Launch Into These Fantastic Space Opera Writing Prompts

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Space Travel

Generation Ships – A Thousand Lifetimes in Space

A generation ship is headed to a distant planet. Every twenty years, the passengers are given new cloned bodies with their memories and personalities copied over to a younger form. Halfway through the trip, one of the passengers grows sick of living on the ship and refuses to go through another cloning. He tries to convince the other passengers to live on through children, not science.
A generation ship launches from Earth on a ten thousand year journey. Due to limited space and resources on the ship, the descendants of the original passengers evolve to be far smaller, never passing two feet tall. After they arrive on the new planet, Earth scientists develop faster than light travel and send new colonists, average-sized human beings. If the colony is going to survive, the two groups must learn to get along.
A generation ship is headed to a distant planet. Halfway through the trip, the passengers mutiny, demanding to land on the nearest planet, habitable or no. Amazingly, the planet turns out to have a breathable atmosphere, but everything else is deadly. The inhabitants, the weather, and even the flowers seem to want them dead.
A generation ship is headed to a distant planet. Twenty years into the journey, the passengers demand to know why the captain and crew never seem to age. They should be in their fifties and sixties but still seem just as young as when they left. The passengers begin to wonder if the people in charge are even human.
A generation ship’s artificial gravity begins to malfunction, increasing until passengers are crushed under their own weight. The crew searches for a way to solve the problem and to prevent a ship-wide panic.
The passengers on board a generation ship mutiny against the crew. Sick of space travel, the passengers demand to land on the nearest planet, habitable or not.
The captain of a generation ship loses his family in a tragic accident. He barricades himself on the bridge and threatens to activate the ship’s self-destruct mechanism. The crew must find a way to get past the bridge’s blast doors before the distraught captain destroys them all.
To save room on the generation ship, the original population of the ship is all women, with children to be produced by artificial insemination. The first “in-space” generation grows up in a society controlled by women.
Variation – To save space on the generation ship, all the original passengers are female. All the children are produced by artificial insemination, all from female embryos. After one hundred generations of only females, the ship arrives on the new planet, and the first males can be born.
The passengers on a generation ship begin to doubt the new planet will ever be reached, and decide bringing new children into the situation would be cruel. The soldiers running the ship decide that, if the passengers won’t reproduce by choice, they will have to be forced.
An elderly man on a generation ship is convinced that the pilot computer is lying, and that the ship was not actually built, but created by God. He preaches his new religion and, slowly, he gathers followers.
The government is unable to convince any passengers to board the generation ship, as they know the first generation will die long before they reach the new world. So, the government decides to take their cues from England and fill the generation ship with prisoners.
On board a generation ship, all of the work is done by robots and other machines. When the ship finally arrives on the new world, the would-be pioneers have a thousand-year tradition of laziness and selfishness.
In order to convince passengers to board the generation ship, ready to reproduce, the government runs a series of ads featuring gorgeous models of both sexes. The ship launches into space, and the passengers discover that they were lied to. They will have to mate with “ordinary” people.
The passengers on a generation ship begin reproducing too rapidly, and risk using up all of their resources. They come up with a violent solution to population control: The Games. Once a year, ten passengers are selected by lottery, and forced to fight to the death for the amusement of the others.
Because of limited space on the ship, the captain must control breeding, and make sure reproduction stays at a specific rate. After the population starts to grow too fast, the captain starts throwing passengers out of the air lock.
A generation ship is sent into space with several androids to do occasional repairs. One android is smarter than the others. After several centuries, the android convinces the new generation of passengers that it is God.
An elderly man on a generation ship discovers that the ship was not created by humans, as they have believed for centuries. The ship was created by a mysterious alien race. The old man struggles to discover exactly what the aliens have planned for the thousands of passengers.
Do to cosmic radiation, the passengers on the generation ship evolve faster than normal. By the time their descendants reach the new planet, they are something other than human.
Do to limited space, the ship’s officers must control breeding, making sure reproduction stays at acceptable levels. The ship is divided into two giant sections, Men’s and Women’s, with any “trespassers” being killed.
Earth builds an enormous generation ship, designed to last for eons. The ship is launched and floats through endless space. After thousands of generations, the ship reaches the End of the Universe. The millions of passengers fight to deal with what they find there.
The passengers on a generation ship begin running out of food, and there is no earth-like planet in sight. They come across an alien generation ship. The aliens have food, but nothing humans can eat. However, the aliens themselves look quite delicious…
To save space on a generation ship, the first generation of passengers has their DNA altered so that their children will never grow larger than two feet tall. After the generation ship finally arrives on the new world, they discover that they were beaten to the planet by another ship. The tiny astronauts struggle to begin their society on a new world filled with humans three times their size.
On board a generation ship, cosmic radiation kills all of the adults, leaving only children under thirteen. The children hold a contest to select the ship’s new leaders.
Variation – After radiation kills all of the adults, the children on a generation ship form two opposing factions: girls vs. boys.
A company designs a generation ship to be sent to a distant planet, but has trouble attracting passengers, as they know they would die in space and only their ancestors would reach the new world. The company announces that all mates will be selected by lottery. The ship is soon filled with passengers, all hoping they will “win” an ideal mate.
The passengers on a generation ship realize that they will die long before they reach the new world, so they decide to reproduce via cloning. Each new generation of passengers will be genetically identical to the first.
A generation ship is heading for an empty, earth-like planet upon which a new human society can be built. After a rebellion results in half the population leaving for an occupied alien world, the soldiers running the ship decide that they have to do whatever necessary to keep the next generation of passengers on the ship. The next generation of children is never told that they are on a ship at all.
The earth sends a generation ship into space to look for a new, earth-like planet on which to settle. Decades later, the grandchildren of the original colonists are angry that they were forced to be born in space, never to set foot on a real world. They turn the ship around, pointing it back at the earth. Somehow, they will have their revenge.

