The Captain's Last Fuel
Write about a first-generation starship captain grappling with the decision to either use the remaining fuel to explore a potentially habitable exoplanet or return to Earth, which has been ravaged by climate change and war.
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 Space Exploration prompts
- Coffee at the Edge of SpaceIn a future where space travel is as common as taking a bus, your main character operates a quaint interstellar coffee shop. One day, an enigmatic…
- The Hidden Star MapIn a universe where space travel is accessible but still hazardous, your character, a young, ambitious cartographer, discovers a hidden coordinate in…
- The Forbidden Ocean ExpeditionWrite a story in which humanity has lived in a domed underwater city on a distant oceanic planet for centuries but has forgotten the true reason why…
- Life Inside a CometImagine a society living inside a comet moving through space. Describe their culture, beliefs, technology, and annual celebration when they pass by…
Fifteen minutes in? Keep going.
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