10 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Writing Prompts to Get Your Creativity Flowing

Flowing Creativity (source: creativekatrina.com)

Are you stuck in a creative rut? Is your well of inspiration as dry as a pond in the Sahara desert? Do you feel like you have a brilliant story somewhere at the back of your head, but you can’t quite reach it?

If that’s the case, you’ve come to the right place.

I’ll let you in on a secret: I don’t particularly enjoy reading science fiction. But I adore writing it. Or at least, thinking about writing it. In fact, I think about it so much and have so many ideas that I don’t get round to actually writing, which means I have a bucketful of ideas swirling around my head and absolutely no use for them. So, by reading this, you’re doing me a favour as much as I’m doing you one (thanks 😀!). Here are some of my better ideas:

1. What would life be like if all your organs were replaced by artificial ones? This one might seem pretty boring at first, but I think it could be very interesting. Today, we can replace some organs like hearts and kidneys, and there are efforts to design lungs and livers too. Why should we stop there? Maybe, one day, we’ll be able to replace all our vital organs with prosthetics. What would life be like for someone who had been in an accident so severe that everything had to be replaced (apart from maybe the brain), including sensory organs like skin and eyes? How would they adjust? Alternatively, you could have “brain in a jar” situation, where the body is totally destroyed and the brain is removed and placed on life support systems. You could then get the doctors to look for a way to communicate with the brain, perhaps making use of electroencephalography (basically, reading the electrical pulses in the brain) or similar tech.
2. Mindnet. What would happen if we found a way to communicate using only our minds? What would it feel like? How would it work? Presumably, any “Mindnet” (“Cybermind”?) is going to have a kind of Search function. Would it be like Google, where you have to (mentally) type the question and search for answers, or could you access answers instinctively, knowing them before consciously asking your question? Somewhere in between? What would happen if someone hacked the Mindnet?
3. The body swap. This one’s a classic B-movie scenario, but I think it has the potential to work. It’s pretty much what it sounds like: two people (or two animals, or a person and an animal) go to sleep an wake up in a different body. Perhaps electrodes were implanted in their brains to transfer motor commands and sensory input from one to another. This might be better suited to a sci-fi comedy than something serious.
4. People wear exoskeletons that go wrong. In the future, it might be possible to buy “mind-reading” exoskeletons to increase strength or speed. There have already been trials on paralysed people and, while they are still far from even approximating the movement of healthy humans, it’s entirely conceivable we’ll see the first commercial “enhancement” exoskeletons before 2050. What would happen if they became as common as mobile phones are today? What would happen if something went wrong with them, if they took on a mind of their own?
5. What would a futuristic war look like? Another classic. Most people envision spaceships or big guns with pretty flashing lights. I think it’ll look a lot like cyberwarfare. If robotics, in any form, are common place, then they will undoubtedly be the target of cyberattacks, which would be worrying, to say the least. If we have a “Mindnet”, perhaps we’ll be the target of attacks on our thoughts.
6. AI takes over the world. Pretty self-explanatory.
7. The bigoted utopian society. Imagine. Everyone has plenty to eat. Poverty and cancer have been eradicated. Technology is progressing faster than ever. Life is good. Except… It isn’t. You have, materially, everything you need, and are given what would today be considered Ivy-league standard education. But, at birth, you were assigned to a category based on your genetics, but you just don’t fit. Most people are perfectly happy (or perhaps the government says most people are happy), but you’re not, and this category is immutable. Perhaps you were assigned to science when your heart is set on literature, or history. Or perhaps you were told to be kind and gentle when all you want to be is right. Either way, it’s not right so you try to fix it (at your peril…).
8. Able-ist dystopian society. The world is in crisis. Poverty is rife. Sickness spreads like wildfire. The dictator is a tyrant, and, in an effort to save money, babies born with even the slightest genetic defect are slaughtered. Your parents learn just a few days after your birth that you have a major sickness. Somehow, they trick the authorities into thinking you died at birth, and they hide you in their house, trying desperately to keep you safe. And then, in the middle of the night of your 12th birthday, you hear a gunshot.
9. Earthtrek: Next Generation. The Earth is in crisis. There has been some kind of disaster (alien invasion?), and only a few thousand humans have survived, scattered throughout the Earth in a handful of warmongering tribes. A mysterious illness has taken some of your tribesmen, and you know it’s only a matter of time before everyone else dies. You search frantically for a solution. Then, your druid has a vision of a massive, hyper-futuristic city, and upon hearing about it during a council meeting, whispers spread around the room: “It’s real,” you mutter, “Atlantis.” For there had been rumours for generations about a blooming city, but everyone thought it was just a legend. After a heated discussion, it is decided that the tribe should migrate (is that the right term?) towards it in order to save itself from oblivion. You meet many peoples on your quest, some friendly, others… not so much.
10. Earth has been destroyed. You are onboard one of the 200 spaceships designed to take enough of the Earth’s population to survive three or four centuries, the time it’ll take to reach Ponsmedulla Oblongata, a habitable planet where you intend to live. You’re almost there. The mode on the ship is jovial. Nothing can stop you. Well, apart from that asteroid…

Bonus: Your spaceship, the Madonna, has crashed onto a thankfully habitable planet. There are a few casualties, but nothing serious. You decide to set up camp and try to fix the spaceship. After months of trying, you give up. You’re stuck. Eventually, your engineer establishes a Mindnet connection, and, to her surprise, manages to communicate with…. Something. It appears friendly, and it’s not as if you have any choice, so you decide to set out across the planet and find your mysterious friend. Your exoskeletons, thankfully, still function, so you take them with you. You might have reconsidered if you’d known that your “friend” is in fact a robot working for the government of a dystopian society run entirely by AI. Only this AI is in need of a high-protein food, and it knows exactly how to get it…

Hope you found these prompts handy. Please comment and clap and remember to follow me if you haven’t already.