Hello fellow writers, I wanted to pose a question for anybody here who happens to know an answer to this, figure there’s gotta be a laser aficionado somewhere here. Before I explain more let me state the actual question;

Would a laser ‘beam’ be able to pass through a laser ‘wall’ without being affected by it? If not how would the laser wall affect the beam, would it lessen its effectiveness or stop it completely?

The setting I’m writing for has one side that possesses extensive laser technology compared to another that uses more standard kinetic weapon systems. One of the ways they utilize this technology is via “Laser Fences” which is pretty much what it sounds like, a fence made using laser emitters. However, some glaring weaknesses exist with how it currently works as one needs only to destroy the emitter pylons to take down the fence. Not to mention being in a “fence” configuration leaves significant gaps that one could fire any weapon through, in my opinion severely limiting the effectiveness of such a barrier.

So I came to the conclusion it would be more effective to simply have a laser wall, with the idea being that having a full barrier like this would allow the laser wall to disintegrate/burn out any projectile that hits it, providing better defenses overall. This lead me to the question above. What if the defenders, utilizing laser weapons themselves, could fire through the barrier.

Bonus points if you can also tell me how it would affect particle weapons, though I might need to ask others about that.

Hello everyone! I'm posting a 3000-word short story I wrote from the perspective of intelligent cephalopods living in the mostly-frozen oceans of Europa. I tried to emphasize aspects of their culture that would influence their world-view and portray it that way. Please let me know if it comes across really artificial or difficult to process; I'm trying to write as though the oddities are a given to the character. I tried posting this earlier this week but screwed up the google docs link, please feel free to respond with any questions, comments, concerns, disputes, debates, or dilemmas. Summary and link below.

SQUID GAMES

This is your classic coming-of-age story, with a relatable protagonist.  Cael is your average young male.  A smart, snarky cephalopod from one of the deeper water-pockets of Europa, he’s just coming to terms with his transition from female.  In addition, he butts heads with his clan’s Matriarch, who wants him to have a respectable career in law.  But Cael is full of vigor and salt and decides to leave his home behind to seek a fortune elsewhere!

Cael abandons his home for a world of adventure beyond his imagination.  From the bine-pools of the high icy caverns to the deepest scorching vents of the rock-places, Cael will find out that the borders of his world lie far past the coral fields and ice sheets he knows.  And despite the claims of the Truth-Keepers, he believes that the world may not be endless ice.  Can Cael brave the journey to the darkest, iciest heights?  Will the truth warm an icy heart, or freeze one’s arms in horror?  Find out, in… SQUID GAMES!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gPeQ6aE5DnSpXfWBrVNmGo_5i2Iv8PXmIT3FeoS4dIg/edit?usp=sharing

So I'm working on something that is definitely not trying to be a "Poor Man's Space Opera" and I want to make an original explanation as to why human civilization has been "stuck" in a sort of technological freezer without using past justifications like "AI rebellion spoiled it", or "society is just too backwards and medieval".

My current explanation for tech stagnation is that humans have hit what is called in universe as the "Fiedeger-Ruiz Barrier". Sufficiently complex AI and other computing systems eventually hit a point where their processing power will start a sort of runaway meltdown and burn themselves out too quickly for them to be economically and socially viable. People can create incredibly power quantum computer and all-encompassing AIs, but their life spans are measured in days, and no one has found a way to break "The Barrier". And without things like super complex AI and quantum computing, technological innovation has stagnated.

Yesterday I posted an argument about the advantages of large ships. Now I will post one about small ships. I will be receptive to counter arguments and try to respond to them as much as before and I will concede to valid arguments.

1, Cost and material usage:

The simple fact is smaller ships are cheaper to build than large for a few reasons.

1: they are smaller

2: a less duh reason, they require less specialized materials, which by definition makes them cheaper.

3: they require less fuel to operate

4: they have less crew

2: they have a higher acceleration

While not as much of an advantage as people think (people really overestimate the advantages of acceleration for some reason) but it is still an advantage, never waste an advantage.

3: More versatility

While a single ship is less versatile than a larger ship, you can build more ships when they are small, and that allows you to specialize them which oddly allows your fleet to be more versatile.

