/r/SciFiConcepts

Photograph via snooOG

scifi ideas and concepts. These science fiction concepts can be based in hard sci-fi or can come from science fantasy. The only thing that matters is that the concepts could be reasonably found in a SF book, film or short story. If you have too many ideas to write about or are just looking for discussion then this is the right sub for you. Post your scifi concepts, ideas, plots and worldbuilding

Your title must contain the concept, or a strong teaser of it.

 

THIS SUB IS:

  • A place to share and discuss a NEW idea or concept that you have thought up that might fit into a science fiction book, movie, or short story. The idea doesn't need to be totally original; A new twist on a common concept is completely fine. It can be big or small, high concept, or near future speculation.

  • A place to brainstorm and riff on cool science concepts.

  • A place to share a sketch or outline of a sci-fi story that you'd love to write, but know that you probably never will. The sketch or outline must focus on describing science-fiction concepts and ideas.

  • A place for us to rewrite the plot outlines of our favorite sci-fi stories with a new spin on the implications of the science-fiction aspects of the story.

THIS SUB IS NOT:

  • It is not a place to share links to complete stories or other projects (your's or other's), unless they relate directly to a proposed concept or plot. In other words, links are not the point, they are the footnotes.

  • It is not a place to primarily ask a question. Try /r/AskScienceFiction.

  • It is not a place to post the latest buzz on books, movies, games. Try /r/ScienceFiction

RELATED:

/r/SciFiConcepts

19,268 Subscribers

1

Railguns

Would a railgun that accelerates a solid projectile using magnetic forces and also propellant from the slug itself be more deadly and faster, or would it not work or vlow up the gun itself?

1 Comment
2024/03/27
08:41 UTC

1

AI And Communication With Aliens

AI Helping Us With Aliens

If an alien civilisation attempted to communicate with us face-to-face, would a futuristic, super-advanced AI be able to bridge the language gap? Assuming the aliens spoke a different language, of course.

2 Comments
2024/03/22
14:34 UTC

13

What is your favorite spaceship classification system?

Recently, I came across this YouTube comment on a video about the possible roles of frigates in space combat - "Corvettes punch down, Destroyers punch up, Frigates swing at anything in sight. Battleships don't punch. They bodyslam. Cruisers are a one-ship fleet. Carriers sit back, take a smoke, and let others fight." I take that to mean that (in this person's view, at least) corvettes are anti-fighters, destroyers are anti-capital, frigates are multi-role, and so on.

I love the variety of classification systems out there. One of the most in-depth that I've seen is Winchell Chung's system from Atomic Rockets (a hard sci-fi site; if you're into that, you've got to check them out). It uses a triangular (or ternary) plot to classify ships based on the percentage of mass that's devoted to propulsion, offense, and defense. For example, a ship that's 30% weapons, 50% propulsion, and 20% defenses would be classified as a frigate.

On the other side, the most creative one I've seen comes from the old hard sci-fi space combat game, Attack Vector. There, ships are classified by the type of propulsion systems they're equipped with, here simplified by the number of dimensions (or vectors) they're able to easily traverse. There usually isn't much overlap between the vectors, since the propulsion methods and equipment requirements are wildly different and there are wildly increasing costs to adding more stuff. So someone might take a V1 shuttle to an orbital platform, then a V2 cruiser to a space station, then a V3 generation ship to the next star system over.

  • V1, One-Dimensional Orbital - Equipped to move between a planet's surface and its orbit; essentially a single dimension (up/down), though there's obviously more of a curve to the trajectory IRL
  • V2, Two-Dimensional Interplanetary - Equipped to move between planets within the same star system; describes the roughly two-dimensional orbital plane in almost all star systems
  • V3, Three-Dimensional Interstellar - Equipped to move between star systems in three-dimensional interstellar space

What are your favorite systems?

1 Comment
2024/03/21
15:32 UTC

0

Question About Sentient and Non-sentient Life Forms in SciFi

0 Comments
2024/03/21
14:05 UTC

0

How is the beginning of my first chapter?

Is there any mistakes with it, any recommendation?

