r/scifiwriting

I know this sounds absurdly specific. Yes, I’m aware of that, but just bear with me for a moment. Imagine that humanity somehow acquires highly credible information about a civilization that became technological around 3 billion years ago and still exists somewhere between 15,000 and 50,000 light-years away. They are extraordinarily advanced by our standards, but still recognizably bound by physical limits rather than possessing unlimited power or galaxy-spanning control. In fact, one of the deepest implications of this information is that Type III Kardashev civilizations simply do not exist in our universe, at least not yet. Even the oldest surviving species in the galaxy still seems entirely constrained by distance, time, energy, logistics, and survival itself. This civilization just had an impossible, massive head start.

They emerged extremely early in cosmic history, in a region where stars and habitable worlds were much more densely packed than they are around us. Life itself also appears to be extraordinarily common in the universe (just baseline chemistry given enough time). When their original star began dying, they survived because another habitable system existed only around 2 light-years away from them. They migrated there and, intentionally or not, caused the greatest mass extinction event that planet had ever experienced. Entire branches of life disappeared permanently. Some of those native species may already have possessed non-technological intelligence comparable to whales, octopuses, or something beyond either. What matters is that they chose their own survival over coexistence or at least didn't care that much about causing the extinction (they had a choice).

Strangely, though, they are not expansionist in the way science fiction usually imagines ancient civilizations. Over billions of years, they have explored only a few dozen nearby systems, focusing on extending their species but also on extracting resources and studying viable options of terraforming (which seems to be their greatest and most important scientific field). And despite being unimaginably advanced compared to us, they follow an extreme form of non-interventionism. They do not contact civilizations confined to their own solar systems. They do not uplift younger species, and they do not interfere even when another civilization is facing total extinction.

The reason for this silence does not appear to be guilt over the biosphere they destroyed during their ancient migration. According to the information humanity received, at some point in their past they became aware of something else. It was some event, pattern, discovery, or inherited knowledge suggesting that direct contact between civilizations can end catastrophically in ways far worse than ordinary war or conquest. It wasn't necessarily something that happened to them personally; it was possibly something they learned from the remnants of another civilization long gone. Whatever it was, it shaped their entire philosophy permanently. Even when they do interact with civilizations approaching interstellar capability, they avoid physical contact entirely. Diplomacy exists, but only as data exchanged at a distance.

There is also a fascinating ideological detail to them. Because they formed so early after the big bang, survived the death of their own star, and benefited from a chain of statistical luck almost impossible to repeat, they developed a kind of civilizational “chosen people” mentality. It isn't genocidal or openly hostile, but they are deeply, quietly convinced that their survival carries ultimate cosmic significance.

And here is the important part: they do not know humanity exists. We have been technological for barely a century. A civilization that old cannot continuously monitor every single world in the galaxy, and species at our stage are beneath the threshold they care to look for. But now, imagine humanity knows about them on the basis of real and verified knowledge. We know all this information I wrote down here and the fact that they are likely the oldest technological civilisation still alive in the Milky Way.

So, how should we react? Do we transmit a message toward them, knowing they will easily survive long enough to eventually receive it? Or do we deliberately remain silent because civilisations that ancient understand structural dangers about the universe that we cannot even conceptualise yet? Do we accept this "status quo"? Do we just focus on contacting other civilisations closer to us in terms of technology now that we know life is extremely common? Do you think the wise thing would be to ignore this "grandfather" figure of the galaxy?

Alternate dimensions do not make sense in media. Media portrays alternate dimensions as if there's a version of a character out there in most or every dimension where the most realistic outcome would just be a different sperm winning the race, causing a completely different person.

I know this kind of realism would not have an interesting outcome for most stories but I never feel fully immersed in an alternate dimensions story because of this

I have an idea for a sorry where an infection is spreading but it only progresses and grows while people are sleeping so they are ina state of constant sleep deprivation (to stavd off the disease) while trying to find a cure.

I thought maybe about Cortisol? Like a bacteria that breeds whenthelevels get too low?

Is this a crazy idea?

I'm writing a story set in our galaxy far in the future (circa 2700-4000 years from now) and a problem I've been having is that it just doesn't feel like it's 3000 years from now. It doesn't feel like the far future. In some ways it just feels like the 20th-21st century but with advanced technology.

The characters just feel like they're either from the 20th or 21st century.

How do I avoid this? How do I actually make it feel like the far future? And how do other writers accomplish this?

And before anybody says that I should just write what I want, I want to write a setting that feels like the far future.

I'm working on a horror story right now that applies sci-fi to cosmic horror imagery, and a crucial plot point is that a force is discovered that somehow holds physics together. In zones that are intentionally deprived of it, in a Faraday cage styled setup, lose any hold of physics, things dissolve and break down, gravity breaks, etc etc. This force is later discovered to originate from the corpse of some higher being, and the universe is essentially the rot that feeds on the meat.