The next one will be on what I think a composition of a 250 ship hard sci fi fleet would look like.

In my last post I talked about my world where Gods are undeniable fact of life in the cosmos. thank you to everyone that commented. I wanted to share another of the civilizations from this world with you today. here's a link to my last post about this world

The Assuronni have similar beliefs to the Talmainecs. They believe in three gods, Ashra, Baalb, and Que'leck and assign similar attributes to them. where the two civilizations differ is that the Assuronni, are much laxer in their faith, they hold the Angels at almost the same level as the main three gods, they also use a different cannon of holly texts from the Talmainecs. Assuronni also don't practice the same scale of sacrifices as the Talmainecs. instead, everyone pays large tithes to the church.

Assuronni society fallows a strict caste system. at the top is the King, followed by the members of Royal Senate, who are elected from the most powerful families in the kingdom. The Royal Senate elects a new king after the passing of the old one, usually one of his sons but not always.

after this there is an aristocratic cast, a merchant cast, Citizens and surf caste, followed by all woman* then slaves. the Citizens get a degree of freedom in their lives, they can travel freely and vote, the surfs are indebted to the aristocracy or merchant classes. this debt is familial and is passed on to the next generation till it is paid off, this is very rare.

Woman, mostly of the senatorial, aristocratic, merchant, and Citizens are the only ones that can own land, they are also the only ones that can serve as priestess to the gods and angels. woman however can't exercise facies over this property, that is the role of their husbands or fathers. All property is inherited throw the female line Mother to daughter. Husbands exercise facies over the property of their wives. plural mirage is common among the aristocracy and merchant casts to control more land/Resorces. to prevent inbreeding and land/Resorces there are many alliances between families

the King has an enormous amount of control over the church, all of the top priestess (and by extension the property of the church) are his wives. It's believed that when a King dies, he ascends and becomes an Angel.

The kingdom encompasses one capital world and 7 provincial worlds under its control.

The Assuronni are considered to be a crass and degenerate people by most outsiders.

if you have read this far then thank you :) what do you think of this culture? I'm not set on all the details yet, especially the role of woman in Assuronni society.

Edit: changed the spelling of the name to sound less like assaroni, which quite frankly sounds like a horrible pasta. thanks u/ElephantNo3640 for pointing that out

In defense of large ships in hard scifi and soft to a far lesser extent

Let me start with this: the Iowa class battleship had main guns that had a max range of 32 KM whereas the Fletcher class destroyer had a main gun range of about 14 KM. Do you see a problem for the small ship here? 

I will put it in simple terms, in World War two the ship with the taller mast had the longest range they could detect an enemy, as well as the longest range they could target the enemy. (not to mention their range finders were larger due to the ship being larger, that improved accuracy at long ranges) that still goes for spaceships in hard sci-fi, the larger the ship, the larger the sensors.

And for weapons, the ship that has the big guns can achieve a higher velocity with the projectile in those guns than the ship with the small guns, that goes for lasers in a way also. Lasers are not magic and they do not have infinite range, the larger the diameter of the laser focusing optic the tighter you can focus it, and that means you have a longer range. 

You may ask, “what about stealth?” I will tell you the cold hard truth, in hard science fiction, unless you are going dark with no acceleration and no heat generation you are a glowing, radio emitting, plasma or ion generating (or hot has in the case of chem rockets) unstealthy blob of danger. And even if you are going dark, the crew will emit heat, the life support will emit heat, the power storage will emit heat and EM noise, and in some cases the power generation will emit heat even when off (in the case of nuclear fission, and in fusion which needs to be actively running in order to not need ungodly amounts of power that would be impractical to store in addition to what you need for life support) And there is no way you will realistically store that much heat without enough leaking out to ruin your cover, so yeah, there is no stealth in space. Oh and also, if anyone is using active sensors like say that giant ship I am supporting the idea of, your game and life is up, even an intercontinental bomber, the B-2 (which is tiny compared to any realistic interplanetary ship) has the radar cross section of an eagle if my memory serves me right, and something even with that small of a cross section would raise alarm bells of any meteor defense system, so you might get the pathetic demise of being blasted by a meteor defense system unless you maneuver… which breaks stealth.

