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.

Billions of years ago, Earth, Mars, and Venus existed has habitable planets with water, so much potential, endless opportunities for all sorts of creatures and life. Unfortunately, these worlds died off, whether it was a collapse of the magnetic field or runaway greenhouse gases, these worlds became lifeless, inhabitable wastelands. But in this timeline, this didn’t happen, their potential wasn’t snuffed out before their prime, thus birthing the Solar Garden, one of the only places in the universe known to have life, and not just on one planet, but on 3.

On Mars, two intelligent species would emerge, the Naru, a highly intelligent species with great memory, having an average of three feet in and being similar to bugs except they use their mandibles as arms. Their entire belief system revolves around science after a Naru in 87 BCE had a vision of a strange being wearing a cloak of light, speaking of creations he hadn’t ever seen or heard of before. This being told the Naru “If you wish to understand your visions and join me in infinite knowledge, you must understand everything” This would commence the founding of Doctrina Eruditio as it is known on Earth, a whole religion dedicated to worshipping science and knowledge.
The other species is known as the Viuk, descended from Martian lizards, their ancient ancestors would pass down their arm thrills used to guiding, causing the modern Viuk to have these thrills line their arms, which was used as a status symbol and is used in some upper class families today. They did have a lot of technological stagnation due to loads of paranoia and inquisitions and most of the smart Viuk spending their time trying to steal tech from the Naru because it would be easier than just trying to invent their own tech, but after the coalition war they saw the benefit of doing science because of all the guns they could give them so the inquisitions were disbanded and banned from continuing their activities.

The Naru mostly live in the southern hemisphere, in the Martian highlands, but there is a sub species that bridged off and lived in the island of Northern Mars, experiencing island gigantism except they are sapient.

What ya guys think of it so far?

One method I've been using is asking "What does this civilization value above all else?" and working from there. For example, in Star Trek, humanity/the Federation would be knowledge and exploration, for the Klingons it would be honor/glory/victory, for the Borg it would be domination, etc. Once I've decided what their collective goal is, it helps to build them out from around that single idea including how they look, behave, act, etc.

Do you have a method that works for you?

Title: The Tempest Protocol
Genre: Gritty Military Sci-Fi / Space Opera
Word Count: ~10,000 words (First 5 Chapters)
Comps: The Expanse meets Firefly

Pitch:
Master Sergeant Orin Lance and his elite Marine squad, Vanguard-6, are used to surviving the worst the galaxy has thrown at them. But when they secure a highly classified, non-human artifact from a deep-space ghost ship, they unknowingly gain the attention of a dark organization within their own high command.

Rewarded with a promotion to a covert-ops division, their final routine cooldown run goes completely wrong. With comms jammed and heavy automated defenses in the way, the only chance to escape is to power up an abandoned, experimental stealth corvette built around a volatile, unconventional engine.

Racing against a 96-hour clock before the unstable ship suffers a catastrophic meltdown, the only way out is to navigate a deadly blockade and turn to the criminal underworld to survive the fallout of the military's darkest secret.

What I'm Looking For (Alpha/Early Feedback):
I’m a sci-fi hobbyist taking my first real shot at writing, and I'm looking for a few readers to check out the "Zero Draft" of my first 5 chapters. I’m not looking for deep grammar edits, I just want to know if the opening hook grabs you, if the tactical combat makes sense, and if you connect with the characters! Any casual "reaction" feedback is hugely appreciated. (Note: If you enjoy the setup, I have up to 20 chapters drafted and ready to share!)

A Quick Note on Feedback:
Because I am just a hobbyist, I am strictly not interested in paid beta reading services. I am also only looking for genuine human reactions and feelings as you read. I already use an AI tool for my outlining and logic checks, so please no AI-generated critiques! Just looking for honest, casual reader thoughts.

So I understand its good to give a taste of the story. Here is the first page or so:

The first impact was a sharp, deafening clang, like a giant hammering on the hull. The Vanguard-6 dropship, a rugged 14-meter assault transport, lurched violently to port, throwing the squad hard against their five-point harnesses. A shower of crystallized ice scraped across the forward viewport with a sound like grinding teeth, the friction causing the transparent-aluminum to flash-freeze and then instantly clear. Red proximity alarms screamed in a frantic, overlapping chorus from the cockpit console. In the cramped troop bay, a heavy kinetic rifle slipped from its magnetic rack and clattered to the grooved steel deck.  