My question is, if something like this existed, what fields of study would lead to finding it? How would someone plausibly accidentally uncover something like that? And would it be a force, a particle, something quantum? What kind of terminology should I be leaning on to describe it, at least pseudo-scientifically?

I’m currently writing a zombie horror book meant to follow a scientists journey through the apocalypse, and the journal entries she logs throughout it. How’s this excerpt? Keep in mind this is simply a draft.

My name is Doctor Charlotte Roslyn Parks, and I work at the CDC as a scientist. The last few months, I’ve been studying an endemic virus I’ve nicknamed ‘Z-Virus’. Its scientific name is ‘Prilosis Senilis’, and it’s caused by the virus Senilia. The symptoms are like nothing I’ve ever seemed before, and developing a proper treatment plan for it has proved difficult on account of its constant mutations. Transmission of the virus is through bodily fluids, primarily saliva through a bite wound.

Incubation seems to take place over the course of fourteen to thirty days, and once the virus reaches the Central Nervous System symptom onset is rapid. It behaves similarly to Rabies Lyssavirus, in the sense that it hijacks the vagus nerve and other autonomic nerves to travel to the spine and brain. It also seems to cause encephalitis, however not as fast.

A distinct difference between Prilosis Senilis and Rabies Lyssavirus is that Prilosis Senilis seems to cause blood clotting in the brain, as autopsy reports show patients of this virus seem to die of stroke before the encephalitis becomes severe enough to lead them to their grave.

Now as I mentioned earlier, this virus is endemic. The only reported cases of it have been in villages in Argentina, where I am currently located. We have not found the initial carrier, or where the virus originated from, however we suspect that it is zoonotic in origin and comes originally from local rodent populations. My standing theory is that the rodents are picking the virus up from some kind of food source. What the source is so far is unknown to me.

Behavior in infected patients is strange. We have noted aggression in individuals who are usually docile, a decrease in their ability to communicate, and patients also have been reported to try and eat anything they can chew on, including other humans.

Now vaccine trials are occurring, however even in our best attempts to create something that can prepare the body to fight the virus anything we have tried to make seems to only speed up the symptom onset. As mentioned earlier, there has also been so many mutations of this virus that as soon as we get close to finding a vaccine, it just seems to mutate again.

I have suggested the Milwaukee Protocol, however my colleagues believe that this method is outdated and too expensive. Which it might be for Rabies Lyssavirus, however this virus is seemingly more aggressive and therefore requires an aggressive treatment.

Thank you for listening to my ramblings on my findings, and I will continue to update as I learn more.

I'm currently working on a cyberpunk like story and world. Though one where it's 50% cyberpunk 2077, Neuromancer, Blade Runner, DREADD and Virtual Light, yet with influences of Helltaker and Ultrakill by including demons and angels. I've coined this along the lines of "Occult Cyberpunk" and taken elements from the few "Tolkein meets Blade Runner". Magic and cybernetics.

Is there anything I should consider aside from the obvious when fleshing out and crafting a cyberpunk world?

Hey all,

While working on my book, I got tired of hand-waving travel times, so I made a small tool to estimate interstellar travel with a basic accelerate => cruise => decelerate model, including fuel mass loss:

👉 https://jsbin.com/wizobaboqu/edit?output

You can tweak engine power, exhaust velocity, efficiency, payload, and fuel to see how it affects travel time and peak speed. I made it myself so that I could run the simulation on a range of parameters and find sweet spots.

It only really works well below light speed.

Would love feedback:

* anything feel off?

* features you’d want?

* and obviously links to similar projects that do it better than I do.

https://preview.redd.it/8gn111bxt22h1.png?width=1336&format=png&auto=webp&s=2a1dc753a9df247e8a56ae2322f51f22f7febdb9

edit: it is not self promotion. I got nothing to sell this sharing is opensource and anonymous.

In this sci-fi/fantasy scenario, there is a very huge ship--enough to fit the population of Tokyo at most. It's either damaged from a war or retired from service. Whatever its origin, it has become grounded and stationed into a city. Now there are problems turning a ship into a city. For one, narrow corridors would make good sidewalks but awful roads. Standard crew quarters would have to be enlarged into larger stores and markets. Many closed environments would have to be opened up. The purpose of the bridge, situated right at the front of the ship as it is air force rather than naval, would have to be reoriented. How can any of this be pulled off? What, ultimately, would a city that was originally a ship look like that would differ from a city that was originally a city?

So in a setting I've been making, I was initially going to use Alcuberrie drives in an attempt to at least have it be "aldente scifi," at least where human technology was concerned. But further reading basically said that the math doesn't math out for that in terms of actually using them. So I looked into other options. I saw Krasnikov Tubes and they are cool; I included them as Earth's first attempt at interstellar travel, but they introduce some weirdness to the setting that idk if I can or want to deal with. I never liked straight hyperdrives, but I did get an interesting idea.