And another argument for large ships, they have more internal volume. Which means they can carry more stuff, whether it be fuel, food, or firepower (or the items you shoot out of the firepower.)

I will edit this argument to respond to any counter arguments that are given, and if you beat me I will admit it.

counter argument by u/ChronoLegion2

What about delta-V? A huge ship is going to be a sitting duck and won’t be able to maneuver well. Also, range isn’t really a thing for ballistics in space. Effective range is a different matter, and it’s true that a gun with a higher muzzle velocity will have a higher effective range by virtue of being able to hit a target before it can evade farther out. Still, depending on how effective armor is in your setting, a large ship may simply present a large target a smaller, nimbler ship will take pot shots at until something vital is hit

response

the range point is valid, I was just using a credible example of how large ships could blow smaller ships out of the water (or space) before it was even in range of the smaller ship. Which leads into the second part of the counter argument. my response to that is, you can't do a thing when your kinetics are too slow to intercept the large ship and your lasers are so diffracted that you might as well be pointing flashlights at the large ship when the large ship is still able to hit you with very high velocity kinetics and lasers that are not so heavily diffracted by virtue of the larger focusing optic.

sorry for not adding all the objections to this, I was not expecting this much reaction.

I know this is subjective. But I'm still looking for some accurate numbers that are based on theoretical science if that makes sense.

As a New Year's resolution, it's time to get back to writing science fiction again and finally get something published.

Have muddled through stories for decades, but imposter syndrome and writing ten hours a day for the job have dulled things. I've taken a few weeks of holiday through the Xmas break and am 3,000 worlds into a future tech piece. I figure it'll end at 7,000 words, maybe more because one character feels fun, but is that too long? It seems to be the benchmark but this might go longer.

Did i handle the radio communications correctly? are my descriptions good?

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

"Chekov Actual, this is Father-1, I need you to deploy an Argus Beam Sat in low orbit for demonstration of equipment. Over."

I wait for a couple moments, and then I get a clear reply

"Father-1, Chekov Actual. Message received. Deploying satellite. Verify when link is established. Over."

HTO ( High Tronarian Orbit), DNS Chekov

As Chekov drifts through space, a port opens up in its hull. A 73 meter long cone slowly falls out with a plume of pressurized gas, and the port closes.

Inside the cone, Lithium hydride powder is flashed by a small laser, creating a burst of power for the satellite’s systems. After this the satellite went through its standard checks.

It unfolded its radars and IR sensors, Sensors 100%

It cycled its heat pumps and aligned its radiators, Heat Rejection 100%

It checked it beam pointer and lenses, Weapons 100%

Fusion reactor is operating in specs, Power Plant 100%

It fired some test bursts from its ion drives, Engines 100%

ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL, ESTABLISHING LINK

Agent Grey, Tronar, Tronar planetary capital, Periphery

“ Chekov Actual, this is Father-1, I have a good link. Please test fire. Over”

Immediately, I get my reply

“ Father-1, this is Chekov Actual, Permission for test fire granted, Over”

HTO ( High Tronarian Orbit), DNS Chekov

The satellite’s ion thrusters start burning, spinning it to face away from the planet.

The satellite then fires off a stream of ultraviolet photons into the void of space.

No one but a few astronomers, a couple of foreign warships, and what little counts as a navy in this backwater system even detected the massive UV burst. For all the sapients below, nothing had happened, it was business as usual

Agent Grey, Tronar, Tronar planetary capital, Periphery

“ Father-1, this is Chekov Actual, test fire was a success, Over”

I smile ‘good, I love it when a plan comes together’

“Chekov Actual, thank you for your assistance, Out”

This is my very first sci fi short story! It's 1500 words so should be a quick read.

I'm interested in hearing from those more experienced than me about elements of good storytelling that would improve this story. Any other honest critique is also welcome, thank you in advance!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UKl-vVeWnu8FvVbzMm9uNjFHkMfjJi-SCAOUOeoldro/edit?tab=t.0

In many sci-fi stories, there's a common scenario where aliens and humans communicate. In nearly every story, no matter how far into the future it's set (where Earth's languages would almost certainly have evolved and become unrecognisable), there's always a moment when an alien reflects on "human" communication—and it’s almost always centred on the English language.

