#writing scifi

[leebrontide]

More scifi where everybody wears fucking slippers unless doing manual labor. The space ship has no rocks dirt or weather why do your shoes look like mine?

[one-real-wrimonkey]

If you’re writing scientists be aware a huge proportion of lab time goes to the mundane.

Let your scientists be frustrated as they spend hours calibrating instruments and sorting items and cleaning equipment and trying not to scream or slam their heads into desks.

[sskybooks]

2# What if your characters where forced to fight each other?

Hot air, and sand blasts across your characters face. They squint at the sun as they walk out into the arena. The stumble back in shock as they see who their challenger is.

Okay, so I've been posting a bunch of character prompts, mostly focused on a singular character.

But the challenge of this prompt is to see what would happen, if you threw a bunch of your characters into an unknown situation. This will help you straighten out your character dynamics. So if your characters sound clunky when put together. I hope these prompts I'll help you with that.

To make this extra challenging, try writing a small one-shot of your characters interacting. You don't have to, but it might challenge you more.

I will be posting these every week (hopefully) on Monday. These prompts will range from funny to potential trauma.

Have fun!

[the960writers]

Vulgarlang is a constructed language (conlang) generator for fantasy writers and role players. Create unique languages for your race of peoples in the click of a button! Vulgarlang models the rules, irregularities and quirks of real languages: from grammar, to sounds, to vocabulary.

Trial the demo version with a 200 word output. Signup for a 4000 word vocabulary and extra features. Vulgarlang uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and various other linguistic terminology.

Vulgarlang

[girlypopinspos]

Get in, babe, we're subverting the illogical "The people with more power than mere humans (supernaturals, people with superpowers, etc) are actually the oppressed ones" trope and holdng it underneath a critical lense!

[ipsogender]

Alternative language for biology of sex without using "hermaphrodite"

So, you're worldbuilding a scifi alien species or a fantasy race that can reproduce as both male and female. Or you're a biologist or science educator. And you want what you're writing/making to be inclusive to intersex people.

The term hermaphrodite in biology refers to species that can reproduce as both male or female. The problem is it's also a slur when used against intersex people (it's also incorrect - we're not hermaphrodites). I recently polled other intersex folks informally and a plurality were fine with the h-word being used with the correct meaning in appropriate contexts. But the qualitative feedback I got was, all things equal, most people who wrote to me said they'd just be happier seeing the term less.

So here is a glossary of words you can use to talk about the biology of sex without invoking the h-word:

Gonochoric species where individuals (typically) reproduce only as either male or female. This means the species produces two types of gametes that have different sizes, and conventionally the larger is female. Gono- for generation/reproduction and -choric for separated/distinct. Note that "non-gonochoric" includes both hermaphroditic species and those that can reproduce asexually (e.g. parthenogenesis).

Gonosyne: species where individuals (typically) can reproduce as both male or female. Gono- for generation/reproduction and syne for together/combined. This is a term I have coined to be an alternative to hermaphrodite.

Types of gonosyny: it's common to categorize different forms of gonosyny based on temporality and how many gonads an individual has.

Grouping by Temporality:

Cosex: species where individuals can reproduce as both male and female simultaneously. Alternative terms: cosexual, simultaneous hermaphrodism. For example: land snails/slugs typically mate by linking up both pairs of genitals.

Dichosex: gonosynic species where individuals reproduce as male and female at different times in their lives. Protandrous species start as male then switch to female; protogynous start female then switch to male. Some species cycle between the two (serial/bidirectional hermaphrodism/disexuality). Alternative terms: dichosexual, dichogamous, sequential hermaphrodism. I coined this one after feedback that "dichogamous" was not intuitive to non-botanists, keeping dicho- (in two parts/paired) for simplicity. Example animal: clownfish (the Finding Nemo fish).

Grouping by Gonads:

Digonic: species that can reproduce as both male and female because they have separate male and female gonads. Digony can be cosex or dichosex. In botany the term monoecious is used for flowering plants. For example: barnacles have their ovaries in the base of their body, and testes in the back of their head.

Syngonic: species that can reproduce as both male and female, because their gonads can produce both male and female gametes. Alternative terms: syncoecious, monoclinous, ambisexual. (Note ambisexual has other meanings.) Syngony can be cosex or dichosex. In dichosexual species the gonad changes which gametes it produces when the individual changes sex. For example: land slugs have a single gonad (ovotestis).

Together this makes four categories. Examples come from: Sex change in plants and animals: a unified perspective.

Syngonic cosexual. Simultaneous gonosyny within the same flower/gonad. Examples: Black-jack daisy, Lady of the Night cactus; mangrove killifish, stubby-root nematode.

Syngonic dichosexual. Non-simultaneous gonosyny within the same flower/gonad. Examples: Bromelia chrysantha, grape ivy; California sheephead fish, common limpet.

Digonic cosexual. Simultaneous gonosyny from different flowers/gonads. Examples: bitter melon, jaraguá grass; barnacles, flatworms.

Digonic dichosexual. Non-simultaneous gonosyny from different flowers/gonads. Examples: papaya, catsfoot; staghorn coral, earthworm.

