rex? We waited nearly thirty minutes but then we figured you died out there.”

“I don’t know where I am! I ran out of the green and reached a miniature city of some sort. It looks like there’s an infestation of some tiny two legged creatures.”

“Yes, we found the creatures too. They’re *everywhere*. But Rex, they’re sentient. We were able to make contact from the ship. They have radio waves. Wait, maybe I can ask them about you.”

After about fifteen minutes of conversation where the humans realized that the Godzilla-like creature that had attacked New York was actually connected to the UFO observed, and provided the aliens with detailed explanations as to how to find their friend and to please take him away, they found him.

“Barry! Augustine! I’ve never been so happy to see you. Thank you for saving my life.”

“Yeah, wasn’t that supposed to be your job?” said Augustine, returning to the comm center.

“We have fascinating news Rex. We are not alone in the universe! There was another advanced civilization emerging right here on Earth. Isn’t it beautiful? There’s so much we can learn from each other.”

Barry was nearly jumping with excitement. Good thing he didn’t though, the ship may not have been able to handle it.

“Their technology is primitive in some ways, but more advanced in others. Specifically, they have nuclear power, which they informed us of as a sort of threat when we asked about you.”

“In any case,” said Augustine, “this is a matter for diplomatic action. If we want to return to Earth, we’re going to have to share our home with this beings.”

“We thank you for your help in finding our bumbling bodyguard,” Augustine typed on the comm screen.

“Heyy”, said Rex, infuriated.

“Glad we could help. Now take him and leave, or we *will* fire,” was the response from the humans after a three hour long consultation between the heads of all states.

Barry and Augustine frowned. This was unexpected.

“They were just as excited about the prospect of knowledge sharing just a while ago. I wonder what changed. Perhaps we offended them somehow?”

Rex shuffled his gigantic feet. Then cleared his throat.

“Um, about that…”

“Yes?” said Augustine, her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“It may have something to do with the fact that I maybe, kinda ….”

“Go on.” It was amazing just how far she could narrow her eyes and still see.

“I may have stepped on one or two.” Rex mumbled.

“You did what?”

“I stepped… on the little creatures… it was an accident…” Rex felt himself shrinking beneath the gaze of the smaller dinosaur.

Barry stepped in.

“Well, I think that’s the end of that. Let’s get out of here before we become nuked meat. Maybe things will cool down in another couple of million years.”

HAHAHA! Oh, what a mess! I can’t imagine THIS report back home! Great job, Sana. 🙂

Thanks Ruthanne! 🙂 And I loved the prompts. They were very fun. I hope we see more posts of the kind.

Oh, poor Rex! He wasn’t prepared for this at ALL.

Oh, I LOVE this idea! I hadn’t even considered these dinosaurs being xenophobic – that adds a whole new spice to the mix. 🙂

Doctor Johnson stood in Room 12B and labeled each vial of blood, 1st, 2nd, 3rd. He dated them, then tucked them away in the final case of blood samples. His research was coming to fruition – and soon. After the blood samples had been sent off for testing, it would only be a matter of time before he discovered what in Julia’s blood gave the girl her secret power.

A knock sounded on the door.

“Enter,” he said as he locked the blood sample case.

An aide entered. “Sir, the soldiers are getting uneasy,” he said, handing Doctor Johnson his mail.

Doctor Johnson gave him a hard look. “And why is that?”

“Since the government started the Life Extension program, the men think because they’re connected to you, if your operations are discovered, they’ll be the ones singled out to die.”

The aide’s concern was nonsense—whenever the population increased to an undesired level, the government usually targeted small children, adolescents, or the old to be eliminated. They rarely chose persons closer to the middle, like Doctor Johnson, who almost forty, or his soldiers, who were in the range of mid-twenties to early thirties.

“Neither the government nor the military know about my operations here,” Doctor Johnson said. He picked up a short stack of files and tapped them on the metal desk to straighten them, then faced the aide again. “And besides, my goal is to complete my research without being discovered. The fate of a fraction of my soldiers is of little interest to me. You’re dismissed.”

The aide gave a brief nod, then exited the room.

Exhaling out a long breath, Doctor Johnson put his pen in his breast pocket and flipped through his mail. A light bill. Two credit card offers. A letter addressed to him, with the government’s stamp in the corner—finally. He’d been waiting on his tax return for over a month.

Doctor Johnson opened the envelope and tugged out the folded paper inside. In the left-hand corner, his name, identification number, and date of birth were printed in red. His eyes then scanned the first sentence. The only sentence.

The letter slipped from his hands.

He was sentenced to death.

Any feedback/suggestions are welcome. Loved the prompt! : )

Nice! It was a little abrupt though. I wished the story made me care more about the fact that the guy was dying.

The viewpoint character is actually one of the main antagonists in my story…so that’s probably why it seemed like I didn’t care as much. : ) Thank you for the feedback!

Hmm. It’s rare to read an entire story from the antagonist’s POV. I wonder why that is. Maybe because from their POV, they’re the “good guy”. Course this way you can have a slow reveal where you either see the person transform or you realise they’re the antagonist with some new information. Hope to read what happens next!