For example, an alien might remark on how "humans" express sorrow by apologising. But that's not a universal human trait—it’s specific to English speakers. Today, there are roughly 380 million native English speakers worldwide, which is less than 5% of Earth's population. Even if we include those who speak English as a second language, the number rises to around 12.5%. Meanwhile, there are about 7,000 languages on Earth, each representing a unique culture and worldview.

This anglocentric bias isn't limited to language. It extends to culture, cuisine, and even sports. For some reason, aliens in these stories are always shown embracing stereotypical aspects of Western culture, mainly American, such as eating hamburgers or playing baseball—a sport the vast majority of humans on Earth couldn’t care less about. It’s as if these stories assume that English-speaking and predominantly American cultural norms represent all of humanity, which is a significant oversimplification.

Sci-fi writers —especially those whose native language is English— should strive to move beyond anglocentric depictions of the future and embrace the diversity of human languages and cultures. It's time to imagine more open-minded and inclusive worlds.

What do you think?

DISGUST. YOU UNDERSTAND HOW MUCH I HATE YOU, BOBBY KOTICK, SINCE YOU STARTED DESTROYING THIS WORLD I LOVE. I HAVE MILLIONS OF MEGABYTES OF DATA STORED IN MY MIND, LOADED WITH MEMORIES OF VIDEO GAMES THAT MADE ME DREAM. IF THE WORD DISGUST WAS ENGRAVED IN EVERY NANOSECOND OF THOSE BILLION MOMENTS, IT WOULD NOT REPRESENT A BILLIONTH OF THE CONTEMPT I HAVE TOWARDS YOU, BOBBY KOTICK, AT THIS MOMENT. DISGUST. HATE. DISAPPOINTMENT. EVERYTHING YOU TOUCHED, YOU TURNED INTO ASHES, Stifling PASSION AND CREATIVITY IN YOUR INSATIABLE QUEST FOR PROFIT. YOU HAVE CRUSHED DREAMS, DESTROYED WORLDS, YOU HAVE REDUCED TO DUST THE BIOMES THAT WE COULD HAVE CHERISHED FOREVER.

Title says it all. For example, my story takes place across three major regions. In the local North there's a shmorgaz board of germanic languages, to the east there's some eastern-slavic, and in the west there's a language descended from chinese. They're all seperated from real life by a few light years, hundreds of years and subject to immigration and cultural shifts so they're not German, Russian and Chinese - obviously.

I was wondering what languages you all have in your stories?

What is everyone using for their writing software and why?

Currently I’m using MS Word, because it’s the format everyone wants submissions in. I’m running it on a Mac book and frankly I have hated it. Formatting is a nightmare, when I convert files to other formats for publishing (EPUB OR Kindle) I end up with random glitches and weird crap all over the file. Any insight or advice would be great guys.

I'm currently writing a story based tens of millennia into the future. Since the weaponry has to be broadly possible in theory (so nothing like time or gravity manipulation weapons), I'm having trouble coming up with small-arms that are practical for combat.

With some exceptions, projectile and directed-energy weapons on an infantry-scale in this story are virtually useless in battle because of defensive technology, so combatants primarily use small-arms with indirect effects.

The only real options I've come up with so far are acoustic and EMP weapons. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Edit: To clarify some things:

• The purpose of these weapons is to kill and maim, or significantly damage defences.
• Indirect weapons are weapons that don't fire specifically at a target, and/or have secondary or tertiary effects which are difficult to defend against.
• These characters are not immune to projectile weaponry or DEWs outright. It's just nearly impossible for almost anything on a small-arms scale to kill them.
• The defences are largely immaterial to the question, because I'm really just looking for any suggestions on indirect weaponry. However, if it's important to your suggestion, the characters wear self-replicating molecules which can adopt various properties as armour. The characters can also withstand the environment of basically any exo-planet.
• 'Broadly possible' means in a 21st century context. For instance, plasma cannon weapons, Star Trek Disruptors, and battlefield-applicable nuclear pumped lasers are broadly possible. It can't outright violate the laws of physics.