Hope this is helpful! I have two little notes I want to add on: Note on "non-gonochoric": it's possible this could also include isogamous speries? There's some ambiguity in use. Isogamy refers to sexual reproduction where you don't have two different sized gametes - instead it's two identically sized gametes that are getting combined. This is the standard amongst unicellular eukaryotes and very common in fungi.

Note on ambisexual: this is the term that Ursula K LeGuin used for the dichosexual aliens in the Left Hand of Darkness. The term in biology these days refers to undifferentiated (immature) tissue that has yet to develop into a given sex - e.g. a human embryo has ambisexual gonads until sexual differentiation later on in development. The term ambisexual has a ton of other meanings in other contexts such as a sexual orientation. For this reason I'd personally avoid it.

[rew0205]

[novlr]

[talefoundryshow]

NEW VIDEO!

In a future free from all evils, what’s left for us to do? According to a certain creator, we play ball. Game on!

[tlaquetzqui]

Given nobody is gonna call real artificial consciousnesses “AI”, not after what the tech industry has done to the term, and “Mind” is taken by the Culture from Iain Banks’s novels, I think in my SF setting they’ll be known as either conches (from consciousness), sapes (from sapient), or sophs (from sophont). Kinda leaning toward the middle one because then you can refer to AIs and humans collectively as “sapes and apes”.

[leebrontide]

If only moderately aesthetic hashtag writer lifestyle pics were actually the way to success as an author.

I couldn’t find any clean and non-broken plates for my writing snack today, so I had to use a cute bowl, so I took a cute picture anyways.

Today’s cozy writing snack; a clementine, some ginger cookies, rosemary cashews, sugar snap peas, and a pot of fancy green tea pookie got me for Christmas.

Today’s scene features a motel, scifi health anxiety, and scrutinizing the color yellow.

[the13thmonth]

So…You Want to Write Sci-Fi?

When you think of science fiction, what do you think of ?

This post is a way to branch out and see what ideas would form that are not primarily space-related, alien-related, evil corporations or apocalyptic.

This is a short list of “What If?” science fiction prompts.

Feel free to use :)

MIND CONTROL

What if you willingly brainwashed yourself, to enjoy the convenience of society?

What if your suppressed memories resurfaced, and you were labeled “defective” ?

What if everybody in society had a mind implant that could fabricate and erase each other’s memories?

What if the government could control you by changing the frequencies of sound? Music, radios, alarms etc.

What if you split your memories with a clone version of you?

FUTURISTIC WORLD/ CYBERPUNK

What if you lived in an machine graveyard of old technology?

What if everything went digital? Everything around you was simulated?

What if “real” food didn’t exist anymore and you had to eat plant paste from pouches?

What if you could live forever by transferring your mind to different bodies?

What if you were at the beginning stages of the New World Order? Everything you ever knew about your world was changing, for the better or worse.

MISCELLANEOUS

What if built your own robot army?

[sskybooks]

#47 What would your character do if their best friend died in front of them?

You hold their hand. Warmth is already leaving there body. Blood soaks through the ground. A metal tang is in the air. You feel like your choking on it it's so thick.

I know you all have amazing creative juices in you and some amazing characters. This prompt is just for you to have fun and to help you explore your Character in a different setting. I would LOVE to hear what your Characters would do.

[the960writers]

by Cecilia Tan in Uncanny Magazine Issue Eighteen | 2545 Words

I have a beef with “show, don’t tell,” and it’s not just that I have a beef with pat advice about something as complex as writing fiction.

[...]

Look at the literary fiction techniques that are supposedly the hallmarks of good writing: nearly all of them rely not on what was said, but on what is left unsaid. Always come at things sideways; don’t be too direct, too pat, or too slick. Lead the reader in a direction but allow them to come to the conclusion. [...] These are the do’s and don’ts of MFA programs everywhere. They rely on a shared pool of knowledge and cultural assumptions so that the words left unsaid are powerfully communicated. I am not saying this is not a worthwhile experience as reader or writer, but I am saying anointing it the pinnacle of “craft” leaves out any voice, genre, or experience that falls outside the status quo. The inverse is also true, then: writing about any experience that is “foreign” to that body of shared knowledge is too often deemed less worthy because to make it understandable to the mainstream takes a lot of explanation. Which we’ve been taught is bad writing!

[...]

But SF/F can do better. We can break the status quo and leave it broken into a completely new shape. This doesn’t reduce the potential power of an SF/F story: it increases it. Instead of a set of shared assumptions about “universal” setting, the SF/F writer has more control over every aspect of the reader experience. All fiction is metaphor, but in a story where the society, customs, and language are crafted rather than inherited, the reader experience of that metaphor can be all-encompassing.

[...]

[dnschmidt]

15 Reasons for Your Alien Invasion Story

Writing alien invasion stories is fun, but space is big. If you want your story to be believable, your aliens will need a pretty good reason to come all the way to Earth.

[shipshapewithsliders]

This Thursday evening, 1st May, at Waterstones, The Galleries, the book launch of in Bristol UK ‘Land of the Free' by Allana Raine King and Lorraine Martin. A wonderful novel with proceeds to charity, Allana was a regular Satellite of Love open mic poet and writer. https://www.waterstones.com/events/land-of-the-free-book-launch/bristol-galleries Come along to this warm and lovely event, would love to see you there - Lisa