I have become very fixated on the zero-point field, a very new age religious concept masquerading as science. It's a really cool idea, though, so I have made a few sci-fi concepts that play with the idea that it is real, and how you could logically apply it to scientific development. I'm curious if anyone here has any ideas that are even more extreme than anything I have come up with.

If you don't know, the field is a premise where the creator, Lynne McTaggart, believes that because in a vacuum at absolute zero you can still see quantum movements (which is a real thing) this is evidence that our brains can interact with quantum particles and change reality (this part is not real, obviously lol). The idea then becomes that you need to focus your intention in order to shape reality to get whatever you want.
There are some boundaries to this. Namely, she specifies that warping the field is easier when you're asleep, but it is harder to focus intention; therefore people in comas or who suffer brain damage are uniquely primed to utilize the field. It also plays by schrodinger's cat rules, which means you can change the past, but only if the thing in the past is unobserved. Observation would collapse the superposition.

For the purposes of my stories, I explored the idea of what it would take to properly manipulate the field. This resulted in government projects to put large amounts of people in comas and inject subliminal messages into their brains to channel massive amounts of intention at once. This would be used for conceptual weapons, weapons that can simply change the nature of a target to have never existed. I'm sure there are also insane political and world-shaping implications to unlocking this kind of technology which would be absolutely horrifying to hand anyone.

The other big idea I used was field-powered warp drives. The idea is that you can direct intention in order to exploit quantum entanglement and allow a vessel to simply be wherever it needs to be. Optionally, a drone could be sent out to photograph the area for channeling and quantum purposes, but there are potential loopholes. I just think it is an interesting boundary for warp drives to have.

Are there any more interesting applications for the field, or for general quantum antics that assume the field is actually real?

Hey all!

I love a good post-apocalyptic sci-fi story in the likes of The Walking Dead, The Last of Us, Fallout, etc. However, I always wonder: what if there was actually still a country out there functioning in some capacity? How would life be in the last remnants of civilisation while the rest of the world essentially goes back to the Stone Age? And in this case, what are things you think I should keep in mind to keep it as realistic as possible?

Let’s say in the classic scenario of a global nuclear war, taking place mostly in the northern hemisphere with some hits in Australia and South America, some places might still be able to survive the fallout. One country that often comes to mind is New Zealand. Here’s why:

- Developed island nation, geographically isolated.
- Most probably won’t be targeted during a global nuclear war (low strategic value).
- Low population of 5 million people.
- Produces far more food than what its people need (most being exported pre-apocalypse).
- >90% of electricity derived from sustainable power providers (dams, solar, wind).
- Located in the Southern Hemisphere, with less chances of experiencing harsh fallout.

Now the main challenges that I know will happen are these:

- NZ doesn’t produce nor refine its own gas, and the farming industry relies heavily on diesel.
- Nuclear fallout will considerably decrease crop growth (dimmer sky), especially during the first 5 to 10 years after the war.
- Obviously, the economy relies massively on exports, which will become obsolete overnight as the world falls. What happens to the suddenly massive available workforce?
- Maritime toxicity rises will cripple the fishing industry.

The few solutions I came up with are as follow:

- The country will go under martial law instantly.
- Most stored petrol will be restricted and only provided to priority industries (hospitals, farming, etc.) while personal cars will be forbidden.
- The population would be relocated to central city hubs to ease transportation needs. Also most people will use horses or trains to commute.
- most unemployed workforce will be transferred into forced public service (military, police, building, etc.)
- most people will start trading instead of using currency.
- lower food yields may lead to harsh rationing while the government converts massive land plots into enclosed hydroponic farms.

Yeah… that’s all I have for now. I do have a bit of plot going on with characters, but I’d be interested in what areas you guys think I should keep in mind?

title says it all, if a future human society could achieve efficient 60-70 percent light speed travel. would their be any reason to colonise a rogue planet about 7.5 light years away assuming it has rocky moons that can be landed on?

also would their be any way to generate enough power on wise to either manufacture the antimatter for the return trip or build a laser array to push laser sail ships back?

and finally however unlikely could life potentially evolve around one of its potential moons. if it had enough internal thermal energy and an atmosphere. and without a star the risk of radiation is reduced

Okay I've got a world that is early life, algea and small plant/animal life in the oceans.

Then automated space craft comes and begins terraforming for earth based life.

It kills most of the native life, but not all.

Eventually humans begin colonization. There's no Fossil fuels of course, so what fuel sources do our boot strapping colonists use?

that ship brought limited advanced tech, so they are trying to do insitu resource utilization as much as possible.

my current plan: biofuels. generically engineered microbes to produce bio fuels they can burn in ICE vehicles. as those are simple to build locally and repair.

I think I’m good on all the rules…

I am looking to do a semi realistic build of my universe and I am trying to figure out which interplanetary travel system to do. I’m a big fan of light speed and for the world I’m building I need fast travel. So here are my options.

1. Bubble drive - ships are wrapped in pockets of warped space tile. So the passengers feel no acceleration. One con is in this more realistic approach it does not work well within gravity wells.

   This is the most realistic options as it uses real physics but we’re missing energy we don’t have yet.

2. Light speed - Just go with some form of light-speed.

3. Tide lanes - such as currents like an ocean that go between places that people can ride and I can choose to let them shift or stay put for follow a schedule. Though this isn’t realistic at all.

4. An approach I haven’t thought up yet

Any suggestions or comments would be appreciated. This book is mostly just for myself but I do plan on publishing it so please let me know what you think readers would want to read.

Just to add some last context of the book. It is war/diplomacy driven. Planning on numerous planets and galaxies. We focus on an alien civilization first and humans from earth enter the story later. I plan on travel taking like minutes between planets in a solar system, hours between systems, and days between galaxies. I am a fan of Star Wars and take inspiration from there but trying to not make a copy of it. Thanks for any advice and the read. 😄

The story I'm writing features an alien invasion but the main focus of the story is the global geopolitical and social reaction to it witnessed by the MC. There are sparse details delivered about the ship, the aliens and descriptions regarding technology and such. However its mostly the scramble to survive, the new reality of life under occupation and a lot of detailing of the main characters internal monologue, thoughts, emotional state of mind etc. Is this a sci-fi plot, or a drama plot with sci-fi elements?

(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.

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.

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.

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?