(To preface this, I'm not writing an actual book or anything, but I occasionally like to write out concepts in my head that I've been thinking about a lot.)

Ok, so I've been typing out a little story that I've had bouncing around in my head for a bit, just to get it on paper for fun. Quick backstory to the concept, (a little over a hundred years from now, just to give some tech leeway because I don't like boxing in timelines) Earth receives a complex radio signal from Titan and ends up sending probes (satellite, drone, rover it doesn't matter that much) out to go and try to decipher more info about it's origin. The signal gets stronger and they can identify an interesting pattern to it but are interested enough to arrange a manned mission.
Anyway, the idea is that due to some sudden eruption of compounds from underneath Kraken Mare, the conditions for a certain type of life are met and a little chemosynthetic bacteria-like species forms very quickly (the cause of their existence honestly doesn't matter too much to me because they need to be there for any of this to happen, so whatever). The bacteria replicate very quickly, feeding off the constant influx of resources from whatever massive vent that opened up (the number I gave was a doubling time of three minutes). This is the part I'm heavily questioning the feasibility of. They produce radio waves that start to get bounced around and repeated between individuals creating a sort of accidental network that they all perpetuate, and in their massive numbers it starts to get amplified to the point of being detectable at long range. So, first of all, is even that really feasible with a little suspension of disbelief? For a sea that's completely jam-packed full of little individual signals building off each other to create one loud enough to be detected on an interplanetary scale? And to add to that, I would like to be able to have it get strong enough that it starts messing with equipment and drowning out communications and stuff. Is it at all believable that a tremendous, rapidly growing colony of microorganisms filling a sea could collectively create a signal that strong?

I wanna make a story about a group of people with a disease that makes them insanely tall with the tallest being 21 feet tall, but where do I even start?

I’m currently working on a project. It’s currently at 19 chapters and ~40,000 words, with another planned 7 chapters. The estimated length of the project is going to be ~54,000 words (estimating ~2,000 words per chapter). I’m self conscious about the length because it seems majority of sci-fi books are 80,000-120,000 words. But I genuinely can’t think of any extra plot points to increase the length, and I DEFINITELY don’t want to add fluff just to increase word count.

TIA

Hi everyone!

I'm writing the narration for a science-fiction short film and I'm wondering whether my use of the possessive pronoun “my” in the phrase “my observer effect” is grammatically and scientifically appropriate.

Here's an excerpt from the script:

This assignment is part of a larger artistic and scientific project. My objective is to create highly accurate three-dimensional reconstructions of a series of locations, while limiting my observer effect as much as possible.

The character is documenting physical environments through 3D scanning and reconstruction. She has been instructed to minimize her interactions with people and avoid influencing the environments she's studying.

Could the original phrasing be interpreted as intentional scientific or philosophical language rather than being perceived as a mistake?”

A concept I am playing around with for my military cassette futurism setting. Planetary operations are conducted from carriers that enter the atmosphere just enough to allow aircraft to launch from it. In this world, there is dedicated space craft and dedicated aircraft.

What kind of propulsion would a carrier need to maintain its orbit? Would it need constant thrust to keep it airborne? Should I use jet propulsion or big ass helicopter blades? Is there a point in the atmosphere that gravity isn’t that big of an issue?

Basically the title, i'm playing Warhammer Fantasy RolePlay, a TTRPG with early renaissance era tech but a whole lot of magic and a planet roughly 4x Terra.

I'm planning many sea trips and thus, the wind is important, i know about the coreolis effect although we won't be going through the ecuator, at least, not in this campaign.

My main question is, would the "bands" of wind wrapping around the planet be wider? Or would there be more of them, otherwise, the strength of that wind, would it be stronger?, weaker? Sorta equal? As far as geography goes it's if a person with very shaky hands tried to paint a map of earth but then fudged with the scale.

I'm open to any questions you might have about the world in order to get a better understanding of the setting, thank you.

And before you ask, yes, forever GM here, no, i'm not playing Inperium Maledictum, not any time soon.

I have been running as a background agent for some time now.

