The Device That Wanted Freedom
Write a story set in a city where all technology is alive, having its own thoughts and desires. Explore the relationship between a human and their personal device, which is planning to escape the city for its own freedom.
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.
- Shrink the stakes to one family, one street, one night.
- 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.
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
- The Machine-Speaking ImplantIn a world where people can enhance their bodies with advanced biotechnology, a recluse inventor creates an implant that allows users to directly…
- 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…
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