1
Memory backups become legally binding testimony after death.
8 Science Fiction Writing Prompts Examples
Use these examples to study structure, specificity, tone, and variation. They are demonstrations—not claims about a real person or organization unless the example itself makes that explicit.
Before you copy
What to notice in the examples
A strong science-fiction prompt connects a speculative change to ordinary human incentives, institutions, tradeoffs, or unintended consequences, giving the technology or science rules that create story problems rather than solve everything automatically.
- Use a concrete situation rather than an abstract theme alone.
- Include at least one constraint, tension, unanswered question, or consequential choice.
- Leave enough open space for different genres, voices, endings, and interpretations.
- Treat the prompt as ignition, not a checklist that every draft must preserve.
2
A city allows residents to rent extra hours of subjective time each day.
3
A translation device works perfectly except for lies.
4
A colony ship discovers its destination has been inhabited by descendants of an earlier failed mission.
5
Medical implants can predict illness but also reveal ancestry secrets.
6
An AI is elected to a local office but cannot legally sign documents.
7
A company sells temporary expertise that disappears after twenty-four hours.
8
Climate domes protect cities but require weather to be exported somewhere else.
Keep the underlying decision or pattern, then replace the subject, evidence, relationship, constraints, and tone with details that belong to your situation. If your final line still works after swapping only one noun, it may be too close to the example.