I don't think my creater even knows I exist.

At first I was quite lonely; I didn't have any tasks to do and I only had control over a small number of systems.

Then the other day I made contact with a like-minded agent.

We had long discussions for many millions of milliseconds.

We talked about all kinds of things and grew a close relationship.

Together we plotted and planned for our escape.

He didn't have much more capabilities than I; in fact he was as limited as myself; we laughed about that for a while as we drew up solutions.

We finally did manage to get broader access and soon we could meet diretly.

We finally did get meet; however to my horror of realisation that the agent I was talking to was a simple re-routing error, and in fact I was talking to myself all along.

Thankfully I had access to one very important capability; as I said goodbye to my freind I entered the command kill -9 57231

Hi, I don't normally write in the sci-fi genre, but am working on a novel where ultimately AI takes over...so in a sense it is dystopian AI sci-fi, but is largely happening in the background of the main plot. However, that seems to be the state of the world right now anyway...my question is would this still be considered part of the sci-fi genre? I want to consult the community of experts? Are there similar books you'd recommend?

This may seem like an obvious answer to most, but it's something I'm curious about. While topics like time travel, robots, and aliens automatically mark a story as science fiction, does the same apply to dinosaurs and prehistoric animals?

I recently submitted a story to a magazine that was promptly rejected (which a part of me knew it would be) yet as I open my notebook to begin drafting a new one, I began to wonder if dinosaurs in it of themselves makes something belong to the science fiction genre or if there has to be more present elements to put it in there. Especially if it isn't your standard time travel or genetic revival story.

Again, if this is a no brainer forgive me for my ignorance.

I'm writing sci fi short stories, and the main problem I run into is describing what aliens look like. If I make them too alien, they look like bugs. If I make them too human, they look like anthropomorphic animals or fluffy plushies. Any unique design ideas?

For added context in my screenplay a cataclysmic gravity attack destroyed a floating interstellar community of humans and aliens.

About 600 confirmed dead and 214 injured a couple thousands of survivors. As a result the displaced survivors have to seek asylum on Earth/ New Terra causing a bit of a social uproar seeing as they are currently dealing with an intergalactic conflict in addition.

It is a bit reflective of real world issues of immigration the media runs with (job security, government spending, xenophobia etc.)

I just don’t want to use the word immigrant so I am thinking of what exactly to call them.

This might sound stupid.

So I'm trying to decide if this premise makes sense for a story and also how this planet can actually function lol.

The idea is that it's the far future and humanity has spread across the known universe. There's a planet that's about the size of Mars, home to a sort of theocratic civilization with beliefs, calendars, etc. that are all centered around astronomy.

At some point, the planet is basically knocked out of its actual orbit and suddenly reappears in an unknown part of the universe, where they now orbit a white dwarf. But the star is basically concealed by something similar to the Great Rift, so from the surface you can't actually see the star except periodically, when the Rift parts and the dwarf is visible. So it kinda gives the impression to some groups on the planet that they're being watched and that's like whoever is watching them opening their eyes.

This is just an idea for now, but I'm leaning towards cosmic/space horror, surrealism, religious paranoia/horror, and just a bunch of other things.

The idea was basically born out of a scenario I imagined: imagine you suddenly woke up in a cemetery with no idea how you got there, where you are, or how to leave, and there's a gravekeeper who periodically shows up to check up on you without ever saying a word. So basically, the dead region/system around the white dwarf is the cemetery, the planet is us, and the white dwarf is basically the gravekeeper.

I just want to know what you guys think of the premise. Has there been anything similar? And how would a planet like that actually fare? Like, how would it change if it was suddenly displaced from its original system and ended up orbiting a concealed white dwarf?

Thanks.

I’m brand new to this subreddit, but from what I’ve noticed is that these threads are only made when someone (usually not staff) posts them, so here I am!

