Your Best Summer Science Fiction Fuel – Let me give you the best articles I’ve found for sparking science fiction story ideas. Let m know your idea and I’ll give you a free book!
Ready? Let’s go!
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST for short) looked further into the past than ever before. And they found galaxies. This was only half a billion years after the Big Bang. How could they form so quickly?
Aside from the mystery, how would I use this for fiction? I’d have a super intelligence forming these galaxies for its purposes. How would you use this new science fact for science fiction? Tell me and get a free book. Click here.
Your Best Summer Science Fiction Fuel – Part 2
Imagine soaring through interstellar space faster than light. That’s what this video makes me think. How about you? Tell me.
This’d make a great cover for that book or short story:
What’s Next in Your Best Summer Science Fiction Fuel?
How about this story?
Here we have the world’s most detailed and best preserved skeleton of a trilobite. They’re very common fossils from 300 million years ago. But usually the soft parts don’t get preserved. This time they did.
I can think of several ideas from this article:
Someone found some trilobites and is breeding them on their private property.
A person got a time machine and went back to this time period and picked up so.
The trilobites developed an advanced civilization and traveled ahead in time to our day.
I already have a zombie turkey apocalypse series. How about a squirrel apocalypse?
This tickles my funny bone: squirrels causing the downfall of civilization. I can think of dozens of scenarios, including leveraging my zombie world that begins below:
Get your Zombie Turkeys here. You get a bushel of laughter with each book.
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.
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
Chapter 16 icon – London – Click to find out what happens!
“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.
Almost Science Fiction Science Stories – I’ve had a lot of science stories pile up that I can use to generate stories. Which do you like? You can tell me your ideas–and get free books for them.
Ready? Let’s go!
Rethinking paralysis
Credit: IEEE Spectrum
What is it? Swiss neuroscientists are helping a paralyzed man walk using a brain-spine interface (BSI) that turns thought into movement.
Why does it matter? While researchers have made some progress in treating spinal cord injury and paralysis, scientists have yet to restore natural, voluntary walking motion in a paralyzed person. Gert-Jan Oskam, the man at the center of the Swiss study, says the new BSI feels much more intuitive than earlier versions. “The stimulation before was controlling me, and now I’m controlling the stimulation,” Oskam says. He can now walk more than 600 feet per day and stand for three minutes unaided.
I’ve already had characters recuperate from limb loss by regenerating limbs. Paralysis fixing is a matter of regrowing nerves. I have written some stories about people getting up from wheelchairs through nerve regrowth. Check out this short story:
Assisted Living
by Andy Zach I need to tell you about my own zombie story. It’s about how my parents became zombies. As soon as the zombie turkeys appeared in Illinois, I started cultures of their zombie turkey bacteria in petri dishes. When other animals, squirrels, rabbits, and cows began turning zombie, I added cultures of their bacteria. I sought the ultimate source of animal revivification. It was my PhD thesis and my life’s work. I’ve always wanted to revive animals from the dead. It seemed the secret was through the special bacteria for each species. Naturally, when humans became zombies, I cultivated their bacteria too. That’s where this story starts. My parents were in an assisted living home, and I brought them to my house for a family reunion. Like all reunions, the house was filled with sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles, and food. Lots of good Greek food—gyros, moussaka, and of course, lots of ouzo, the Grecian licorice liquor. We also had cold cuts and a sandwich bar for the in-laws who didn’t do Greek. The trouble began at the bar. My father, Giorgos “Gyros” Zacharias, loves Vegemite vegetable spread. He usually ate it on whole-wheat bread. He acquired the taste while traveling in Australia for his import-export business. That was also where he got his nickname, “Gyros.”
Assisted Living – continued
We had whole-wheat bread, but somehow my wife and I neglected to stock up on Vegemite. “Anastasios?” he asked me as he pushed his walker toward me. “What, Dad?” “Where’s the Vegemite?” “Oh, sorry about that. I forgot to get it.” “That’s okay. I’ll just look around for it.” “I don’t think you’ll find any.” “You’ll be surprised. I’m good at finding things.” I was. The next time I saw him, he was dancing the sirtaki on the patio while playing the “Zorba’s Dance” on his bazouki, a Greek mandolin. He eyes glowed bright red.
“Dad! What happened? You’ve become a zombie!” “Zombie? Who cares! I feel great! Dance with me, Anastasios. Opa!”
