These 12 Science Fiction writing prompts are all very different in concept, but all similar in one way. They involve a protagonist or set of protagonists we’ve assigned as the fixers of the problems the stories present. Feel free to use any of the writing prompts for your own stories. We’d also love to read them if you do!

1. A spaceship larger than Earth shows up and blocks the sun, causing a global catastrophe as temperatures drop and crops fail. A mathematician and linguist must work together to figure out a way to communicate with the aliens and persuade them to move the ship.
2. An alien capable of rapid cloning lands and quickly starts to replicate, leading to a population explosion that strains resources and destabilizes society. All of earth’s nations are forced to reconcile their differences and find a way to stop the cloning or come up with a plan to accommodate the excess population.
3. Surveillance nano technology creates a future in which we never know if we’re being watched, leading to a loss of privacy and a rise in paranoia. A programmer must find a way to hack the technology or expose the people behind it.
4. A new technology allows us to preview the outcome of certain decisions, but a university researcher discovers that the technology has unintended consequences or is being used for nefarious purposes.
5. A man travels into the future to discover a new ice age and the evolved creatures who live in it, but he also finds that humans have regressed and are living in a primitive state. The man must find a way to help humanity progress again.
6. A man realizes one day that his entire world is nothing more than a fake world within an alien society (like the Truman Show but with aliens). He must find a way to escape and discover the truth about his reality.
7. A cryogenically frozen man wakes up on a large space ship with no memory of why he’s there. And he’s the only one awake. He must find a way to repair the ship and figure out its mission, while also dealing with the isolation and loneliness of being the only conscious being on board.
8. Scientist find a way to open a portal to another dimension and then send a droid in to record the other world, but the droid doesn’t return as expected. She must go through the portal to retrieve the droid and uncover the secrets of the other dimension.
9. An alien civilization lands on Mars and colonizes before we have a chance to, leading to a race for resources and possibly even a war between humans and aliens. Earths humans must find a way to peacefully coexist with the aliens or find a way to outcompete them.
10. Moon vacations become a thing, but the first group of travelers discovers that the moon is not as hospitable as they thought and they must find a way to survive on the barren lunar surface.
11. A group of people survive a nuclear war by hiding out on a small island. After much time they decide to return to the mainland. But they aren’t alone. They must deal with the dangers of a post-apocalyptic world and the hostile creatures that have evolved in the aftermath of the war.
12. A fortune teller uses his skills to warn people of bad things that are going to happen to them, but it doesn’t work out the way he plans because his predictions are not always accurate or because he is not taken seriously. He must find a way to use his abilities responsibly and make a positive impact on the world.

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