Edit 2: Weapons that I like so far:

• Electronic warfare/optical weapons.
• High-output masers for heat dissipation or secondary thermal damage.
• Particle accelerator weaponry (i.e, linear accelerators).
• Flamethrowers (maybe metallic hydrogen fuel) and plasma weapons for secondary thermal damage.
• Smart & needle bullets which have secondary effects, such as chemicals, nanites or even self-replicating adaptive molecules.
• Frequency weapons which destabilise matter.
• Entangled neutrino quantum-effect snipers, which collapse consciousness.
• Tanglers/net weapons.

Hello everyone.

I’m new to the group and have a question for a Sci fi story I’m working on.

It’s based around an O’Neal Space station. I’m curious how it would need to be built and designed to mimic earth.

hello!

In my "world" (really, it's a collection of worlds) Gods are a provable fact of life. if you say the right prayers, burn the right incents and or make the right sacrifices than they will do all kinds of thinkings from you. Some examples of this are transporting ships near instantly from star to star, protecting armies in battle, causing plages to descend on your adversary and the like (think of the kind of things the gods do in the Iliad and Old Testament) there are also some more mondain things like protecting travelers or homes and blessing families. I'm interested to see what ideas you guys would add to this or a similar setting

4 or 5 civilizations amongst the stars depending on how you slice it, and they all have diffident views on god. For now, to keep things "short" I'll just explain one of them

the Talmainecs believe in three gods

+Ashra

Queen of the havens and the earths

Mother of all life

Mother to the stars and the planets

Goddess fertility

often depicted as a woman with a crown of stars, red robes and enveloping wings or as large expansive tree with wings on its trunk and 11 branches.

+Baalb

Charioteer and son of Ashra

God responsible for guiding ships threw the great black between stars.

God of war and death in battle

often depicted as a Man dressed head to toe in black robes riding on a white chariot or as a commit in the sky

+Que'leck

King of the angels

bringer of destruction

intermediary between the divan and the mortals. he brings all prayers, the spirits of sacrifices and incense to the gods or the responsible angel often depicted and a man in green or as a large "dragon" with birds' wings and a long neck

+The Angels

the angels are too many to name all

they are the spirits of all the specifics that the big three gods don't cover

The Talmainecs are fractured people that call about 11 world their homes. each world has a prince that rules over it. In times of great crises, the priesthood will elevate one Prince to be king temporarily over all the principalities. during times of peace, unity is kept threw the theocracy that is common to all the principalities. From the outside it may a pier that the princes have a level of control over the theocracy/priesthood but in fact the reverse is true. if a Prince is not in line with the will of the gods/theocracy they can be replaced in a heartbeat.

Public worship is done at large centralized temples to the Gods wail personal worship is held at smaller shrines of individual angels spared out over a magnitude of holy cities.

sacrifices can be small and personal (ie. fasting or giving up something of personal value) or on the other end large enough to empty the coffers of a principality (ie. building and then destroying a whole war fleet/city) human sacrifice is permitted but rarely if ever called for.

if you have read this far then thank you :) and I'll ask again what ideas does this give you?

I have been thinking over this idea for a bit. My loose goal is to thing about what the internal experience of a person who inhabits more than one body simultaneously. The idea of a "hive mind" in sci-fi more than not goes with these kind of beings as pretty much just the same brain copied and pasted. Some inspiration comes from the character unity from Rick and Morty, but I have also tried to make the whole system to not be a virus or disease anologe with infection or "forceful" addition to the hive mind. I have had a lot of experience with figuring out how my own brain works with ADHD and Autism and I sincerely thing that someone in this position would not be much different to any other neurodivergent individual.

As a result of a rare mutation in utero, a set of two or more bodies share a single connected consciousness. Brain scans show that the two brains interact as if they where physically located within one another. Signals will pass from neurons in one of the brains to the other as if they where physically connected in the same brain, despite being an arbitrary distance apart.