What about a bubble around the ship, in which time is accelerated? Say you want to travel to Alpha Centauri, 4.2 light years away. If you can accelerate to a huge fraction of the speed of light, say 0.9999c, that trip will still take you about 4-and-a-bit years. But what if you could experience those 4-and-a-bit years at twice the speed, like reverse time dilation? An outside observer sees you make the trip in 2 years, but your ship still experiences the full 4 years.

"Isn't that still faster than light travel?" you ask. I say no, not any more than seeing the dot of a laser pointer moving from the moon to the ground seemingly faster than the speed of light when someone flicks it. The ship is moving at relativistic speeds, yes, but not super liminal. The field is being projected around it either at the speed of light or just slightly faster than the ship so it doesn't overtake it's own field. The bubble itself appears to move faster than light perhaps, but only because it is being propagated through a faster time-frame.

I tried searching for this and everything just linked back to the Alcuberrie drive, probably because of the word "bubble," even though I think this is very slightly technically different. Are there any examples of this kind of inverse time dilation, or am I just describing a warp drive in a roundabout way?

And yes, I know that there is no evidence in modern day for "reversed time dilation" and something like it would probably require negative mass density.

Hi, I wrote a speculative sci-fi short story about a civilization that survives the collapse of Mars, destabilizes Venus trying to survive, and ultimately chooses not to colonize Earth.

The story is more atmospheric/philosophical than action-focused. It deals with themes like deep time, planetary change, civilizational inertia, survival, and informational decay.

I’d especially appreciate feedback on:

- pacing/readability

- scientific plausibility

- prose/style

- whether the emotional arc lands

- sections that feel too dense or repetitive

It’s around 3.6k words, so a somewhat longer read.

Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N4TTMIl02RmueuLPF8s5-\_cT9IpgD0zsHyvcyqmnz\_M/edit?usp=drivesdk

Obviously there's more than one kind of apocalypse that could affect the internet in different ways, such as a nuclear war or a virus that leaves physical infrastructure intact.

So for the first kind of internet, after the nuclear war, let's assume that its only a handful of data centers or small servers connected to a other devices via a small handful of satellites and fiber optic cables that remained intact or were restored after the nuclear war? Basically just a lawless internet with limited browsing and slow speeds, but no one can stop you from creating your own website or whatever.

The second scenario one is pretty much exactly as we have it now, but there's less online presence, considering most people are dead, let's say somewhere in between 60-75%. So then influencing no longer has enough users to be profitable because they're busy with other roles. And because corporations aren't making money anymore, there's no ad slop, only local ads created by other users who are still alive and want to buy or sell stuff.

Let's assume that a few nuclear power plants are still operational and delivering all the necessary power. How would this online society behave?

Didn’t think I had to say this, but please ignore how nuclear power plants are operational. It could be hydroelectric or whatever, but something is generating continuous electricity and is irrelevant to this.

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So I was thinking about how a future war could play out, far in the future between two races that have developed FTL technology.

A lot of stories talk about FTL ships. It's a staple of sci-fi going back decades.

But have any stories talked about FTL weapons? Let's say there are two planets in a war where Planet A started a war with Planet B, 100 light years apart. Planet B then attaches an FTL drive to an asteroid, and directs it at Planet A. Even the smallest of asteroids moving at light speed would be cataclysmic to the planet, but the most interesting thing is that because it's moving at FTL speeds, the weapon could hit the planet before Planet A even started the war.

It's essentially a time traveling planet killer. Are there any stories that explore something like this?

Hi there! I'm going down a research rabbit hole and need some guidance.

I'm working on a story about a Mars mission 40 years into the future and there is a plot point where the characters go to see Phobos transiting the Sun for a partial solar eclipse. So now I'm trying to use Phobos' orbital path to determine where I should set up this fictional Mars base.

I used JPL's Orbit Viewer and found a good timeframe for the transit is July 5th 2066 from 11pm to 1am the following day (UTC time zone). Then I found this calculator and converted that time to what would be local time on Mars. The missing part is what regions of Mars are actually facing the sun at that point as the orbit viewer doesn't show the planet in a high enough resolution. I see a pale spot in the middle of the planet that would looks like an ice cap, but is closer to the equator than the poles, but that's my only hint.

I feel like I'm missing something obvious, either there's an easier tool I haven't found yet or I don't know enough to interpret the data I'm seeing. I don't think I need this part to be super accurate, but I'd like to be close.

Any further guidance would be appreciated. Also I'm in a remote area with limited internet, so I'd rather not have to download any kind of tool if I can help it. TIA!

Three-Four ships in orbit around a denser, more mass-having vessel which drives them primarily. In my head this orbit is either artificial with something tethering these ships and turning on this central rod-like vessel. It is 5 am for me, so understandably I may be incoherent.

