The Machine-Speaking Implant
In a world where people can enhance their bodies with advanced biotechnology, a recluse inventor creates an implant that allows users to directly communicate with machines. When the technology falls into the wrong hands, the inventor must team up with a group of rogue hackers to prevent a global catastrophe.
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.
- Tell it from the point of view of someone who thinks this world is perfectly normal.
- Shrink the stakes to one family, one street, one night.
- Choose one ordinary object and show how this world changed it.
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 High-Tech Sci-Fi prompts
- Counterfeit MemoriesIn a futuristic city where memories can be bought and traded like commodities, a young woman discovers that her most precious memories are…
- The Price of Never SleepingOn the eve of the grand unveiling of a neural enhancement designed to abolish sleep, a low-level employee discovers that the enhancement also…
- The Emotional RobotIn a future where every citizen is assigned a robot companion at birth, write from the perspective of a robot who develops emotions and begins to…
- Hackers Behind the Virtual WorldImagine a world where virtual reality has evolved to be indistinguishable from real life. Write a story about a group of hackers who discover a hidden…
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