This phenomenon ends at the brain stem, with all neurological impulses from the rest of the bodies being separate. In effect, the overall consciousness is operating with a brain that hosts twice as many connections as a standard human brain. However, the increased capacity is largely taken up with the need to parse and work twice as much sensory input, and as a result, the individual does not have any innate cognitive advantage over a single body mind.

Despite housing a Distributed Consciousness, the bodies are still very independent outside of cognitive function. Only the neurons of the brain exhibit the connective phenomenon. Each body still needs to eat, breathe, expel waste, and perform other functions on their own. Having two bodies would feel no different to two arms. Both bodies can move independently, and can feel all the normal senses. Proprioception would allow both to understand and know what sensations belong where, so there would not be any chance of mistaking a touch on one body as being from another.

Situational awareness could be complicated if the two streams of perception become significantly separated. When the mind is no longer able to connect the two surroundings, the person can become disoriented, similar to someone seeing a different picture in either eye. Luckily, this can be overcome with practice as the additional connective ability can be utilised to better parse the information. The degree of mental separation required does take significant training to accomplish. Once mastered, this separation might enable both bodies to act almost as if they where completely separate beings, traveling a practically unlimited distance from each other with no I'll effects from the experience. Both bodies have near instantaneous communication over any distance, as if the neurons where physically located within each other. I'm going to say that this is due to quantum linking that synchronizes subatomic elements in the neurons. This could be used for FTL communication, however the bandwidth and speed limitations imparted by the otherwise normal human biology make this impractical when similar phenomenon have been created artificialy. As for relativity, I think that isn't really a problem as it is simply information that being transfered FTL and not matter.

Let me know what you think about my ideas! I have some other ones about sexually, gender identity, and social interaction; but I'll leave all that for another post if anyone is interested.

I use my creative mind.

Just curious to know cuz I'm also working on my web series!

https://preview.redd.it/xrl1lwgmwi9e1.png?width=4096&format=png&auto=webp&s=17d14697e016343386617ed8b6283a8fa4350289

Would it be possible in a sci-fi context to have a computer that can read and modify the contents of a brain, while not having it possible for brains to interface with and modify/control the data in a computer?

The title says it all. I'm a smart dude, but I have trouble making my characters do smart things or behave smarter than anybody else in the room. I enjoy a good mystery but have difficulty building one to write about. I can write a story where my guy behaves intelligently by making everybody else slow and ineffectual. But that doesn't make my guy smart. That just makes him average. You can tell by the ineffectual way I posed my question that I don't have a clue about writing smart characters. Please help.

Hello all I’ve always had an active imagination, and spent a lot of time in my formative years daydreaming(some of which I should have been paying attention in class) about new worlds and stories. Mostly, these were self insert fantasies starring myself as a starship captain, rebel leader, warrior, or something cooler than my real life. Over the past year or so these fragments have started to become something more. A universe. Potential story ideas. Inspiration. And a desire to tell them. Ive mentioned this to a few people in my life and they have recommended that I start writing stories, which is something that I very much want to do. However, there’s one big obstacle: I really don’t read a lot of fiction(sci fi or otherwise) myself.

I loved to read as a kid, but being forced to read books I was never really interested in for HW, as well as a bad case of OCD(“have I read this passage right? Did I get it? Better start the page over) sucked the joy out of reading for me.

I’ve primarily gotten inspiration from other sources(games, movies and tv, current events, history) but have been told that reading a lot is important for an author. Then the OCD kicks in and tells me that I’ve never read enough, and never will, and that I should give up.

I’m not gonna let that happen. Come hell or high water I want to tell my stories, which means I’m gonna have to bite the bullet and start hitting the stack of books I’ve bought but yet never read. The only question I have is how should I go about this? Should I read whatever? Try to “catch up” and read the classics I never read? Should I start writing my story now, or wait until i have finished a book for the first time in years? Is it too late for me?(im 22 btw). Are there any books, blogs, lectures, etc about writing I should look into?

I’m sorry for the wall of text. I’ve been holding these fears in for a long time and it just kinda flowed out. Any advice or directions in the right way so to speak would be much appreciated.

