The Mirror Universe
Explore a scenario where space explorers find a portal to a parallel universe during a routine mapping of the outer reach. This other universe is a mirror image, yet with subtle and disturbing differences. Focusing on the crew's physicist, delve into their personal and moral dilemmas as they encounter versions of themselves leading radically different lives.
Suggested length: A short story: 1,500 to 5,000 words, or flash fiction under 1,000
Start the clock
Pick a sprint, press start and keep going until it stops. Momentum beats polish on a first draft.
Make it yours
Three ways to take this prompt somewhere nobody else will.
- Choose one ordinary object and show how this world changed it.
- Start in the middle of the strangest moment, and explain nothing for a page.
- Write it as a document from the world: a letter, a field report, a warning sign.
Writing science fiction
Change one thing about the world. Follow it all the way.
Science fiction asks what happens to people when science, technology or contact with something new changes the rules. The spaceships are optional; the question is the point. The best of it says as much about today as it does about the future.
What readers expect
- An idea that drives the plot
- Technology or science with consequences
- Futures, other worlds or alternate presents
- Big questions about being human
A tip before you start
Show how your big change reshapes ordinary life: what people eat, fear and joke about. Scenery alone isn't world-building.
More Space Exploration prompts
- The Journalist's Hidden MovementDevelop a story about an intergalactic journalist who travels to war-torn planets to document the impacts of cosmic wars. On their latest assignment…
- Hitchhiking to the Cursed StarImagine a future where interstellar travel is common and "space hitchhikers" are the adventurous souls who thumb rides on cargo ships heading toward…
- A Last Hope for the StarImagine a society living on a space station orbiting a dying star. As the star’s end approaches, causing dangerous radiation levels, the leaders of…
- Winter on the Distant PlanetWrite about a planet where the seasons last for decades and its inhabitants have adapted in unique ways. Your protagonist arrives from Earth right as…
Fifteen minutes in? Keep going.
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