Writing a SciFi story? Check out scifiideas.com

Posted on by Whale by

I’ve been vaguely aware of the website SciFi Ideas for a little while, but for whatever reason (laziness, I suspect), I had never spent much time looking through it.  That has been remedied.

There is a lot of great material there, but I wanted to bring one in particular feature to your attention: the generators.  I’m sure many of you have seen random name generators online.  I know there are quite a few out there geared toward helping Game Masters with RPG names, settings, etc.

SciFi Ideas has some great generators geared specifically toward scifi writing:

  • Star System Name Generator
  • Space Ship Name Generator
  • Alien Name Generator
  • Alien Species Generator

That last one is my favourite, as it not only gives you a name for the species, but also a short description of the species to start you on your way.  As an example, here’s one that I just pulled up.

Name: Bellogirlons

Home-World: Ventos VIII

Description: A race of belligerent proto-mammals with three horns on their heads. They are environmentally conscious. Sex is extremely important in their society, and is used as a form of social ranking. Highly successful individuals who are deemed to contribute more to society are permitted to have multiple spouses, while ordinary citizens are only permitted to have one. Taking more sexual partners than your social rank permits is a criminal offense and is punishable by castration. Those who are unable to find a sexual partner are given government support, therapy, and disability benefits. The species is divided into two distinct races; those with spots and those with stripes.

And an example of the Star System Generator:

Psi Velorum (a binary system approximately 60.5 light-years away. A large yellow-white star orbited by a yellow-white dwarf star)

As you can see, the generators gives you a pretty solid base to build from, or even just a few little details you can yank out and use elsewhere.

To check out the Alien Species Generator and the other generators at SciFi Ideas, just click here and start playing.

 

– DW