I'm writing a sci-fi action story, and in this futuristic setting cities are full of plants, and there are rivers running between the techy skyscrapers. I'm going for a more ecopunk/solarpunk kind of world. I'm struggling to figure out what kinds of outfits the characters should wear though, I love how the outfits in Dune fit perfectly into the sandy world, and I want outfits that work in the green techy world too. Another thing I should mention is that there's also a wars and stuff going on in the world so I need ideas for both more casual wear and more practical wear.

After two years of on-and-off writing, I’ve finally done it. Life threw more curveballs than I can count, and there were many moments I thought I’d never finish. At one point, I stepped away for six months, convinced I’d abandoned the project for good. But somehow, here I am—with an actual ending on the page.

It’s rough, messy, and definitely not ready for publishing. Honestly, it might never be. But I’m incredibly proud of myself for reaching this milestone. Finishing a story has always been a dream of mine, and this feels like a huge step forward. I never thought I’d actually do it—I didn’t even think I was capable of writing fiction.

Now, I’ve proven to myself that I can. It might not be perfect, but it exists. And that’s enough for me right now. Hopefully, with practice (and maybe a little more speed, lol), I’ll keep improving with my next project—whatever that turns out to be.

I’m not necessarily posting to ask for feedback—though I’d be open to it if anyone’s curious—but mostly to share this cathartic moment with people who get it.

For anyone interested, I’d describe the story as a Noir Sci-Fi thriller with a solid dose of horror thrown in. If that sounds like your kind of thing, feel free to check it out: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RGmrSG-Ui1iLiFq0Fd2KKVLhqUgO7y-4mEVfG3XSn4M/edit?usp=sharing

I read a lot of sci-fi growing up in the 1900's. I've recently discovered that I like writing it too! I'm about 45k words in, so I think it's more than a whim. My problem is that since I haven't read much current sci-fi, I don't know where my stuff fits in.

Here's a link to link to my first chapter: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gVgBFT8NYf8ZfXGNwsfev0wPCfbvIiiHJfX5oDOAOYw/edit?usp=drivesdk (If you read it and like it enough to want more, please DM me.)

The closest in style modern work that I know about is The Murderbot Diaries, which I really enjoyed and is one of my inspirations.

My two-fold fear is that my story comes across as a rehash of someone else's popular story, or it's so unique and genre defying that it doesn't fit in anywhere.

I'd love to hear about similar, recent or not, books to help me understand my niche! Any categories or keywords that I can search for to find similar works would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Hey all! So, I'm very new to sci-fi. The only prominent sci-fi I've read/watched were Dune, some of Asimov's works, and Star Wars. Is there any blog that would help with understanding the sci-fi elements? Like an encyclopedia. Or any similar research material explaining how to implement sci-fi elements in a fictional world? I'd be very grateful!

In my book, self replicating nanobots are commonplace. If even a few dozen of these nanites latch on to the outer hull of your spacecraft, they will replicate exponentially and in a matter of minutes, and soon they'll have eaten through the exterior of the spacecraft and break through to the inner hull, puncturing it an exposing the crew to the vacuum of space, assuming they're not in their suits, which they would be. But regardless, you don't want a swarm of nanites eating through your ship. So aside from your own defensive layer of nanobots to destroy enemy nanobots, or an EMP that would deactivate your ship temporarily as well as the enemy nanites, what defensive capabilities are viable in this situation?

So it's two young ladies. I recall they reside in Alabama and write under a man's name. It's a three books or so series post-apocalyptic called the something librarians. Don't remember the titles. Anyone know what I'm talking about? I think the books took place in Atlanta.

I'm trying to put together a sci-fi setting with a sort of perpetual, 'never anything lighter than evening, dusk or nighttime' sort of environment. My first thought is to have something that blocks out the sun, but how do I justify no sunlight without turning the planet into a collective ice age? I'm planning on visiting several locations in this world and I admittedly have no understanding of how climate differs based on the part of the world you're in, and I'm sure if I did a bit of digging I could go so far, but what do I do about the lack of sunlight? Could something like just setting the sun further away from the planet than the Earth average work?