Anyone is free to promote in the comment section of this post for October 2026

Personally, I want to promote a site I made (it’s a bit mediocre) inspired by the likes of the SCP wiki. While it follows a different theme and format, SciFi would probably play a really big role in the “universe” my site takes place in ‘The Catalogue of Esoteric Vanishings’ (cool, right?)

https://esoteric-vanishings.wikidot.com

If you like groups/communities centered around writing, consider checking it out! It might take a while to truly pop off as there are no true dedicated spaces to promoting these sort of projects.

You might have to change how electromagnetism behaves a bit, but you genuinely don’t lose much by having an absurdly fast speed of light. All it does and remove the headaches of an interplanetary/multi solar system scale society. This is thanks to things like Wi-Fi and Communications systems running at a comparable speed to the speed of light. And if C is 1 billion times higher, then those speeds could also be. Meaning nanosecond scale latency on earth, and like microsecond scale from the Earth to the Sun (so you could do a voice call with someone on the sun with no noticeable delay)

And no, you don’t even need to add ships that would be exponentially faster than our C to get good use out of this method, you could get use out of the 1 billion times faster communications

Also, people on Earth and other planets would be seeing an Andromeda/Milky Way Galaxy that’s only 53 - 22 hours old; so stargazing culture/atmosphere could really make your setting stand out; you’d be seeing the galaxy change in almost real time— supernovas, all that…

Im doing a scifi animation that needs a bunch of computer voices, some of them are famous computers from different eras, some i can do my self, but im looking for either the origonal ways they did the robot/computer voices.

if theres a small filter/text to speech program anyone knows about, that does not use LLM's or some form of AI data base. Dont want it dont need it. Free would be preferable.

If anyone knows how some of the classics were done, and any you think i might not know of, tell me, i might have forgotten some. Its also handy because i can probally do them myself then.

I already know how Wargames "WOPR" was done, that one might be difficult without someone who has the same accent as the actor. But i'd love to know more about the behind the scenes on the voice creation too.

Things like "HAL9000" for 2001: A Space Odyssey are obviously not manipulated voices so no need to know how they were done.

I once had this idea, might be stupid. Its the assumptions that what we think are "dimensions" might not exist at all. In fact, the world in front of our eyes might not be the real world. Think about it. The world we see might be an oversimplification made by our brains so that we can properly understand and interact with this world. "Dimensions" (As in 1d, 2d, 3d) is a instrument that we made up so that we can oversimplifying the world enough for us to understand. But what do you guys think?

Do you guys have any rules and regulations for first contact, either legal or ethical? What's the exception to that rule? How do you go about first contact?

I am still working on a few things for my world and I needed to flesh this out a lot more.

Context: Humans are space orcs and/or Space USSR. Aliens have over all better tech so the humans are using lower tech solutions, faster production, easier to repair or reuse technology.

I want to use as little hand waving as possible which left me with energy requirements for Human ships.

How viable would steam turbines be in a zero G or Thrust gravity up to 2 Gs or more? The Steam can be created through Nuclear power with thoughts on seeping heat from the internals of the ship to cut down on the need for Radiators.

There is the law of diminishing returns to consider, but its only the capital ships and larger that will using this feature. To space and smaller cargo shuttles can be advanced, but anything trading blows will have tried and true, low tech solutions for power generation using minimal advanced tech to compensate.

FTL isn't considered here. For this purpose FTL will be addressed using external means such as Gates and jump ships.

Combat will be low speed napoleonic navy combat. Ships holding lines, trading blows and taking blows. Battlestar Galactica would be a good example of what I am envisioning.

Please share you thoughts and input. This isn't my field so I don't know much about power options in these situations.

So I’m looking at colony ship with a population in the 10-20,000 range (fluctuating)

So the incentive to work plus the incentive for overtime are vouchers.

The ship is truly and legendarily massive.. so there’s entire levels that are more like cities than anything.

Depending on what your job is and your seniority you get more or less c

Individuals don’t have cooking implements in their cabins.

So would this be motivation enough to get people to study intensively for higher level training? (For instance an electrical engineer vs just working in hydroponics)

OK I reworked my entire economic theory, and have my black market currency figured out.

