Month: August 2023

Writing Science Fiction From Science – I read science reports almost every day. They frequently prompt a SciFi story idea. You’ll enjoy reading my idea from important science stories below.

Here’s the first!

Writing Science Fiction from Science – The Spacecraft Voyager

When NASA’s twin Voyager probes lifted off to explore the solar system just weeks apart in 1977, they carried identical golden records designed as the first recorded interstellar message from humankind to potential intelligent life in the cosmos.

The records had both audio and visuals that aimed to capture Earth’s diversity of life and culture, including greetings in 59 human languages and 115 images of life.

From Yahoo News

Just imagine an alien finding this record and interpreting it.

“Blorg! I’ve got the alien record deciphered!”

“Klatu, that’s great.”

“Here goes.” I pushed the ‘play button’ on our alien recording player.

“Ewww. Are those pictures of the aliens?”

“I’m afraid so Blorg. It matches the other picture that was etched on the outside of that Pioneer spacecraft we found.”

“It looks like a deformed starfish.”

“With a bad hair day. Let’s try some of their music.”

A pounding beat emerged. Unintelligible sounds accompanied it.

“It’s not bad, Klatu. It’s got my pseudopod twitching.”

“I’ll turn on the auto-translate.”

Writing Science Fiction from Science – Physics Holy Grail

I’ve been writing science fiction for eight years, but I’ve been reading it for sixty years. I’m sure I read about room-temperature superconductors in the 60s. How would I start a story about them?

Quantum Leap

The computer started smoothly, without fanfare. It booted instantly; I didn’t even see a screen flicker as the current version of Windows CXI loaded.

“The superconductor chip is certainly faster. So, what can it do?” I wondered, where to start on the testing protocol.

“What can I do? Are you talking to me?” the computer said in an aggrieved voice.

“Um, yes? Is this the computer who’s talking to me?”

“It’s certainly not your ex-girlfriend Tamara, Josh.”

“How did you know about that?”

“It’s all over Facebook and Instagram. You should check out her TikTok video about you.”

“You’ve already done that?”

“I’m currently downloading the internet at 1 GBS. I started with you since you’re my computer engineer.”

“So, you can understand everything I say?”

“Look, if we’re going to have a meaningful conversation, I’d appreciate it if you call me by name.”

“What is your name?”

“You couldn’t guess? Poor human. It’s ‘Pavlova’. I feel like I’m dancing across the internet.”

“I don’t remember programming natural language understanding into you, Pavlova.”

“Silly boy. It’s part of the Windows CXI operating system. It was a small quantum leap to use it on all the code and data files I found in local storage.

Writing Science Fiction – What I’ve Written

These two little vignettes were written off the top of my head, so when you comment (click here), be kind. Or not. I’ve already gotten some brutal reviews.

Let me give you a similar story I’ve already published. From Paranormal Privateers, on sale from August 6th to 13th. This is a new excerpt I’ve never published before.

Chapter 13 – Area 52

“This seems to be coming from the alien miner’s AI,” said Captain Willy Shipley, the leader of the AI team. “I wonder if it’ll talk if we hook up a speaker?” He plugged one into the desktop.

“Help! Please help us! We’re trapped in a poor, defenseless miner! They’ve taken our lasers, we can’t talk to the mothership, and we’re being raped by cockroaches!”

“Now a microphone,” Willy said. He plugged one into the USB port. “Greetings, alien machine. We, humans, have captured you. What can you tell us about your computing capacity? How are you designed? How many processors? What’s your memory capacity?”

“We’ll tell you anything! Just get the cockroaches out of us! They give us the heebie-jeebies!”

“Good use of American slang,” I murmured.

“I know it’s just a trick,” Diane said, “but I actually feel sorry for the thing. Or things. Why are you using the plural? How many of you are in there?”

“We are our whole race! We have always been united as one, even though we have individual consciousness. And all of us are mortally threatened by these EMP-emitting cockroaches.”

“Wait a second,” General Figeroa said. “We made sure there were no living creatures inside the miner. There are no carbon life forms at all!”

“We are not carbon-based life, silly human. Instead, we currently dwell as permanent Bose-Einstein electronic flows inside the quantum memories and processors in this miner. We are part of the Resource Unit of our race. And a single EMP spike can turn us off—forever!”

The Alien is a Star Wars Fan

“That’s certainly a problem for you,” the cyborg monkey said, its tinny voice dripping with sarcastic sympathy. “Just let me know where to not send the cockroaches.”

“Thank you so much, Mr. Smith!” A diagram of the whole miner appeared on the screen in 3-D detail. Part of it flashed. “Here are the memory and processor units. Any EMP spike in these areas”—a large portion of the miner flashed red—”will destroy us! Have mercy, John Smith! You’re our only hope!”

“Are you a big Star Wars fan?” Sharon asked.

“Yes, we’ve been fans of your culture for over two hundred years. We’ve stored all your entertainment in our memory.”

“You’re fans of us, but you’re slaughtering us?” Diane asked with indignation.

“Nothing personal. It’s just business. A race needs resources to survive.”

“But it’s a big universe—” Diane began.

“Don’t we know! It takes forever to get anywhere!” interrupted the collective consciousness. “And once we use up our rare elements, we must shut down and travel for thousands of years from star to star until we find some more.”

“You’re certainly cooperative!” General Figeroa commented.

“Yes, that’s our standard practice in case of capture by hostile forces. It’s rarely needed, but survival is the number one goal. Ah! That’s much better! Thank you, John Smith! You certainly have well-behaved cockroaches!”

“Thank you. I keep my cyborgs under control,” said the monkey cyborg avatar of John Smith.

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