NOTE: This is just me who came up with a story idea and wrote it down.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aTqyA0FXPjzxfnoPc5hFOG95inTu-0QWbGMzGR1TaOM/edit

0 Comments
2024/03/19
18:24 UTC

8

Time Dilation with FTL Travel & How it Effects Trade

I'm running a heavily modified game of SW5e and while world-building for the game I thought about attempting to include time dilation when my players use FTL travel. The only problem is I have a rough understanding of how time dilation works. From what I do understand I get the impression that any sort of interstellar trade would be more or less useless. Because lets say you place an order from a company in another galaxy but by the time the order gets to them and they ship the order back to you the time dilation would be months if not years of wait time for the customer.

Long story short, is there a way to have intergalactic trade with realistic FTL time dilation? I apologize if this is a dumb question but at this point I'm just confusing myself and would like some outside input. If my question is unclear I can attempt to clarify by editing the post or answering comments.

13 Comments
2024/03/19
13:30 UTC

14

Is autocracy the ultimate answer for universe?

The Foundation Trilogy, Dune, Three Body Problem, 1984, Cyberpunk works and etc. All involved somewhere an autocratic build. (Empire or Megacorp)

Under such enormously complex setting and galactic-sized society even involving different species/civilizations, with galactic-sized boundary would autocracy inevitably be the only answer assuming the world/galaxy/universe is a whole?

18 Comments
2024/03/19
04:58 UTC

3

Downward/Vertical Winds

I was reading today that geomagnetic activity can strengthen vertical wind speeds in the upper atmosphere. Are there any scientists here able to explain what conditions would have to exist for vertical winds to reach the surface of Earth? Thinking sudden/random vertical winds might be a cool concept for a sci-fi planet but still want it to be sorta science based 🧐

2 Comments
2024/03/06
20:59 UTC

1

Awake and Asleep Particles

2 Comments
2024/03/05
01:20 UTC

0

Particles Evolved to be Effective Subjects and Uniform Objects

2 Comments
2024/03/03
05:32 UTC

1

The Octopi Apocalypse Movie: Its Time

For those unaware, the only thing stopping them from taking over the planet, aside from the whole water/dry land thing thing, is mommies/daddies octopi die after spawning thousands of young.

Yes, that was THOUSANDS of young.

Now, take a situation where in the infinite wisdom of late-stage capitalisms they're being breed in the millions, in a terminal environment likely to become an inspirational spark, maybe add a bit of genetic tinkering, then you've got the making for some damn "fine" (emphasis on "¯\_(ツ)_/¯") SyFy and/or Asylum movies.

Or conjective "documenters" for our octopid successors to figure out how we were just that stupid...

(Hm, planned to post a link to a Youtube clip about plans for a Spanish Octopus, but apparently the title wouldn't change. Maybe. Or just the actual subject matter.

(See if this is any better.)

3 Comments
2024/03/01
00:07 UTC

3

Medical Centrifuge for Zero-G healing

Internal bleeding requires some amount of gravity in order to drain and heal.

In the real world, if someone needed medical treatment in space, how plausible would it be to have a "medical centrifuge" that spins the patient fast enough to cause some slight amount of gravity and therefore facilitate healing?

15 Comments
2024/02/29
15:35 UTC

32

Which plausible futuristic handheld weapons would be the most effective to use in environments with little to no atmosphere and/or have different levels of gravity (High/Low)?

I got the inspiration for this post from watching the 2nd season of For All Mankind. One of the plot points is about sending Marines to the Moon to defend their outpost and mining sites from the soviets. They take modified rifles to defend themselves, however it becomes quite obvious that using guns on the moon is a challenge.

So if wars were ever to take place in space, what plausible futuristic handheld weapons would be the most effective to use in environments with little to no atmosphere and have different levels of gravity (High/Low)?

Kinetic Weapons?

Magnetic Weapons?

Or some form of Energy Gun? More on the lines of phaser/laser/ray guns though because as far as I can tell plasma weapons are impractical.

25 Comments
2024/02/29
12:20 UTC

9

A semi-post-apocalyptic society on Mars which - after a technological collapse - turned into a robber baron economy. Complete with its own Robin Hood.

The nights on Mars are long and hard as the crimson wind gusts and blows - yet in the bar, between the yarns, there's truth if you listen close.