Aww thanks!

Oh, this is AWESOME. You took the idea and expanded it magnificently. The characterization is fantastic, too. I really love it! If I’d read this as a sample, I’d want to keep on reading.

I absolutely loved where you went with this story!!!!!!!!!! I want to read more!!!!!!!!!

Thank you so much for these ideas!!! I LOVE #1, and I’m writing it now. When I’m done, I”m probably going to post it here. Again, thank you!

Delighted to hear it, Renee! 🙂

Fats, a large Ragamuffin cat, lay on the roof of his owner’s house. The stars were fading into the early sunrise. A clatter below him drew his attention, and Fats stood up. “Who goes there?” Fats droned. Fats’ voice was thick like his swinging belly.

“Bones and Hank,” a manly voice responded. Hank was a little, purebred British Shorthair, and Bones was an abandoned Scottish Fold kitten, whose bones stuck out from his skin. Fats dragged his stomach across the roof as he went to meet the two cats.

Hank popped up from the rain gutter, and Bones eagerly followed. As the two cats seated themselves on a pale spot on the roof, Fats spoke. “General Steve, and Commander Bob will be here to pick us up for the meeting soon,” Fats announced.

Hank snorted. “Last time they said that, they forgot,” he chuckled. Little Bones, not wanting to be left out, said, “Steve hates me.” Fats and Hank knew this was true; at any time possible, General Steve tried to get rid of Bones.

Lights took over the sky, and all three cats on the rooftop blinked in surprise. A little ship landed, and two ugly Sphynx cats trotted out a sliding stairway connected to a folding door. The taller of the two Sphynx cats paused, and announced, “Loyal housecats, we have completed our mission to control the world. Now we must mislay our love for the smelly humans, and return to the Moon.”

The two Sphynx turned on a dime, and sauntered into the spaceship. Fats, Bones, and Hank followed. The sliding stairway slipped into the bottom of the ship, and the folding door closed with a thwack! .

“Good job, Fats. You have gathered information that can be used to overcome the humans. This plan was created eighteen generations ago, and has not been completed until now. Hank, you are now officially appointed to the rank of Commander, and Bones, you… have accomplished the task of melting the humans hearts with cuteness,” the tall Sphynx congratulated the three.

The smaller of the Sphynx turned to the beeping, red-blue-green buttons and silver control panels. “General Steve, we are prepared to go to the Moon,” the little Sphynx quipped. General Steve, the tall Sphynx, nodded. “All systems go!” General Steve cried.

As the little, silver ship sped away, a couple stirred underneath the roof that the cats had been on. “Hey, Karl, did you here something?” the young wife whispered to her husband. “Huh? Oh, nothing. Go to sleep, Ginny,” her husband muttered, clearly annoyed. The woman shrugged, and closed her eyes.

She opened them again. “Karl, I have the strangest feeling that we’re being tricked by those housecats,” she murmured. Her husband snored.

Hahaha! Clever lady! 🙂 I wonder if she had any idea. I also wonder if she’ll miss them now that they’re gone! 🙂 But what comes next? They accomplished world domination; what’s their next step? 🙂

The man’s footsteps were audible throughout the corridor as he sped past the storage rooms into the unexplored paths of the building that had been his home since adolescence. The usually relaxing sounds of machinery humming about seemed hostile today, as if it somehow knew the fate that awaited him. The man in the lab coat ran towards a metal portal, and pressed his hand over the array of biosensors and scanners. Behind him, his pursuer’s panting filled the corridor, and the man knew he was nearly out of time. “Identity affirmed”, a robotic voice erupted, “Entry granted to Doctor Abacus.” Dr. Abacus was not his actual name. He was called that by his peers due to his exceptional mathematical skills. If they could see me now, he thought, quickly entering the room. In a trice, the portal began closing. As soon as Dr. Abacus was going to take a huge sigh of relief, his pursuer came into sight. In the blink of an eye, he was lunging for the doors. Before Dr. Abacus could recover, he was already there. By the time the doors closed, he had cornered the scientist. “What do you want from me?”, Dr. Abacus’ scared voice echoed against the narrow walls. “Your most powerful asset”, a raspy voice replied. “Your ability to manipulate time.” “You are reading too much science fiction”, the scientist replied defiantly, “That’s where time travel is possible.” A humourless laugh resounded against the metal walls. Dr. Abacus felt a stab of fear. “You and I both know that you’re lying. Your recent discoveries seem to corroborate time travel.” Dr. Abacus was shocked. How could this beast know? Did somebody disclose it? “You have researched the string theory”, continued the captor, enjoying his prey’s helplessness, “and have discovered another kind of duality. The T- and S-duality allowed distance and coupling manipulation. Now, the new duality discovered by you allows you to interconvert space and time. They were already a part of a continuum, but you allowed their discrete manipulation. And if I am wrong”, said the man with a dangerous edge to his voice, “I will spare your life”. The man gave an emotionless smile and produced a sharp knife. “Now, start talking about the locations, security and other details of your breakthrough, or else this goes into the neck.” Dr. Abacus was dead and he knew it. Even if he gave away the specifics to the monster, he would slit his throat, and leave him here to rot. “And if I don’t?”, Abacus ventured, “There isn’t much you don’t seem to know”. The man smiled again, “If you don’t, then I will obtain it by alternate means. I simply want to choose the lesser of two evils.” “Murdering an innocent man is a lesser evil?” “Compared to the other way, yes” “I don’t think that I will give you the particulars in that case. You would only misuse them.” “In that case, Doctor, you have outlived your usefulness”, said the man, sounding disappointed. “Goodbye.” When the man left the room half a minute later, he was feeling full of adrenaline. Doctor Abacus lay in his own private room with a stabbed throat and the immeasurably powerful secret being lost from the mainstream forever, dying with his remaining brain cells.

