Science Fiction Writing Prompts

Search thousands of the most popular writing prompts from Reddit, and write a story from any of them with AI.

"Captain... the human didn't put on it's anti-warp gear before we jumped." "Sad to hear, prepare the coffin and jettison it." "No, sir. The human... nothing's happened to it. It didn't go insane from seeing infinity in the stars."

10,499 upvotes438 comments

Theoretically, you can not surpass the speed of light. Humans find out why when we manage to break this rule, as our ships begin to outpace the rendering speed of the universe, and the illusion of all reality is broken as everything around us vanishes the faster we go.

10,493 upvotes115 comments

The reason earth never made alien contact is because earth is in a natural reservation inside a non transit area inside a neutral zone between two warring empires in a relatively boring part of the galaxy.

10,474 upvotes264 comments

Ever since turning 17 you've been hearing a voice saying "Get out of my head". After having had enough, you get an MRI scan revealing what the doctors think is a tumor and they want to remove it. Then you realize, that's you. You're a parasite.

10,469 upvotes156 comments

Humanity split into subspecies: Alters, who alter their genes, Augmented, who augment flesh with machines, and Ascended, who uploaded their consciousness. After centuries of coexistence, the tenuous peace between the ideologies is threatened.

10,460 upvotes334 comments

You've been convicted of 1st degree murder, and (as is customary in society) are sentenced to "death by black-hole." You expect death as your capsule approaches the event horizon. After crossing, everything goes silent, until you hear someone say "Sir, I've found another one."

10,457 upvotes444 comments

After working hard your whole life you’ve finally done it: You have a stable job that’s rewarding, a wonderful wife, two young children, and you just bought your first home... You awake. “Thanks for grinding out those beginning levels for me.” The stranger says. “Your money’s in the bank.”

10,446 upvotes129 comments

You're a dude with no friends who gets his hands on a cloning machine. You create an exact replica of you, he looks the same, acts the same, and you're forced into living with him. You realise why you have no friends after having to live with yourself for a week.

10,432 upvotes161 comments

NASA employee: oh hey you guys are back early. Astronaut: Moon's haunted. NASA employee: what? Astronaut: *loads pistol and gets back on rocketship* Moon's haunted.

10,432 upvotes222 comments

You're walking to work, then suddenly a person in a white suit appears and says "Uh yeah I've accidentally permanently stopped time and it'll take me 2 months to fix it, but somehow you're not frozen in time. But hey, whatever object you touch should still work, so uh good luck and have fun."

10,417 upvotes191 comments

While jogging through the park, you find a small token on the ground with 'F12' etched on the front. When you give it a small squeeze, words and numbers appear in your view. You have found the developer token for this reality, allowing you to view the source code and statistics of everything.

10,410 upvotes125 comments

A day before the Earth is destroyed by a collision with a rouge planet, time freezes. You, a completely normal person are untouched and cannot die. Text on your arm appears that reads, "however long it takes, save us".

10,409 upvotes3,029 comments

You woke up in a bathtub full of ice with fresh stitches on your back and abdomen. The emergency room reveals that several organs are missing, replaced with something unknown. They want to cut you open, but you're feeling awesome, stronger and healthier than you've ever felt in your life.

10,398 upvotes141 comments

Elon Musk has finally landed on Mars, and he has decided to claim it as his own. This prompts a declaration of war from the UN. Though the rest of Earth can't land on Mars yet, they can still throw things at it

10,390 upvotes203 comments

You've just discovered the reason behind aliens abducting humans. Turns out they were after impartial jurors for the intergalactic court.

10,383 upvotes125 comments

You're a time traveler sent back to warn people about the future, but to avoid creating mass panic you must inform the public subtley. Recently you've finished your magnum opus: The Simpsons

10,383 upvotes63 comments

Time travelers have become such a nuisance that governments have begun recording fake historical events that lead time travelers to areas where they can be arrested. You're a bartender at one of these artificial towns, trying to determine if the customer in front of you is from the future.

10,374 upvotes174 comments

A global arms race gets out of control and every country's only option for survival is walling themselves off with impenetrable defensive technology. Millions of years pass before a catastrophic event brings down all the walls, revealing how humans evolved in isolation.

10,368 upvotes133 comments

100 years from now, The Pokemon Company takes their creation to the next level. They open their first genetically-engineered pokemon park.

10,360 upvotes186 comments

You are a magically immortal being who snuck onboard a generation ship to travel beyond the solar system. It's been a couple hundred years, and it's getting difficult to conceal your immortality from the crew.

10,358 upvotes267 comments

You're abducted by aliens & soon realize it's more of an adoption than an abduction. You're now a pet for a loving alien family. They can't understand you but they seem to understand your body language & have basic knowledge of what humans need to live and entertain themselves when they're busy

10,332 upvotes240 comments

Humans left Earth long ago, and Dolphins have just achieved underwater technology comparable to the 20th Century. They build water suits allowing them to travel overland. They are just discovering the remnants of ‘the land walkers’. You, a young dolphin, discover a mysterious island. Manhattan.

10,332 upvotes168 comments

You are a SpaceX astronaut on Mars. The earth as you knew it was lost to a nuclear war between NATO and China/Russia. Luckily your mission was to construct the colony and you have enough supplies to survive indefinitely. It’s been 25 years since loss of contact. You hear a knock on the door.

10,328 upvotes465 comments

With total war as a concept alien to the rest of our galaxy, All saw humans as negotiators and peacemakers, soft and weak. Today is the day when the galaxy discovers why being so good at finding ways to avoid war was a survival mechanism.

10,297 upvotes642 comments

You have undergone experimental surgery to be one of the first soldiers equipped with a first person shooter-like HUD showing your health, weapon equipped, current missions, etc. But, they forget to remove it after you retire from service, and you find it surprisingly helpful in civilian life.

10,276 upvotes151 comments

You were born into a society where permanent augmented reality contact lenses are fused onto every newborn's eyes. You're unaware of this until one day, a lens falls into your left hand.

10,272 upvotes336 comments

You're the wizard's apprentice, and of course the first few years involve running errands and doing other tasks. He hands you a daily schedule, but to your confusion the total hours for the different tasks add up to more than 24. "Figure it out" He says, "I chose you for a reason."

10,264 upvotes132 comments

In the late 2040s, a supernova killed humanity so suddenly that Death simply gave up on processing them all. Centuries later, aliens are extremely weirded out when they contact an entire starfaring society entirely comprised of ghosts.

10,258 upvotes124 comments

You’re a human stranded on an alien planet. The locals are sapient, but have a lifespan of only about six months. After dozens of generations (about a decade), you’ve managed to make quite a name for yourself.L

10,247 upvotes251 comments

Inventing Bacteria that ate carbon dioxide was a miracle. Releasing it into the oceans, nature began to flourish intill it continued eating, taking more carbon dioxide even from the air. Humanity to survive, had to return to the mass burning of fossil fuels thus began a new era of steam punk.

10,239 upvotes117 comments

This search engine lets you explore about 5,000 of the most popular writing prompts from the /r/WritingPrompts and /r/DirtyWritingPrompts subreddits.

Writing prompts are a great way to practice your writing and to get inspired. And if you aren't a writer, you can find fun and creative stories in their Reddit threads.

How To Use

Search for anything, and the prompts closest in meaning come first. Browse by category or subreddit, or combine them with a search. You can also filter the prompts by their Reddit upvotes and comments.

Here are some examples:

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