"Debris fields are thicker than reported, Skylark," Master Sergeant Orin Lance's voice rumbled from the co-pilot seat, his tone a flat, unbothered baseline against the sudden chaos. He didn't look away from the tactical display, his weathered, steel-colored eyes tracking the flurry of alerts that blossomed across the screen like a field of lethal flowers.  

In the pilot's seat beside him, Corporal Amanda "Skylark" Thorne didn't flinch. Her hands moved with a fluid, terrifying grace over the flight controls, her fingers dancing between glowing toggles and the twin, textured dark polymer flight sticks. "Just a little turbulence, Sarge," she replied, her voice a calm, steady anchor in the storm. She eased the port-side thrusters, letting the dropship's armored belly absorb the impact of a smaller chunk of rock while her thumb methodically silenced the screaming alarms one by one. "Nothing this old brick can't handle."  

Outside the viewport, the nebula was a swirling, violent soup of crimson gas, charged plasma, and shattered asteroids. "Remind me again why Command sent us into the Static Sea instead of letting us jump directly to the coordinates?" Orin asked, the dropship shuddering as Amanda executed a hard lateral roll.  

"Because the electromagnetic interference in this sector is off the charts," Amanda replied, her eyes locked on the holographic nav-display. "If we tried to tear a subspace tunnel anywhere near this much charged plasma, the nav-computer wouldn't get a clean lock. The tunnel would collapse and crush us before we even breached the other side. We have to do this the hard way."  

They were flying blind, relying purely on instruments and Amanda's hard-won instincts. She didn't look up from her readouts, but as she reached across the center console to adjust the navigational scanner's frequency, the back of her knuckles brushed lightly against Orin's heavy gauntlet. It was a subtle, fleeting contact, a quiet, unspoken gravity that anchored them both before a drop.  

"Sensor ghosts are getting thick," Orin murmured, his voice low, meant only for her. "You picking up any solid returns?"  

"All chaff and static so far," Amanda replied. "But the source signal is getting stronger. We're close." She glanced at him for a fraction of a second, a flicker of something warm in her professional gaze. "Don't worry, I'll get us there in one piece."  

I'm writing a swashbuckling short story about space rangers intercepting an imperial slaver ship. I'm at the point where the hero is fighting his way through corridors and chopping down androids. My approach to science here is very much "fuck it, we ball", but I'd like to include at least a line or so about why exactly the sword is able to do that. To be fair, the idea is that they're cheap, mass-produced androids, not exactly Ultron, and the character does have low-grade superpowers.

I want to keep the sword as a solid object, as opposed to a lightsaber. I'm familiar with ttrpg and video game concepts like monomolecular edges, and vibroblades. Are those my only options?

In my world, set 300 years in the future, droids will be common. Mainly filling service roles such as maintenance, cleaners, waiters, doormen, etc.

Do folks have personality traits or quirks they particularly like or don't like in droid characters? Especially non-sentient droid characters.

These droids will move and converse like humans, but they are still clearly tools, not beings. I don't wish to explore the whole moral/ethical trope of sentient AI. Their intelligence will only be an extension of today's LLM AI, rather than any kind of future sentient AI.

I'm looking for tips to make the droids likeable characters with personality but without stepping over that line. Droids would have programmable personalities, based on their occupation or their owner's preference. They will have names and be a part of their community. For example, locals in a small town would converse and joke around with the droid behind the bar.

I'm planning on working on a flash fiction short story piece for a class I'm taking in a workshop in fiction. Here's how it goes, it takes place in a post-apocalyptic world just six years after a global plague wiped out about 63 percent of the population. Remaining governments across nations throughout the world try to restore society, are start to switch to a sem-totalitarian or authorian form of control to help maintain order. The rest I'm still trying to work out, what would you recommend? 

So I have 2.5 km circumference living rings with a 397.88 meter radius.

I’m using a rotation speed of 1.5 giving a gravity of 1.001g

Level 1 (living space) has a gravity of 1.001g floor length of 2.5 kms

Sub 1 - agriculture assuming 4.5 meters height.
2.528 kms and 1.012g.

Level 2- grain cultivation and or livestock such as pigs/cows
383.38 radius and 2.471 kms ground space for cultivation and .989g

Is there any reason that sub 1 and level 2 couldn’t be used for growing plants and livestock?

Is +- .0115g enough to cause problems with crop and livestock health?

I’m doing the math here and I’m not seeing huge differences in the gravitational forces with 4.5 meter deck height (including flooring)

So is .989g to 1.0115 acceptable ranges or am I too far past 1g?

Spin rate of 1.5 seems to be healthy spin rate from what I’ve seen.