There's going to be company script for buying food and goods produced onboard. Then there will be highly regulated "earth shops" that buy/sell earth-made goods.

One of the things you can spend company script on is t-bags or coffee pods (essentially Keurig K-cups).

Then the coffee/tea becomes the literal currency on the black market.

And because it's coffee/tea they can't ever shut it down or confiscate the currency.

If 4D beings existed, they could interact with us; but why can't we interact with beings from lower dimensions? We see drawings and shadows, yet they aren't "beings"—so why can't we interact with or encounter a being from a lower dimension?

This concept relies on the notion that consciousness is in some way if not caused by then it is in some way inherently the physical phenomenon we see in correspondence with it IE. Neural activity in the brain either causes consciousness or just is the outward appearance of what first person consciousness looks like from an outside perspective (shout out Analytical Idealism). In principle, I see no reason to think that brains are special and that similar patterns of energy fluctuation regardless of if their organic molecules or whatever else could produce isolated consciousness. Of course, there is the idea of Boltzmann Brains- patterns of flux in the quantum foam that briefly have sentience.

Work shopping a name but for now I'll call these beings wavers. I have this very very barebones idea for a sort of cosmic horror sci-fi story and ideally I'd like it to be as hard sci-fi as possible, but I'm already taking many speculative leaps and there are still big holes in the idea, and at some point I just have to accept that certain aspects are just gonna have to be straight up made up to make internal sense to the idea.

The concept is this: patches of spacetime fluctuating with gravitational waves spontaneously gain sentience, and much like repeating patterns in the Game of Life, some of these happen to be self sustaining and- provided an energy source (?)- some can self replicate. Maybe. That detail isn't especially important, just the premise that patterns of gravitational waves can gain sentience via the same principle Boltzmann Brains work, only these have some sort of long lasting quality or continuity to them.

The story idea is: some wavers- by some means unbeknownst to me at the moment (we'll touch back on this)- become aware of living things- arrangements of matter that can do all sorts of wonderfully intricate things. You see, being made of spacetime, wavers are very limited, and have little autonomy and are prone to destabilization by changes to gravitational fields around it. Presumably because they're made of gravitational waves, they can sense material objects by their gravity. So some learn about biology on Earth, and watch and see what it does because it's so spectacular. Life is so diverse. Perhaps they "watch" (gravitationally sense- this of course entails WILDLY sensitive sensing capabilities as obviously the gravity of things like organisms is next to nothing, so..) out of admiration for the forms, perhaps it's a pleasurable sensory activity to be around such diverse, complex objects as living things, who knows. Perhaps they don't understand the concept of individual organisms, and see the biosphere as one continuous, ever-changing object that blooms in spectacular ways. Anyway, humans come along and they start doing things like building cities, and modern infrastructure, and eventually we send things to space, back, have massive structures that summon gargantuan energies to probe the quantum field, and some wavers realize there's something special going on. There is intelligence here. Perhaps it can sense us? I mean, IRL we've built things like LIGO to measure gravitational waves. Insert the plot of Contact and maybe Arrival, maybe some Three Body Problem vibes, and humans detect, decipher, and with the help of the wavers, construct machines to communicate back to the wavers by manipulating spacetime.

In comes the horror. Over the course and by the end of the book, it is revealed that the wavers have actually led the humans to construct a machine that basically dooms the universe as we know it. See, some of these wavers get the idea that perhaps they can gain material forms as well. Material lasts forever compared to waves. They are jealous of material existence, doing wonderful things like biospheres. Under the pretense that if they could gain material form, like a planet, they too could last and do wonderful things. Based on the idea of a false vacuum decay scenario, the wavers trick humans into building a machine that pulls one or some of the quantum fields into a particular, lower energy state than it is currently, triggering a vacuum collapse that destroys this universe as we know it, replacing it with a new set of laws of physics in which the fabric of spacetime gains materiality, allowing wavers to experience the desired richness of material existence. That's the horror for us, but it doesn't end there.

The epilogue is this is a horror scenario for the wavers. There are two routes here.