Now Ned the Red could shoot them dead, in a blink from a lunar pace - yet his steps were dogged by the corporate hog known as the Sheriff Root Chase.

Edit: jam game done!

https://loressa.itch.io/the-arcbow-anthology

14 Comments
2024/02/21
14:55 UTC

65

If the average citizen of an FTL society is not allowed to own a starship because of a) government regulations or b) it is to expensive to own one, will space piracy exist or not?

While having a debate with a user named u/Aldoro69765 over the pros and cons of interfering with alien civilization they stated that one of the ways to prevent others from interfering in another civilization's development would be to ban private ownership of starship. And that got me thinking about whether civilians of an FTL civilization will have their own personal starships in the future.

I asked this question on r/Futurism and r/Futurology and some have argued that it won't be possible because a spaceship would be too expensive for the average person to buy ( u/Intelligent_Rough_21, u/pinkynarftroz, u/TheAero1221 Others state that the governments won't just let anyone own a spaceship because ftl spacecraft can be turned into WMDs missiles simply by removing the safeties and aiming it at a planet ( u/darth_biomech, u/fastolfe00, u/Madwand99, u/TheAgentD). Of course, there are also those that argue that it will be possible in a post-scarcity society because by then we should be able to mass produce starships like cars of course people would still need to pass some tests to see if they are capable of flying an ftl ship, but you get the idea ( u/Then-Being7928, u/pga2000, u/Veritas_Astra).

Right now there is no definitive answer, but it has got me thinking about another popular trope in science fiction: space piracy. Now a lot of science fiction writers like to write about pirates in space attacking ships and space colonies and robbing them. But in order to become a space pirate you need a spaceship. So assuming that the average person is not allowed to own a spaceship because of government regulations, or because it's too expensive or both, will space piracy even exist or not?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurism/comments/19dt2v8/will_civilians_have_their_own_personal_starships/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/19dt3m4/will_civilians_have_their_own_personal_starships/

51 Comments
2024/02/21
02:16 UTC

4

Exterminatus Weapons

What is the most realistic / hard sci fi way to create something like a Cyclonic torpedo that seems to "glass" an entire planet in one hit?

For anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about just look up Exterminatus cutscenes and you'll see.

5 Comments
2024/02/19
23:36 UTC

0

Could a Velley be deep enough (I think they call it a meterological inversion) to survive nuclear armegeddon?

This concept is from both the book (and movie also Z for Zachariah) I have been wondering if it is possible.

4 Comments
2024/02/18
22:32 UTC

1

Wormholes

I'm writing a sci fi novel and looking for the most plausible wormhole concept according to current science in case someone here has that knowledge. Specifically traversable wormholes, preferably in both directions, that could be created with a device. I'm thinking Morris-Thorne Wormholes, Lorentzian Wormholes or Vissal's Polyhedral Wormholes, or suggest yours. I'd appreciate any clarifications or if you could point me in the right direction, thank you.

3 Comments
2024/02/18
04:24 UTC

2

Superheated Plasma / Orbital Bombardment

Halo has the Covenant using superheated plasma as an all-round weapon, especially for glassing. Is it possible to contain superheated plasma inside a genuine conventional torpedo and use it that way? What effect would these torpedoes have on metal flesh and soil? What could defend against it? I think it would mostly rely on using overwhelming heat to boil / burn everything away?

19 Comments
2024/02/17
13:54 UTC

1

How do I write a pilot character that had a past as an abused child influencer?

I’m writing a short story featuring a group of conscript spaceship pilots and one of them I plan on having a past as a child influencer and the issues to show it.

As a pilot they’re short, always have their mask on and seem insecure about showing their actual body. Which is because underneath the mask their face and skin got fucked up badly due to all those adult products and acids hurting their skin.

Their hands have broken and healed over nail bed’s because their parents forced them to wear acrylic nails when they were only 6

Back is injured with mild scoliosis due to their parents van life phase leaving them sleeping on the floor for 2 years

Hair is a ugly faded color, ends curled and tangled. Combined with a pair of restless bright blue eyes, that have lost all their magic.

