Posts tagged science-fiction
In a game scenario I am developing, one option for a fleet to infiltrate an enemy is to use ftl to "hard burn" through a black hole's event horizon. Their ftl drives use a "warp bubble" principle t...
Inspired by the Paycheck and Minority Report movies. So far as I can tell, physical time travel is impossible for humans, and so I searched to see the future possible scientific or theoretical pos...
[Repost to condense question down] For a science fiction world of mine I am considering using a type of microscopic organism that is able to generate energy as it goes through its lifecycle, a life...
I am working on a space game that allows players to participate in the human colonization of a distant star cluster. I could use some help determining what sort of numbers I should have aboard the...
I have a species that I wish to create whose life cycle is similar to a Xenomorph from the Alien series. By this, I mean to create a species wherein: A Xenomorph, or Species A, the base creature,...
A thought experiment that I would like to work into a story. Need to basically know the tipping point of such an event happening. Assumption: The being is starting from a small size and is still a...
I'm building the world of my story for my comics and I've come to a bit of a standstill with a particular idea. Assuming there were no other planets in our universe, just a single planet Earth. ...
Form follows function, or that's how the saying goes. Which isn't true for some things. That is to say, a large reason why humans use a base 10 numbering system is because we have 10 fingers, not t...
For my question, I was wondering the idea of a creature that needed to be visually seen by Humans or else, if no sight on it by a human being has been made then it can only last for 24 Hours. I w...
Despite the wide variety of movement strategies employed by Earthling animals, up to an including curling their bodies into circles and rolling, there is one mode of locomotion that is glaringly mi...
We've seen it throughout media before, a crazy mutation that creates zombies, rabid people, giant spiders, etc. I'm spot checking how crazy I can get with this short story I'm writing about a bacte...
I have a world where there are two types of beings. One type, let's call them X, exist in our "dimension," and the other, let's call them Y, exist in another "phase" or dimension. Only 10% of X b...
In the climactic final battle Faction A engages Faction B on Faction B's planetary base, both in orbital and ground combat. Realizing they can't win, Faction A activates a device that transports an...
Taking into account all of the developments in the alcubierre warp drive theory including the new calculations by Harold White. Are their any plausible/theoretical ways to generate a warp bubble wi...
Background: In the year 2204, humans have colonized most of the inner solar system. During the first explorations of the vast outer system, a team of researchers uncovers a series of alien artifact...
If a spaceplane were to try to simulate the look of aerial flight in the vacuum, would it be difficult or easy for the pilot to manually simulate aerial maneuvers, using just a contemporary reactio...
I'm working on a hard sf novel about humans being forced to survive on a metal-poor planet. They have to take dietary metal supplements at first but eventually a bio-engineer rigs the biochemical p...
The scenario described below is for a role-playing game. The setting is Earth-like but with a healthy dose of sci-fi. Even though the setting is sci-fi I would prefer answers be largely based in re...
Hal Clement's novel Needle was revolutionary in featuring a non-parasitic alien lifeform capable of inhabiting a human body. Specifically, the Hunter in its independent form is a gelatinous mass c...
In my story, there is a large group of humanoid clones that help the city function, doing mundane tasks such as cleaning and maintaining the city. Doing all of the minimum wage jobs and 95% of the...
The setting I'm interested in would involve a cold planet (cold enough for most bodies of water to be frozen - I'm thinking of an average global temperature of -20C or below). The simplest way woul...
I'm designing a small two-person spaceship for use in battles in space. It is set around the year 2100. It would be around the size of a tank (approx. 50 tons). It would need to be fast and easy ...
I am thinking about a game where people will shoot out in space, with different features. However, an integral part of the game is no spraying/spamming bullets. I don't want to have it in a fantasy...
Melange, also known as "the spice", is a fictional drug in Frank Herbert's famous Dune series, which has many benefits (and some drawbacks). In this series of questions, I'll try to see how many of...
Any story about an independent, self-owned tramp spaceship crew tends to implicitly or explicitly raise the question of how the crew got a spaceship, how it afforded it, and why it doesn't just sel...