WOW! What an intense tale! And you actually told a complete story in a short space – beginning, middle, and end, even though it leaves the reader with a lot of questions. Great job, Krish!

I’m sort of late to the discussion, but I just want to say that I absolutely LOVE #8 and #12. Thank you so much for these wonderful prompts!

thank you for the hot air balloon idea it is great! I wrote about it in a notebook and I named the girl Anna. She is protecting her city when she sees a pterodactyl, The pterodactyls are not that bad as everyone thought and soon Anna meets her best friend, a Pterodactyl named rosy. That is just a sum of the story. I hope you like it!

sounds like how to train your dragon

Time marches on, like the slow and steady beat off a drum. He could run but not forever, because time always wins.

“Quickly.” “There he is!” The voice shouted, faltering. He sprinted past the corner of the grey building ignoring the vague red lights flashing ominously, stumbling slightly as he felt his knees buckle. His breath came out in short exasperated heaves, and his hand fumbled around in his faded jeans – reassuring himself that it was still there. The one thing that he came for. Risked his life for – not that his mattered anyway. He’s over there! Not bothering to glance at who shouted, he ripped the small device from his pocket and held it to his forehead. Memories bounced around in his mind like a jack in the box before they finally settled onto one. He took the device away from his clammy forehead and peered down at it. Timetrive actualized. Initiating countdown. 10..9..8.. A strong force knocked him down from behind and he struggled against it, finally escaping it’s grasp and knocking it down with an elbow to the stomach. He ran like a madman down the bleak hallway, weary of the men pursuing him. 3…2…he halted in his tracks. The timetrave was grasped tightly in his hand. 1… His entire being started to dissolve. Like little pixels on a television, slowly evaporating. And then he was gone.

Confusion overwhelmed him, before he slowly started to recognise his surroundings. His head pounded- he was overcome with intense nausea. A lump formed in his throat and he tried to swallow it down. And then suddenly it all ceased and he felt ‘normal’ again. The faint sound of chatter lapped at his ears and stared up at the enourmous flag that covered the wall in front of him. He moved cautiously, creeping towards the sound of a man talking. “-And that is how I get my spray tan.” The voice boomed into the microphone. Venom coursed throughout his body, turning his blood hot with fire. It was him. The despicable imbecile who had ruined the nation. He could’t restrain himself any longer. After all. This was his intent from the begining. The floor heaved beneath his feet as he ran ferociously onto the stage, lunging himself at Donald Trump. All his vision was filled with putrid bleached hair “I’m gonna sue you, and make sure that immigration takes you away!” He seethed. “Try me.” He responded, before karate chopping him in the face, watching as he split right down the middle. Standing victorious over the carcas on the ground, he waved at the crowd smirking gleefully. “Sir! Sir! That was amazing. Just who are you?” Looking at the young girl direct in her eye he responded, “The name’s Boris.” He paused. “Boris Johnson.”

I have an idea: Five shards fall down on earth and 2 kids find 2 of them. The “bad guy” tries to find the rest, and the kids have to find them before himher and defeat hamher. This was my latest idea, and I am making a story based on this now!

Here is my plot

Jellyfish are actually aliens that landed here aeons ago and adapted to the warm waters of Earth. Hidden at the bottom of the ocean their master’s ship lies shut down with no sign of life. One day archeological scientists uncover a round disc full of inscriptions in an unknown language. What they don’t know is that they have just found a part of the opening device to the ship. Will they find the other pieces and unlock the ship or destroy them in their own safety? One scientist finds further information about the ship and its owners discovering that they are asleep in a time bubble called the “blue aquamarine” so that if they awake they will find that aeons have pasted in the blink of an eye. Not knowing what powers the aliens have The Earth immediately turns defensive and sets up a system that can destroy anything. But the scientist knows that the aliens only came to look for a home and tries to convince everyone that they are friendly but no one will listen. The scientist finds a way to decode the disc and it turns out that the disc is one of five different discs holding different information about the aliens. The disc that the scientists found is the disc holding information about the ship. The other discs have information about the future, the aliens and their history, species and plants on their planet and their planet. He discovers the ship is made of platinum and sets out on a journey to design a flaw in the new destroying system jamming it’s ability to destroy platinum in an attempt to save the aliens.

If I may add an idea?