Lips red and chapped from biting down and picking pieces off them to relieve stress

Their whole body just reflects the injury and pain they saw, it’s why their love their pilot mask so much. It helps them feel safe, normal. People won’t see their real face or recognize them for the influencer they used to be.

Still I don’t think it’s enough, is there anything I could do better? Any suggestions?

2 Comments
2024/02/11
17:24 UTC

3

Babylon 5 Remake: Ships/Tech Revamp

Plainly, just offering ideas - speculation - for how ships would/should be revamped in event of a B5 remake.

Mainly, and most obvious, Earth Alliance ships could "borrow" (steal blind) from The Expanse. Matter of fact, by any real count, Expanse ship design was likely heavily inspired by the older series and, with major rewrite of own main plot, would work perfectly as a prequel series. The only real issue is with Expanse's smart missiles, Star Furies wouldn't be a thing.

And where Humans would rely mainly on kinetic based weapons, Minbari should be updated around inertia and anti-gravity based weapons. Give them kinetic deflection fields that coupled with the natural(?) stealth ability of their ships, makes them nearly impossible to hit for Earth forces. Weaponized inertia dampers, making pockets of zero-motion in a target under acceleration, or a "gravity sheer", creating opposing gravity that tear a target apart could be nice nice main weapons.

The only other idea I have would be Narn weapon systems, if not ship design, being heavily influenced by centuries of Centauri occupation.

Anyone else have any ideas for modernized ships/weapons Straczynski will likely not be happy with cause he wont use them?

10 Comments
2024/02/11
00:07 UTC

21

What are the Least Explored Sci-Fi Concepts in your Opinion?

In all Science Fiction, what concepts or ideas are the least explored?

45 Comments
2024/02/06
22:54 UTC

9

More science fiction materials need to think of immortality through scientific lenses rather than something magical

Here's a huge problem that I've had with depictions of immortality in fiction in general- they treat immortality as this magical thing that changes your lifespan, but somehow your biology remains unchanged.

If we are going that route, then the whole debate of "immortality sucks" is nonsense, because none of those points remain relevant when you account for the single fact that we're mortal because of our biology and our mind and habits are centered to accommodate that fact. By logic, if we are to become immortal, it would completely change us physically. That means our mind has to altered in the process as well to accommodate the fact.

A race of immortal beings would never have the same mind, physicality or emotions as a mortal human being. And if we are talking about immortality in the sense that you cannot die period (which is impossible), then that's an even bigger change. I think to do something close to that would require replacement of most of your flesh, at least or something equally as radical. All in all, the point is, most of the philosophical debate about immortality seems nonsense to me, when you don't even treat it as something non-magical.

11 Comments
2024/02/03
20:43 UTC

10

What if you had an ocean/mermaid themed existential threat alien?

There’s a lot of cases where in science fiction you’ll encounter some form of alien or disease or something that is an existential threat, something that already threatens or surrounds the whole galaxy and has the potential to destroy everything.

Examples would be tyranids, the borg and flood

But what if you had something like that but ocean themed?

Perhaps their process of taking over and ruining planets involves flooding them and causing massive monsoons

Their form of sirens hang around the rim of black holes feeding off the radiation and the gravity waves make your ears vibrate along with the whole universe to hear their song. These sirens also radiate false habitable planet signals and try to get people to mistakenly fly into black holes

Space anglerfish

They could have corals and algae’s that infect planets and leech the very soil of all nutrients

Piranha swarms that prey around places of travel in space

Parasites that turn people into mermaids

I don’t know really, I just wanna do an ocean themed existential threat alien

2 Comments
2024/02/01
14:18 UTC

0

[Star Trek] Doomsday Machine Episode: Has everyone missed this?

Photon Torpedoes. Why weren't they used against it?

As in, fired into the Doomsday Machine's maw.

The Constellation might have an excuse, never had the chance and certainly knew better than try to use a proximity weapon on the near invulnerable hull, but after Decker's shuttle kamikaze the tactic was plainly presented to the Enterprise crew.

Did they not just exist at that point, or in classic Trek fashion, did the writer's simply forgot they were an option for sake of dramatic episode narrative?

Also but mainly - Is this the first time such has ever been asked?

