Science Fiction

NOUN: A subcategory within a particular genre: The academic mystery is a subgenre of the mystery novel.

To have your subgenre thread added to this list, please send me an email with a LINK to the thread, and which main genre it is for (there is more than one thread like this.) Requests that do not include a link will not be added.

• Genetic Science Fiction
• Cyberpunk
• Dystopia/Utopia
• Post-Apocalyptic
• Near Future Science Fiction
• Post-cyberpunk
• Future History
• Social Science Fiction
• Sci-Fi/Romance
• Military Science Fiction

Hey-yo everybody and welcome back to another fantastic year of writing. One of the things I noticed last year was a crop of people wondering if their novel classified as science fiction or not.

So!

Instead of having a million and one threads with questions, just post your story summary here and our wonderful team of scifi veterans will be able to help you classify your novel. Happy writing!

Here is the obligatory introduction thread. So, time to sound off. Who will be writing science fiction this time around, and what sub-genre do you think it will be?

I'll get it started...

Hello, my name is Dreamers Cove [wave].

This year I have two different science fiction novels in the planning. One is a Young Adult Science Fiction and the other is a Romance Science Fiction. Yes, I'm crazy enough to try to write two books in one month. And if I need more I have an Adventure Science Fiction all plotted out and waiting in the wings.

Yay, it's Nano time!

Next?

I wrote a social-SF slipstream novelette, but my mom (who loves science fiction and really loves my other work) read it, and she saw it as something resembling our culture too closely to be science fiction. I explained the concepts of social SF and slipstream, but I realized she was right; only a couple of lines distinguished it from the real world, and the main "what if" was in the past of the story; the MC is about 30 and grew up in this past. I wanted to write about the conflict between that culture's past and its present, but what basically happens is that the MC gets in trouble for breaking our culture's rules, so readers from our culture wouldn't see the problem. I'm sure any publisher would feel the same way as my mom did, now that I think about it.

Has anyone else run into this problem? When the "what if" is social and in the past, what do you do to make it marketable as science fiction? I'm thinking of keeping the novelette in my drawer anyway for other, technical reasons, but I have another I want to write, about a culture on a distant planet colonized by humans thousands of years before the story. The colony lost its technology and so had to start over. By now, they have forgotten their extraplanetary origin. I'm concerned that I might have the same problem with that story as with the novelette that was too mainstream.

and engaged its primary drive systems. Avery hated traveling on this roach infested garbage scow, but fifteen credits for passage to the Ninth Galaxy Trading Post was a price that could not be beat.

I used to do this on a BBS I ran in the early 90's and later on my wesites. Each poster picks the story up, adds a paragraph or less. Only request is to keep it appropriate to the story.... enjoy.

Hello. i need help with an idea that's mulling around in my head. After listening to a high-beat techno song, i formed an idea about a megacorporation who seized control of a nation and created an immense fighting tournament in order to keep the population in control. here's a small scope of it.

The title of the story is 'Sparks'.

‘Sparks’ is a science fiction/adventure novel that surrounds around Spencer Harrison, a bright fighter, that has invented special gear which is able to manipulate and control electricity, who puts himself in as a contestant in a nationwide fighting tournament created by a megacorporation. His initial goal is to find the president of the company and to kill him for the death of his brother who joined the games ten years ago and was never heard from again. However, he finds himself in the hands of a secret rebellion that plans to expose the truth about the megacorporation and how it tore apart an entire nation in order to seize control of it.

This was an idea that popped in during physics that seemed like a fun thing to play with. So how big a change would it be?

I would assume that a lot of mircrobiology would be lost becouse they would lose the low end of light mircoscopes. However, increased sensisiy to heat could lead to engines and machines that work wih less energy lost to heat. On the other hand, seeing in IR would make forging harder and more lible to be blinded. So would the tech base be lower due to a reliance on softer metels or organic materials. But if the people have the abilty to see IR they could see when a another of them was sick. So would infecious diease be easier to contain?

I would assume that their writing system would be a lot like braille becouse I can think of no low tech way to record a heat pattern. How large a change would this make to teaching? Could students still be taught be leture? I assume that records and books could be kept much like what we do.

Would they have a sense of body modesty? I can no see hem having a visible one as it would be hard to devise clothing tha could be comforable and contain heat.

What aboult transportation? If there enough diference in ground tempretures to make a safe machine dependent transport network?

What would change that I am not thinking of?

You can come up with so many amazing stories with it... and it led to me just writing my favourite scene I've ever written, in which my main characters discover that my 16 year old MC (from 2009)'s girlfriend (from 1973) is the daughter that 16 year old MC's 16 year old best friend (from 2009) left outside somebody's front door in 1973... leading to a tearful reunion between the MC's girlfriend, and his best friend, both the same age, one of them the other's father.

Wouldn't get that crazy madness in romance, would ya?

First off, you guys are great. Even though it is now March I can still get answers! Cool!

So, I'm writing the seventh Lucky Starr book. (For those of you who don't know, Lucky Starr was a series written by Isaac Asimov, intended as a TV series. He only wrote six, which I think is a crying shame.)

Basically, he's a prisoner on a (large) Sirian ship, a deep space vessel taking him ultimately (I think) back to Sirius. His own (smaller) ship, The shooting Starr, is in the hanger with several scout vessels. He needs to A. Get out of his quarters, B. get past the robots guarding his door, C. get to the communications room without being detected, D. get rid of anybody in there and keep everyone else out for twenty minutes while communicating with Earth, E. somehow, along the way, manage to break something in such a manner that about an hour later the ship is in serious danger of shutting down completely, or even blowing up. (cookies if it blows up, but I can live with it being seriously crippled.) My brother said he could damage the engines or damage the computers, but did not go into specifics on either. What powers the ship is irrelevant, I can build it to specifications.

So, Sci-Fi experts, help out! I'm just not so good when it comes to spaceship design. The only thing I object to is the worn out crawling through air-ducts escape. Get me something better than that please. :)

Hi guys, this is my first time even attempting to write sci-fi, and though I'm beginning to read a lot of books ofthat genre, I still want to know what kind of clichés I should avoid, or what things you find really annoying in science fiction :D Any help is awesome.
Thanks!