600 years after Earth fell into chaos and became unihabitable. But the nerds at Nasa had a plan and secretly created a massive Bio Sphere (A half sphere that has its own cool ecosystem. In this idea just a city but often whole varieties of eco systems), on Mars. The BioSphere is the size of Texas and Alaska put together.

Ig just go from there.

“As I had been hovering on Saturn’s rings for a few hours or so, I received a faint frequency ringing through my ears. It felt as if it was coming across The Nebula.” See.. I’m wanting to actually create a story where this teenager is a gift from the Galaxies Gods. He just didn’t know that he had powers like to where he can either A- Destroy planets and become a cruel being and bend space and time to the breaking point of a black hole swallowing all. Or B- He becomes a hero, makes new planets, helps colonies, helps Earth even.. And usually when I have trouble making sci-fi novels, I listen to Starset, they have like.. amazing music that has to.. its difficult to explain.

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20 Sci-Fi Story Ideas | J. Giambrone - […] 20 Sci-Fi Story Ideas […]
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20 Mystery Story Ideas - […] ideas, by the way. If you’re interested in the others, check out 20 fantasy story ideas, 20 sci-fi story ideas, and…
The Gift of Life – Write Affair - […] Writing Prompt: Ten years from now, scientists figure out how to stop human aging and extend life indefinitely—but every…

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Essay on Science Fiction

Students are often asked to write an essay on Science Fiction in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Science Fiction

What is science fiction.

Science fiction is a genre of literature that explores imaginative and futuristic concepts. It includes advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life.

Origins of Science Fiction

The origins of science fiction can be traced back to ancient mythology. However, it truly began to take shape during the 19th century with authors like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.

Why is Science Fiction Important?

Science fiction is important because it allows us to explore possibilities for the future. It challenges our understanding of the universe and sparks our imagination.

Science Fiction Today

Today, science fiction continues to be popular in books, movies, and TV shows. It inspires scientists and inventors, and captivates audiences of all ages around the world.

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Paragraph on Science Fiction

250 Words Essay on Science Fiction

The essence of science fiction.

Science fiction, often abbreviated as Sci-Fi, is a genre of speculative literature that extrapolates current scientific understanding into a future or alternate reality. It explores the interplay of science and technology with human society, often creating a platform for philosophical contemplation and social critique.

The Evolution of Science Fiction

The genre’s roots trace back to ancient myths and fantastical voyages, but it truly came into its own in the 19th century with authors like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. Their works, such as “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” and “The Time Machine,” respectively, paved the way for the genre’s evolution. The advent of pulp magazines in the early 20th century, like “Amazing Stories,” further popularized science fiction, leading to its golden age in the mid-20th century.

The Impact of Science Fiction

Science fiction has significantly impacted society by sparking imagination and promoting scientific literacy. It has inspired many real-world technological advancements, from cell phones to space travel. Moreover, through its speculative nature, it allows us to explore ethical and moral questions raised by scientific progress.

The Future of Science Fiction

With the rapid advancement of technology and an increasingly interconnected world, science fiction continues to evolve. It is now exploring themes like artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and climate change, providing a mirror to our possible futures. As we navigate the complexities of our technologically driven society, science fiction remains a vital tool for understanding and shaping our world.

500 Words Essay on Science Fiction

Introduction to science fiction.

Science fiction, often abbreviated as sci-fi, is a genre that uses speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena not fully accepted by mainstream science. These elements may include extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, time travel, parallel universes, and advanced technologies. Sci-fi is a way of understanding, and potentially shaping, the future, while also illuminating our present world in unique ways.

Historical Evolution of Science Fiction

The origins of science fiction can be traced back to ancient times, with mythology, folklore, and fantastical tales that hinted at different realities or futures. However, it was during the 19th century that science fiction truly began to emerge as a distinct genre. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells are considered pioneers, with works like “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” and “The Time Machine” respectively, that integrated science and technology with imagination.

In the mid-20th century, science fiction experienced a ‘Golden Age’, with authors such as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein exploring advanced societies, artificial intelligence, and interstellar travel. Their works often reflected contemporary societal issues, such as the Cold War, space exploration, and technological advancements.

Themes and Concepts in Science Fiction

Science fiction is a broad genre that covers a wide range of themes and concepts. One prevalent theme is the exploration of space, often involving interstellar travel and alien civilizations. This theme explores the possibilities of human existence beyond Earth, and how we might interact with other sentient life.

Another key theme is the future of humanity, often exploring how current trends in science and technology may evolve. This can include dystopian futures, where societal or technological changes lead to a grim reality, or utopian visions of a future where technology has solved many of our current problems.

Science Fiction and Society

Science fiction serves as a mirror to our society, reflecting our hopes, fears, and ethical dilemmas. It often addresses contemporary issues, providing a platform to discuss topics such as artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, climate change, and the ethical implications of technological advancements.

Moreover, science fiction has the power to inspire scientific and technological innovation. Concepts first imagined in science fiction, such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and even the internet, have since become realities.