Still, this central rod could be a massive engine, being the primary driving force and leaving more space for the society inside the three to four ships in orbit.

Orbit could also be artificial through tethers which rotate along the rod, pulling along the ships.

I briefly considered it being the source of artificial gravity, which could work but more likely each ship would have its own source. Possibly even all three able to pull on one another and orbit one another without this engine rod thing at the center.

I must sound insane. I am not a physics person and this may not be the most correct subreddit for this, but it IS for a sci-fi world I'm building. My passion for space is one thing but my understanding of physics is another. I understand the basics, of course, and I've looked into and researched things over the years. However, I'm no expert and find myself often a tad confused and feeling a wee bit stupid.

I'm asking if in hypotheticals this could work, given any amount of /something/ exists TO make it work and would it even be reasonable to make something like this beyond the aesthetics.

Overall my main goals are that each ship has artificial gravity or simply some way to generate enough gravity to have a great enough pull to simulate earth. I get that all things have gravity etc etc. anyways, that and I want the ships to be capable of linking up with one another for colony folk to exchange from one ship to another. These ships do not travel at light speed, and are meant to be generational ships, not cryosleep n such and so on. So they're essentially functioning societies. Or need to be. The ships can travel in bursts of speed but they are built to drift and move slower.. sort of bursts of speed to escape greater gravity pulls, certain scenarios and so on. These ships remain near one another. I'd say the reason theres three of them and not just one is to lessen the size and thus mass of each, making them a bit less of a hazard and to give a higher survival chance. Just because one ship goes down or fails doesn't mean the others will, thus ensuring again, more survivability...

Anyhow. Any help is appreciated, and I understand some of this may be impossible or sound plain stupid to those with better understanding regarding space travel and physics.

Hey everyone. I'm having a writing day. Currently 111 pages into my novel, but I'm racing through the plot and dialogue and leaving lots of (add further detail later) and (add name)) where the finer details have yet to come to me. So I imagine i'll be spending even longer on the editing.

I'm at that restless stage where I'm looking for distractions, so what better way to distract myself than to come onto reddit and ask what projects you're all working on?

My novel is about longevity medicine, its future impacts and the arguments for and against it. How about you?

OK, about time I get back to putting words on the page.

been building out a near-future setting where someone has an uncontrolled biological ability (think neurological, not magic), and during a severe episode they accidentally trigger a chain reaction that wipes out a few city blocks. person survives but is incapacitated. government steps in to coordinate cleanup under something like a Stafford Act-style emergency framework, and then tries to recover costs from the individual afterward. the legal wrinkle I keep bumping into is that the Stafford Act is really designed for public emergency assistance, not cost recovery from a private person. and yeah, asset seizure doesn't just happen automatically, it would realistically go through civil tort claims, insurance subrogation, or some kind of special statute with due process attached. instant forfeiture isn't really a thing without very specific legal authority. so the worldbuilding angle I'm leaning into is that this near-future setting has passed a dedicated liability and containment statute specifically, for people with dangerous biological conditions, basically carving out catastrophic medical events as their own liability category, separate from standard tort law. feels more legally grounded than just stretching existing disaster law to cover it, and it gives the, story room to explore what rights you actually have when your condition is classified as a public hazard. for anyone who's done legal worldbuilding in sci-fi, how do you handle the tension between a character, who is genuinely a victim of their own biology and a government that has to recoup massive damage? and does framing it as tort vs disaster law actually shift how readers sympathize with the character? curious whether the legal mechanism matters emotionally or if people just respond to the human situation regardless

Say you have a telepath that's currently having a seizure which (because of their powers) causes all civilians in a 50 meter radius of them to have the same seizure. Like Professor X in Logan.

Or someone's powers randomly activate somewhere mundane like school or church and they end up lasering a giant hole in the roof.

Or maybe the person doesn't have any powers and they have a stroke and the plane Thier piloting falls out of the sky

I am writing a story but I just hit a wall when I realised I have no idea what the legal aspects of living in world with supernatural people would look like.

I don't know if/how governments would police and/or classify a while demographic of people with various and wildly unpredictable non typical abilities. When a person's "super" strength can be anything from holding a bucket of water over their heads for hours without struggle to a guy who can bench press a fully loaded semi truck for 5 reps before passing out; then you consider outliers who can bench the semi for 6 or 7 reps.

I'm thinking classifying people a world with supernatural powers would be as difficult as classifying people by race; there'd be no reliable non-dna metric to use. For people with potentially dangerous abilities, how do you handle the risks associated with involuntary events such as medical emergencies? Whose at fault if the offender is as much a victim as everyone else?

And what's the difference between how the law treats/sees supers Vs non supers? Would it be similar to how it sees minors vs adults? The mentally insane Vs sound?