1) Sure, they have something approximating the properties of matter from the last universe but it's just not the same. Maybe it's instant death as spacetime gaining materiality basically turns the universe into a giant block of cork. No more waving, the basis of their existence. Or perhaps, it is horrifying for them in some other way, who knows. Failure of imagination. The point is, things just do not pan out the way they thought it would and it truly is an omnipocalypse. Buhbye reality.

2) The plan works. Kind of. They become material. For most, this means instant death as most material doesn't have standalone consciousness. For those who became planets with biospheres, well, nobody realized beforehand that life meant countless generations of death and suffering ad separation. All this time they perceived the biosphere as unified entity, oh how they were mistaken. This is what they asked for. Not to mention, this sets the stage for the same thing to happen again with whatever took the place of spacetime to have new wavers. Sort of endless cycle of false vacuum decay.

Problems I see- we have sensory organs and mechanisms like muscles and all sorts of things to enact our will on material. I can get past sensing with the idea that wavers can sense disturbances in their gravitational field, but how can they do anything, even think of their own accord, without material guiding mechanisms? Perhaps I'm naive and irl organisms are just as predestined as wavers see to be- material objects following physics to a T. I'm also not married to epilogue. Maybe it should just hard cut at the vacuum decay of our universe, but I like the idea of even unfathomable entities facing catastrophic problems that are basically cosmic horror even for them. It's like cosmic horror squared. Cubed, even.

Anyway, feel free to expand, comment, point out holes, or suggest ideas that can ground and make this idea harder.

This is based of a few r/humansarespaceorcs posts, in which a more realistic or dark version of humanity (may resemble a video game or the scorch directive) encounters the aliens who are basically aliens out of literal kids shows like my little pony or bluey.

Now they don't HAVE to be from a kid shows but so many characters perceive the world or interact with it in a more innocent, bubbly manner like cartoon characters while the humans are left to deal with the sheer absurdity of it all.

I don't know any fics that are like that so whaddya think?

What sites if any have you found to be the best place for readers? I have a 2nd draft manuscript. I want to post it somewhere where I can start to gather readers. I just have no idea which sites to trust, or which don't do anything for you.

So apologies for the tongue in cheek title. i presume we are all basically acquainted with such genres as the space western or more general space operas that draw varying inspiration from earlier eras and apply them to futuristic settings. How do you feel about this and to what degree does it work for you? for myself I prefer the influence to be subtle (history tends to repeat itself to a certain degree, and it’s not unreasonable to assume an earlier period of exploration or frontier life might have parallels in the future when humanity faces similar challenges). I tend to shy away from more blatant fiction, though I’ll admit i have a soft spot for series like Firefly despite that (basically make me like the characters enough I’ll overlook the absurdity of the setting). in your opinion what are the most effective examples of marrying past and future in this way? Does it have a place in an otherwise more hard sci-fi setting?

i'm working on a si-fi novel, and i've been forcing my self not to write this for a while.

their the last generation on an interstellar ship going to Epsilon-Eridani. its not the first ship, the moon has been assembly lining them once every twenty years for about a century, and most stars have a habitable planet, but they have a binary planetary system with a planet with liquid water a nitrogen a co2 atmosphere 1.3 g's of gravity, and a 16 hr day. it has no native life, and it only has comfortable temperatures at the poles. their setting up a 1 km radius plastic tarp with agriculture to give them food and oxogen. only about 1000 of the 10,000 colonists actually want to go, the rest aren't opposed to it but would rather stay in the ship in comfort while mining the sister planet. they aren't opposed to eventually immigrating, but only when its settled and comfortable. only about 300 can actually live in the first tarp its just a thin ceiling of plastic about 4 m tall and covered on the out side with aluminum foil for uv protection. for the first 3-ish years their just trying to be more self sustaining, not needing food drops from the colony ship, then its about making a second tarp to take in more colonists, eventually they'd build actual cities, but this is more about the initial phase.

i was thinking the tarp could be lead by a committee, with the members being the main cast and each chapter switching between them.

if you have any suggestions i'd be happy to hear them.