A character is on an alien planet that is very much like any one of our large deserts. Sort of a Tatooine like on Star Wars. He needs to cause a diversion. There aren't any explosives on planet o...
I'm working on a novel, in which a character was given a cutting edge vaccination to a deadly disease. She is now valuable because she was the only one given the vaccine and the research to make mo...
My current project features a contemporary scientist who is convinced that some sort of spacetime anomaly occurred in a tiny rural Yorkshire, U.K. community circa-1850; he believes a dilapidated ol...
Trying to develop a fictional scenario with a 'believable' theory as to how a Nuclear War and resulting Nuclear Winter could turn into a millennial scale ice age. By 'believable', I mean that it p...
I'm writing a novella for a school competition. My main character is a shape shifter. I am trying to find a plausible scientific explanation for how shape shifting is possible. I tried finding an...
For this sci-fi story/world hat I'm building, I'm introducing my androids which, while having intelligence closer to a human, are still just machines in nature. Theoretically one can destroy the bo...
I'm interested in creating some construct of a society in the Twilight and Midnight zones of the ocean. By what means could they mine, farm, and trade in what is suppose to be a more futuristic so...
My question stems from What would a space fighter look like? After reading through @dsollen's question can a human fighter pilot fully grasp 3 dimensional frictionless movement in space? I started...
I've created a fairly fleshed out, detailed FTL concept. Basically, you have a circular starship, with a ring of tungsten encircling that, held in place by an antigravity ring beneath it. The rim o...
In my military scifi novel the military is, obviously, very concerned with security aboard its spaceships. They don't want other people to be able to receive any information about what happens on t...
What would happen if the entire inner surface of a Dyson sphere (not necessarily a solid shell, maybe a very dense swarm) would be coated into a highly reflective material? Let's say it can reflec...
I am trying to write a sci-fi setting in a not so distant future in which analog signal (brainwaves, in this case) processing is one of the main points of the plot and pretty much required to expla...
Imagine when a jet fighter swoops in to drop a 400 pounds giant chainsaw to you just so that you can use it to grind down one problematic enemy into a pulp then discard it a foot away from you. Wha...
If a person had control over each and every single cell in his body, I.e: Cell growth Cell multiplication Shape and form of cells How cells bond/bind with each other Cell Function Would they be...
Considering that oil is only really prevalent on earth (where dead biomatter can be compressed over millions of years into long hydrocarbons) I began to think that plastic might be just as rare as ...
Angels are advanced technological beings who are messengers of the gods. These extra-dimensional beings are large, upwards of 30ft tall, and resemble eldritch abominations in their true form, such ...
My story is set in a fortress town built below a mountain, and revolves around the struggle between the witch who protects the mountain and the tyrant who seeks to plunder it for resources (think P...
I'm working on a sci-fi setting which includes an aquatic space-faring species. When a human space vessel is ruptured and depressurizes, the gas can escape rapidly and we immediately suffer from t...
I asked a question earlier on here concerning Negative and Heavy Matter - hypothetical types of matter I created to have a working FTL drive. With some extra work, I've tweaked the concept and been...
Partly inspired by this question My Venusians are happy in their cloud top city when a small group somehow (with lots of handwaving) crashes to the surface, falls underground, and ends up in a hid...
Due to the moon's gravitational pull, objects at Earth's surface directly under the moon are slightly lighter. This tiny lessening of gravity would also take effect if the moon were on the exact op...
I am a collector traveling from planet to planet, who believes that art is an expression of human emotion and feeling, and can come in all types of forms. Many greats, such as Picasso and Van Gogh,...
Ok so I was thinking about a way to hypothetically have undiscovered elements with bizarre properties (for unobtainium purposes). And an idea hit me: replace nucleons with heavier but stable counte...
I'm working on a story in which there is some sort of planetary erosion of language. Humans lose the ability to communicate verbally (orally and written). They can remember having language, can eve...
Demonic possession occurs when an evil spirit hijacks the biological system of an organism, corrupting it and taking control of its functions. Although powerful, the possession eventually breaks do...