Science fiction is more than mere entertainment; it’s a powerful tool for understanding and contemplating our place in the universe. It serves as a bridge between science and art, combining the rigor of the former with the creativity of the latter. Whether it’s exploring distant galaxies, envisioning future societies, or grappling with the implications of new technologies, science fiction continues to push the boundaries of our imagination.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Essay on Science Exhibition
Essay on Modern Science
Essay on Invention of Science

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

The best new science fiction books of April 2024

There’s an abundance of exciting new science fiction out in April, by writers including The Three-Body Problem author Cixin Liu, Douglas Preston and Lionel Shriver

By Alison Flood

1 April 2024

The last remaining free city of the Forever Desert has been besieged for centuries in The Truth of the Aleke

Shutterstock / Liu zishan

There are some huge names with new works out this month: Cixin Liu and Ann Leckie both have collections of shorter writing to peruse, plus there’s a dystopic future from the award-winning Téa Obreht and a world where woolly mammoths have been brought back from the bestselling Douglas Preston. I also love the sound of Scott Alexander Howard’s debut The Other Valley , set in a town where its past and future versions exist in the next valleys over, and of Sofia Samatar’s space adventure The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain . So much to read, so little time…

A View from the Stars by Cixin Liu

This is a collection of short works from Liu, the sci-fi author of the moment thanks to Netflix’s new adaptation of The Three-Body Problem , ranging from essays and interviews to short fiction. I love this snippet from an essay about sci-fi fans, in which he calls us “mysterious aliens in the crowd”, who “jump like fleas from future to past and back again, and float like clouds of gas between nebulae; in a flash, we can reach the edge of the universe, or tunnel into a quark, or swim within a star-core”. Aren’t we lucky to have such worlds available to us on our shelves?

3 Body Problem review: Cixin Liu's masterpiece arrives on Netflix

Cixin Liu's novel The Three-Body Problem has been turned into an eight-part series for Netflix by the Game of Thrones team. There is much to admire so far, but will the adaptation stay on track, wonders Bethan Ackerley

Lake of Souls by Ann Leckie

Leckie is a must-read writer for me, and this is the first complete collection of her short fiction, ranging across science fiction and fantasy. On the sci-fi side, we will be able to dip back into the Imperial Radch universe, and we are also promised that we’ll “learn the secrets of the mysterious Lake of Souls” in a brand-new novelette.

The Morningside by Téa Obreht

In a catastrophic version of the future, an 11-year-old girl arrives with her mother at The Morningside, once a luxury high-rise, now another crumbling part of Island City, which is half-underwater. Obreht won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2011 for her debut, The Tiger’s Wife .

The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar

Samatar won all sorts of prizes for her first novel, A Stranger in Olondria . Her latest sounds really intriguing, following the story of a boy who has grown up condemned to work in the bowels of a mining ship among the stars, whose life changes when he is given the chance to be educated at the ship’s university.

A boy grows up working in a mining ship among the stars in The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain

D-Keine/Getty Images

Extinction by Douglas Preston

This is set in a valley in the Rockies, where guests at a luxury resort can see woolly mammoths, giant ground sloths and Irish elk brought back from extinction by genetic manipulation. But then a string of killings kicks off, and a pair of investigators must find out what’s really going on. This looks Jurassic Park -esque and seems like lots of fun. And if you want more mammoth-related reading, try my colleague Michael Le Page’s excellent explainer about why they won’t be back any time soon.

Mania by Lionel Shriver

The award-winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin brings her thoughts about so-called “culture wars” to bear on her fiction, imagining a world where a “Mental Parity Movement” is in the ascendent, and “the worst thing you can call someone is ‘stupid’”.

The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard

This speculative novel is set in a town where, to the east, lies the same town but 20 years ahead in time and, to the west, the same town but 20 years behind, repeating endlessly across the wilderness. The only border crossings allowed are for “mourning tours”, in which the dead can be seen in towns where they are still alive. Odile, who is 16, is set for a seat on the Conseil, where she will be able to decree who gets to travel across borders. I love the sound of this.

The best new science fiction books of March 2024

With a new Adrian Tchaikovsky, Mars-set romance from Natasha Pulley and a high-concept thriller from Stuart Turton due to hit shelves, there is plenty of great new science fiction to be reading in March

What If… Loki was Worthy? by Madeleine Roux

Many will question whether the Marvel superhero stories are really science fiction, but I’m leaning into the multiversal aspect here to include this, as it sounds like it could be a bit of fun. It’s the first in a new series that reimagines the origins of some of the biggest heroes: here, Thor died protecting Earth from one of Loki’s pranks and, exiled on our planet, the Norse trickster god is now dealing with the consequences.

The Truth of the Aleke by Moses Ose Utomi

The second book in the Forever Desert series is set 500 years after The Lies of the Ajungo , following a junior peacekeeper in the last remaining free city of the Forever Desert, which has been besieged for centuries. It was actually out in March, but I missed it then, so I’m bringing it to you now as it was tipped as a title to watch this year by our science fiction contributor Sally Adee.

