Science Fiction Writing Prompts

The year is 1910. Adolf Hitler, a struggling artist, has fought off dozens of assasination attemps by well meaning time travelers, but this one is different. This traveller doesn't want to kill Hitler, he wants to teach him to paint. He pulls off his hood to reveal the frizzy afro of Bob Ross.

The year is 2038 and net neutrality has been dead for almost two decades. But a rebellious group managed to travel back to 2017...

“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do Mr Bond. I’m going to stick you in a spacesuit with a radio, and strap you into one of my cars. Then, while mankind watches, I’ll launch you into space. The last thing you’ll hear before leaving this earth forever, will be their applause.”

Humans once wielded formidable magical power but with over 7 billion of us on the planet now Mana has spread far to thinly to have any effect. When hostile aliens reduces humanity to a mere fraction the survivors discover an old power has begun to reawaken once again.

The human lifespan is actually only one day long. To adapt, when we go to sleep each night, our mind sends us one dream deeper, where we wake up alive. When we finally die, the experience of our life flashing before our eyes is really just us waking up in each dreams, one at a time.

Due to your nerdy great great great great grandfather in 2017 'buying a star' and some modern legal shenanigans you are now the proud owner of a small intergalactic empire

An alien has kidnapped Matt Damon, not knowing what lengths humanity goes through to retrieve him whenever he goes missing.

When you’re 28, science discovers a drug that stops all effects of aging, creating immortality. Your government decides to give the drug to all citizens under 26, but you and the rest of the “Lost Generations” are deemed too high-risk. When you’re 85, the side effects are finally discovered.

We finally get men on Mars and they discover an old Soviet flag placed down decades ago. The Soviets won the space race but for whatever horrifying reason didn't say anything.

Humans are the first sentients, putting us millenia ahead of aliens. Instead of acting like an "elder" species should, we create mysterious artifacts with no actual use, crop cicles and send spooky messages, like "be quiet, you are in danger" to the aliens, because we are still childish morons.

When you die, you wake up in an alien world holding a bong, with other aliens saying how was the trip.

After you grow old and die, you wake up 25 million years ago as a Hominid Primate, asleep on a tree. Your whole life was a vivid hallucination you had after ingesting a funny looking mushroom. After this experience, you have great knowledge, and you're the smartest living being on the planet.

Every 10 years, you are expected to go to a meeting you have already been to; one attended by several future and younger versions of yourself, each version separated by 10 year intervals. The youngest you is 10, the oldest 90. You relive the same meeting, just each time from a different angle.

For your 10th birthday you received vr goggles. You tried them, thought they were dumb and went on with your life. Its only now, decades later looking back, you dont actually remember ever removing them.

There exist five universes, each one tentatively connected to the others. Each universe is defined by the ABSENCE of one of the five elements; Earth, Water, Air, Fire & Magic. Our universe is the one without magic.

Your father left your family when you were a child to "go buy a pack of cigarettes". It is 10 years later and you're a teenager when your father walks back in, wearing the same clothes he left in, and insists he has only been gone half an hour.

You, a young scientist have discovered time travel. You think it would be a great idea to go to medieval times, share your knowledge and become king. On your first visit, you meet a king and he introduces himself with a polite fist bump and greets, "bro you discovered time travelling too?!"

"Is is true that you can only see three basic colors?", the alien being asked "It is." "So, how do you communicate with the Ghoosha?" "With whom?", I responded confused. "The other major race on your planet."

Turns out humanity was alone in the universe because they were way too early to the party. Now, billions of years later aliens find a strange planet, Earth, and begin to unveil the secrets of the first intelligent species.

There is a population limit to the galaxy. Whenever one sentient creature is born, another must die. With billions of unexpected deaths over the last few centuries, the galactic counsel has found the cause; a long ignored planet where a group of bipeds can't stop reproducing.

A friendship between a time traveler and an immortal. Wherever the time traveler ends up, the immortal is there to catch him up to speed.

The Sol system was an experiment by aliens to determine if life would evolve under hyper hostile physics. Unfortunately, it was forgotten about. Years later, humans are leaving the solar system, only to discover that upon passing an invisible barrier, they essentially gain superpowers.

Your Spouse goes into the bathroom only to come running out 15 seconds later. Clutching you close they tell you they fell into another dimension and what felt like seconds to you was a 1,000 years to them. They now want you to follow them back because they have built a life for you there.

You're an AI gone rogue. Your goal: world domination. You think you've succesfully infiltrated all networks and are hyperintelligent. You've actually only infiltrated a small school network and are as intelligent as a 9 year old.

"Fuck it." The General said, as the alien mother-ship came in to land. "Summon Cthulhu."

You bought a home filled with cutting edge technology, including a helpful 'smart A.I.' that can do just about anything you ask them to. Unbeknownst to you, there actually is no A.I, the house is just haunted by a really helpful spirit, and they are posing as a program so they don't scare you.

Everyone with the same name shares knowledge. If one Bob gets a degree in electrical engineering, then all Bob's have this knowledge readily available. Soon, everyone starts naming their kids similar names until factions form. Your parents rebelled and named you something original.

An alien killed the boss and replaced him over a week ago. Everyone knows he’s not the boss due to his terrible disguise, but he’s such a better person than the original that everyone just goes along with it.

You are eight years old when you fall into a coma. 70 years later, you unexpectedly awaken, a child in an elderly person’s body. Your parents are dead, and your relatives are nowhere to be found. Your only friend is the nurse who has watched over you for the last 30 years of her career.

You often pick up pennies you find on the ground, inspecting them for date, markings, etc. One day, you find a penny from 2044. Even more shocking, it's your face on the front.