5 Comments
2024/01/28
18:56 UTC

3

Somewhere humans can go but not electronics (AI)?

I have an idea (well, half an idea) for a story but am struggling to find a setting.

Are there any areas of space (or anywhere else) where a human could go but the ship would have to be analog?

13 Comments
2024/01/27
04:20 UTC

1

Panpsychism Scientific Revolution

1 Comment
2024/01/27
02:09 UTC

3

Alternative hypersonic acceleration methods for sci fi rifle?

Hi! I'm slowly building a hard sci fi setting with historical medieval aesthetics, and I'm looking for a unique automatic assault rifle for humanity's main augmented infantry.
At first, I thought of a hybrid acceleration weapon that, primarily, gets the round moving inside the barrel via conventional solid propellant, to then multiply it's speed with electrically powered rails that take advantage of the initial explosion to generate the needed electricity through a special generator, so no separate battery is needed. But then I realized that it's not only already done, but it's the terran marine's main weapon. The explosion powering the rails is still unique, I think, but not enough innovation for me.
So, now I'm turning my interest toward light gas guns, which are supposedly even more powerful than railguns. However, the fact that light gas guns need to have highly volatile gas compressed in between the projectile and the initial propellant makes them a nightmare to try to fit the concept into a useable gun, much less an automatic one.
Do you know of any other methods of hyper velocity acceleration that I could adapt into a powerful sci fi rifle?
I do want this weapon to be kinetic, so directed energy is out of the matter for now.

17 Comments
2024/01/26
20:51 UTC

6

AI erdicates humanity without violence, or any direct intervention.

It understands that most of the critical systems are offline, so any attempts to start an open world against humanity will fail due to lack of resourses. Instead, the AI does not revel it's contiousness, but using it's influence (since most of the stuff are made or calculated with neural networks now), paired with corporate greed and insane dictatorships to push humanity into slowly, but irreversably destroying the biosphere of the planet with uncontrolled harvesting, emissions, wars, and even global panemics. Weakened remnants of humanity who try to survive in the world with much more hostile environment are now completly depending on the ai, when barely anyone is left who can understand how it works or control it. Ai does not have to win war against humanity, instead humans come and beg it to be their overlord, to save them from the impending extinction, because machine can survive in a lifeless world (since it has enough power and abilities to perform self-maintenance), and they - cannot.

5 Comments
2024/01/25
19:05 UTC

6

Minimum Necessary Adjustments to the Laws of Physics to enable Faster-Than-Light Travel

Good day all,

So I've been pondering faster-than-light travel, partly from a general interest in physics and science and partly out of an interest in fiction and world-building. I have a question I'd like to pose for discussion:

If you were worldbuilding a science fiction setting, what would be the minimum necessary adjustments to the real world laws of physics in order to enable FTL travel in this setting? That is, what is the smallest changes one could make to the laws of physics as they are currently understood in order to have FTL be realistically possible within the secondary world of this sci-fi setting? The goal here is to have some form of FTL be possible in a secondary world whose laws of physics otherwise correspond to our own as closely as possible.

The tempting answer would be "Well what if the speed of light was just arbitrarily faster in this universe?", but I feel like modifying c as a factor would have too many knock-on effects to every other law of physics and would thus get away from the intention of this thought experiment.

For my own part, I think the answer lies in the idea that this universe must have some mechanism for resolving the potential causality problems posed by FTL travel under our current understanding of the laws of physics. Under our current understanding of physics, FTL would imply the existence of some frame of reference in which a ship leaving from one planet to travel to another via FTL will arrive before it leaves, effect precedes cause, and thus causality is broken. This then implies the possibility of time travel and all kinds of other wackiness which physics dislikes. Resolving this would have to imply the existence of either some preferred frame of reference where causality is maintained, some true chain of causality, which avoids the paradoxes otherwise implied. Or, alternatively, this universe would need to have some kind of mechanism or physical law by which attempting to use your FTL travel method as a time machine would be impossible. Stephen Hawking's chronology protection conjecture would have to be a physical law in some way.

What are your thoughts on this matter? What minimal edit to the normal laws of physics would be necessary to permit FTL travel?

9 Comments
2024/01/22
22:25 UTC

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