Anomaly by Andrej Nikolaidis, translated by Will Firth

It is New Year’s Eve on the last day of the last year of human existence and various stories are unfolding, from a high-ranking minister with blood on his hands to a nurse keeping a secret. Later, in a cabin in the Alps, a musicologist and her daughter – the last people left on Earth – are trying to understand the catastrophe. According to The Independent , Nikolaidis “makes Samuel Beckett look positively cheery”, but I’m definitely in the mood for that kind of story now and then.

Martin MacInnes: 'Science fiction can be many different things'

The author of In Ascension, the latest pick for the New Scientist Book Club, on why he wrote his novel, cultivating a sense of wonder and the role of fiction in the world today

Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton

In this techno-thriller, Mal is a free AI who is uninterested in the conflict going on between the humans, until he finds himself trapped in the body of a cyborg mercenary and becomes responsible for the safety of the girl she died protecting.

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Science Fiction's 10 Most Epic Love Stories

Science fiction gives us space wars and robot uprisings, but there's nothing as huge and awesome as a love story that spans star systems or timelines. Here's our list of the top 10 greatest romances in science fiction.

Note: This list is just our personal preferences, plus those of our friends whom we polled online. Feel free to suggest your own candidates for "greatest love story" in the comments!

Makoto and Chiaki (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time) : The tomboyish Makoto discovers she has the power to travel through time, and mostly uses it for frivolous things — including preventing her friend Chiaki from confessing he's in love with her. After Makoto uses up her time-traveling mojo, Chiaki stops time and reveals he's a time traveler from the future. Chiaki uses his own last chance to time-travel, saving their friend Kousuke. Chiaki's erased from time, and Makoto realizes she loves him too — but maybe it's not too late to rescue him from the timestream? I love this clip.

Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese (The Terminator): Some people complain that the romance between Kyle and Sarah happens way too fast, and feels too much like stalker-hood on Kyle's part. But dude. He travels back in time to save her, and he's got her picture. (Okay, he got it from her son, which is a bit odd.) And they bond in adversity and come together in a time of hunormous danger, with the apocalypse breathing down their necks, and a killer cyborg stalking them. Plus their love involves a time paradox, and paradoxes are automatically romantic. Bottom line: Their love results in the savior of humanity, which is as epic as it gets. Don't believe me? Here's a shmoopy fanvid.

Aral Vorkosigan and Cordelia Naismith (Shards Of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold): It's a classic recasting of Jane Eyre , as Jurgen Wehrmann writes in the essay " Jane Eyre in Outer Space": Cordelia is a kick-ass commander of a survey spaceship who's unlucky in love, while Aral Vorkosigan has suffered from an epically bad first marriage. On an expedition to an uncharted planet, Aral captures Cordelia, but they're soon cut off from both their crews and forced to work together to survive. They fall in love, but when Cordelia returns to her feminist utopia on Beta Colony, her love for Aral is viewed as a mental illness or a sign of brainwashing — and the "therapy" for this turns out to be very nasty indeed. Cordelia survives a hostile planet, war, and the threat of mindfuckery to return to Aral's side — where she later proves herself his ideal mate by bringing the severed head of Count Vidal Vordarian into a meeting of her husband and several of the Count's partisans. Book cover art by David Cherry.

Wall-E and Eve (Wall-E): It's bizarre that one of the most touching love stories in movies comes with almost no dialogue other than the characters repeating each other's names. But seroiusly. If you didn't get choked up when Wall-E put the umbrella over Eve, or when they were separated only to find each other again, then you're the robot here. And like so many great epic love stories, their love saves the entire world. And here's a shmoopy fanvid to prove it.

Paul Muad'dib and Chani (Dune by Frank Herbert): Paul and Chani face a great deal of tragedy, including the murder of their first-born child by a House Harkonnen raiding party, and later Irulan's attempt to make Chani miscarry a second pregnancy. But their love affair is long-lasting and inspiring, and she provides his emotional support as he builds his rule. As Herbert writes, when Paul views the future: "Paul felt himself at the center, at the pivot where the whole structure turned, walking a thin wire of peace with a measure of happiness, Chani at his side. He could see it stretching ahead of him, a time of relative quiet in a hidden sietch, a moment of peace between periods of violence."

Spike Spiegel and Julia (Cowboy Bebop): She's the girlfriend of the aptly-named Vicious, but she and Spike start a torrid affair, and he's willing to resign from the Syndicate and elope with her. They arrange to meet in a graveyard, but then Spike is caught in a gun battle when he tries to tender his resignation. And Vicious tells Julia she has to kill Spike — but rather than do this, she goes into hiding, leaving Spike believing she betrayed him. He only finds out the truth when it's too late.

David and Rosalind (The Chrysalids by John Wyndham): They face so many obstacles together: They're persecuted mutants in a post-apoaclyptic world full of religious people who hate anyone different. They're cousins. Their families hate each other and won't ever let them be together. But despite everything, the two telepaths form a strong bond of love and manage to escape together. When Rosalind lets go of her emotional armor and David can see inside her, it's like a flower opening. (Detail of cover image by Mark Salwowski.)

Penny and Desmond (Lost): Who cares which guy Kate ends up with? Lost 's real love story is the time-crossed relationship between Desmond Hume and Penny Widmore. Especially after seeing "The Constant," in which Penny's presence in Desmond's life across all timeframes saves Desmond from being driven time-mad, you can't help but be invested in their love forever. All sorts of things have conspired to keep them apart — including the Island, Penny's father, Ben Linus and the machinations of Eloise Hawking — but they've still found each other. (If they are torn apart once and for all, especially for cheap effect, I will probably carry my television set around with me until I see Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, and then throw it at them.)

John Crichton and Aeryn Sun (Farscape): This couple has been through so much together, including Aeryn's "death" in "Die Me, Dichotomy," not to mention the death of the duplicate John that Aeryn has a passionate affair with at one point. John finally gives up his dream of returning to Earth so he can be with Aeryn, and she finally agrees to marry him — and then, of course, the death thing again. Luckily, death can't stop these two from being together. Here's a list of the 25 greatest John/Aeryn moments . What did they leave out?

Han Solo and Princess Leia (Star Wars): Their love was so strong, it turned Luke into Leia's brother so they could be together. (I kid, I kid.) Anyway, it's the classic story: a roguish smuggler and an uptight but ass-kicking princess discover they really love each other. And she risks everything to rescue him from being frozen in carbonite. Dude. Here are the top 10 Leia/Han moments. (Again, what did they miss?)

Thanks to Seth Kaufman, Elizabeth Bates, Andrew Liptak, Jessy Randall, Amy Vernon, Gunilla Leavitt, Joe Kinkopf, Barclay Sylvester, Lun'Esex, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Misty S., Beth Wine Garner, Ace the Zombie, Mike Berry, Madeline Ashby, Eremitic Jude, Pilot, Luis Alberto Urrea, Jason Von Evil, Derek Powazek, and everybody else who suggested pairings.

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COMMENTS

Science Fiction Essay Examples with Tips
Here are some possible essay topics about science fiction: The Evolution of Science Fiction. The Impact of Science Fiction on Society. The Relationship Between Science and Science Fiction. Discuss the Different Subgenres of Science Fiction. The Influence of Science Fiction on Pop Culture. The Role of Women in Science Fiction.
Science Fiction Writing Tips: Ideas from 8 Authors
These tips on writing science fiction from essays and interviews with sci-fi authors will help you develop your speculative fiction writing craft. Post author By Jordan; No Comments on Science fiction writing tips: Ideas from 8 authors; If you love good science fiction, you know the genre is so much more than deep space adventures or scientific ...
Why Do You Love the Science Fiction You Love?
I love The Time Machine because I consider it the archetype of science fiction. The time machine was cool, but not the point. Wells' speculative explorations were epic. That's how I define science fiction - as speculation. I love The Time Machine in the same way I love Olaf Stapledon's majestic speculations.
50 Science Fiction Plot Ideas and Writing Prompts
They include prompts about the environment, artificial intelligence, genetics, medicine, time travel, space exploration, alien races, and alternative histories. The real value of sci fi ideas, of course, is the way the author uses them to explore questions about society, humanity, and relationships. I created these as interesting writing ...
Essay 1: What is Science Fiction?
Science fiction is a genre that considers futuristic expressions of utopia and disaster. It is an art form that stretches and tests the limits of what we hold true in the realms of time and space and is deeply reflective of the state of the world at present. Science fiction differs from mythology as it is focused on the future rather than the ...
A Guide to Isaac Asimov's Essays
It was all a labor of love; in particular Asimov often remarked that of all his writing, his essays for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction were his favorite, despite the fact that he received the lowest word-rate payment for them. From November 1959 to February 1992, an essay of his appeared in the magazine every month, without fail.
Why Science Fiction Is the Most Important Genre
Yuval Noah Harari, author of the best-selling books Sapiens and Homo Deus, is a big fan of science fiction, and includes an entire chapter about it in his new book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century ...
Science Fiction Essays: Examples, Topics, & Outlines
1. Conven. There is little doubt that Adam Marek's "Without a Shell" is a story that belongs to the category of literature known as science fiction. The tale adheres to many conventions of this particular genre. One of the chief elements of many science fiction tales is the fact that they take place in the future.
Essays on Science Fiction
What Makes a Good Science Fiction Essay Topics. When it comes to writing a science fiction essay, choosing the right topic is crucial. A good science fiction essay topic should be thought-provoking, imaginative, and relevant to the genre. It should inspire the writer to explore new ideas and concepts and engage the reader in a captivating ...
How to Write a Science Fiction Story
Conclusion. In order to write your science fiction story, it makes sense to study the genre. Take in some sci-fi tropes and create 'what would happen if' scenarios. Root your story in history and science. Let your imagination lead with new ideas to present to your readers.
Sci-Fi Month: 7 Reasons I Love Science Fiction (AKA my love letter to
November is Science Fiction Month, and I am so excited! Fun fact: prior to book blogging I primarily read science fiction and while I have absolutely loved expanding the genres that I read, I am really excited to dedicate some time to reading the genre again! Tomorrow I will unveil my TBR and overall plans for the month, but I wanted to kick everything off with a list of the reasons that I ...
What 'science fiction' means today, and how the genre has radically
In the great new sci-fi books and movies of the last 10 years, authors and storytellers have imagined the future in new ways. Editors from Tor, Orbit, Asimov's Science Fiction, and more weigh in ...
"Women of Wonder": The Legacy of Feminist Science Fiction
In her seminal essay "The Image of Women in Science Fiction," Russ argues that science fiction has completely ignored sex, gender roles, and family structure and further, has fallen into ...
An essay on science fiction
And it's not all about the science. Star Wars isn't about 'science'. Star Wars is King Arthur. It's the oldest story written, you could say. That's the beauty of science fiction: it tackles themes as old as the hills. It frees up the writer and the reader. Look at Foundation; that's a Noah's Ark story. Dune is the Wars of the ...
110+ Sci-Fi Writing Prompts (+ Generator)
110+ Sci-Fi Writing Prompts (+ Sci-Fi Story Idea Generator) January 8, 2022. Bring on the robots, aliens and distant planets with this mega list of over 110 extraordinary sci-fi writing prompts. Science fiction (or sci-fi for short) covers a breadth of topics including aliens, technology, future cities, space travel and scientific experiments.
20 Sci-fi Story Ideas
Twenty Out of this World Story Ideas. Just so you know, these are "soft sci-fi" rather than "hard sci-fi," which basically means they're more focused on character than math and science. Aliens who only communicate with sign language invade. To avoid war, our governments must engage a vastly marginalized portion of the human population ...
So goes the love-hate relationship between science fiction and Kurt
As Vonnegut later said in his collection of essays A Man Without a Country, "I became a so-called science fiction writer when someone decreed that I was a science fiction writer." As a result ...
Science Fiction Essay Examples
Poetry Essays. Comedy Essays. Ghost Essays. Tragic Hero Essays. Drama Essays. Fiction Essays. Short Story Essays. Write your best essay on Science Fiction - just find, explore and download any essay for free! Examples 👉 Topics 👉 Titles by Samplius.com.
Essay on Science Fiction
Science fiction, often abbreviated as sci-fi, is a genre that uses speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena not fully accepted by mainstream science. These elements may include extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, time travel, parallel universes, and advanced technologies. Sci-fi is a way of understanding, and ...
Friday essay: science fiction's women problem
Friday essay: science fiction's women problem. Since 1953, the Hugo Awards have been one of science fiction's most prestigious honours - past winners include Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clark and ...
The best new science fiction books of April 2024
3 Body Problem review: Cixin Liu's masterpiece arrives on Netflix Cixin Liu's novel The Three-Body Problem has been turned into an eight-part series for Netflix by the Game of Thrones team.
Essay on Why I Love Science: A Journey of Wonder and Discovery
In this essay, I will delve into the multifaceted reasons why I love science, exploring the myriad dimensions that make it a remarkable endeavor. Table Of Contents show The Curiosity-Driven Quest A Universe of Questions ... Science fiction serves as a bridge between the known and the unknown, sparking curiosity and encouraging us to ponder the ...
Life Beyond Us: An Original Anthology of SF Stories and Science Essays
My complete review of Life Beyond Us is published at Grimdark Magazine. Life Beyond Us is an anthology of fifty-four original science fiction stories and science essays compiled by the European Astrobiology Institute, a consortium of European institutions devoted to research, education, and outreach activities in the field of astrobiology, i.e., the study of life in the universe.
Science Fiction's 10 Most Epic Love Stories
Science Fiction's 10 Most Epic Love Stories. By. ... as Jurgen Wehrmann writes in the essay "Jane Eyre in Outer Space": Cordelia is a kick-ass commander of a survey spaceship who's unlucky in love ...

Science Fiction Essay: Examples & Easy Steps Guide

What Is Science Fiction?

What Is a Science Fiction Essay?

Science Fiction Essay Examples

How to Write an Essay About Science Fiction?

Know What Kind of Essay To Write

Find an Interesting Topic

Do Some Research

Organize Your Essay Outline

Start Writing Your First Draft

Edit and Proofread

Science Fiction Essay Topics

Science Fiction Essay Questions

Science Fiction Essay Tips

Choose a Topic That Interests You

Make Sure Your Essay is Well-Organized

Use Strong Verbs

Be Creative

Use Quotes Appropriately

Keep reading

Science fiction writing tips: Ideas from 8 authors

How to write good science fiction:

1. Decide your type of science fiction

What type of science fiction do you want to write?

2. Imagine it doesn’t have to be the way it is

Imagining otherwise: Sci-fi writing prompts

3. Keep abreast of science and tech news

GET WRITING TIPS, VIDEOS & HOW TO’S WEEKLY

4. Think in systems and impacts

5. Explore the creative uses of AI

Example: Using AI tools to find science fiction ideas

6. Show the effects of change

7. Embrace the complexity of fantastical tales

8. Think about power, representation and access

Power, representation and access in science fiction: Questions

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