Sleeper Ships – The Longest Night

A passenger aboard a sleeper ship is awoken halfway through the journey. No one is around. He is alone on a ship with thousands of frozen passengers. He explores the ship, searching for food and supplies. He hears footsteps behind him, feels eyes upon him. Something is getting closer.
A passenger aboard a sleeper ship wakes up on a distant planet, a thousand years later than his scheduled arrival. The planet is in ruins, the colony destroyed. He goes out into the rubble, searching for clues to what could have destroyed the world.
A sleeper ship is struck by an asteroid. The sleeper cells are scattered, floating off in every direction. A passenger wakes up aboard an alien spacecraft. He is a thousand lightyears from the ship’s planned route. His wife was aboard the ship. If he survived, she could have, too. But how to find her?
A passenger aboard a sleeper ship wakes up halfway through the journey. He discovers that many of the sleeper tubes are empty, the passengers missing. He discovers the crew unthawed, dressed in robes, and chanting about a “devourer from beyond the stars”.
An alarm goes off on a sleeper ship. The captain sees on the radar screen that a missile is headed in their direction. The ship is too heavy to outrun it, unless he ejects some of the frozen passengers into space. But how many? And who? How do you decide who lives and who dies?
The crew on board a sleeper ship is thawed out for the ship’s annual inspection. They discover that the ship has been hijacked by aliens and is being flown to their home planet. Unarmed and outnumbered, they search for a way to regain control of the ship and save the passengers from their alien kidnappers.
A sleeper ship is traveling to a distant world. To keep the passengers’ minds active, they are placed into a video game world. The passengers wake up mid-journey to discover that the ship has been invaded by aliens. Half the passengers are convinced they need to fight for their lives, while the other half are sure this is still part of the game.
A sleeper ship carrying families of frozen colonists heads off to a new world. When the ship lands, a computer error results in only the children being thawed. While their parents sleep, the children are left to fend for themselves on a new planet.
A sleeper ship heads off for a new world with a load of frozen colonists. Due to a missing semicolon in the computer code, the ship misses its destination and keeps traveling, Trillions of years later, the ship finally crashes on a planet. The colonists are thawed just in time to witness the heat death of the universe.
On a sleeper ship, the frozen passengers are connected to a virtual reality simulation of their lives back on Earth. The trip lasts so long that they begin to forget it’s just a simulation. When they are awakened on the new world, it comes as quite the shock.
A sleep tube malfunctions, leaving one man awake, to spend the rest of his life alone on the ship, surrounded by his frozen “sleeping” friends.
The ship’s computer malfunctions, and begins beaming TV signals directly into the heads of the frozen passengers. When they finally reach the new planet, they are more than a little warped by the experience.
Earth’s governments deal with overcrowded prisons by cryonically freezing the prisoners and loading them onto spaceships. The ships are designed to drift forever in deep space. However, one of the ships is knocked off course by a meteorite and crashes onto a distant, alien world…
A spaceship sets out for a ten-year journey to a new planet. Do to a technical glitch, some of the passengers are brought out of suspended animation almost as soon as the ship launches. A young couple awake on a new planet to find that their children have grown up while they slept.
A teenage girl, a telepath, boards a ship for the stars. While in suspended animation, she remains conscious. She explores the other passenger’s minds, toying with their dreams, stealing their knowledge, and making psychic mischief.
A sleeper ship makes the months-long journey to the new colonies on Mars. When the ship arrives and the passengers awaken, a woman discovers that she is pregnant. Somehow she became pregnant on a ship where all the passengers were asleep.
A depressed woman boards a spaceship where she will be placed into a state of sleep-like suspended animation until the end of the trip. However, she isn’t sure she’ll ever want to wake up.
A sleeper ship is struck by an asteroid, destroying the ship and killing most of the passengers. A few sleeper tubes survive, floating through space, eventually crashing on a distant, alien world.
A man and his wife board a spaceship for a long journey. They arrive, years later, on a new planet. The man is revived and told that his wife apparently had cancer and didn’t tell him. If they bring her out of suspended animation, she will die.
A young couple and their newborn daughter board a sleeper ship, where they will be placed in suspended animation for a twenty-one year journey to a new planet. Their daughter, although in suspended animation, remains conscious. Her mind connects telepathically to the ship’s computers, and she begins to learn.
An alien sleeper ship lands on earth but, due to a malfunction, the aliens are never taken out of suspended animation. The government must decide wither to take the chance and thaw them out.
A handful of scientists on a sleeper ship must stay conscious to monitor the passengers. One of the scientists begins to fantasize about a beautiful, young passenger.
A team of astronauts heads to a distant planet on board a sleeper ship. The ship crashes, and the only survivor is the young, female ship captain. Her sleeper tube shuts off, and she awakens in the middle of a large, beautifully decorated building. Examining her surroundings, she discovers that, for hundreds of years, she has been on exhibit in an alien museum. Soon, the aliens find their planet’s most beloved “work of art” is alive.
A group of astronauts are sent on a sleeper ship to several new planets. As each planet is reached, some of the passengers are awakened and sent to the surface in shuttle craft. The ship passes the last planet and, unfortunately, one passenger is left on board. He awakens to discover that he is alone on an immense spaceship headed for nowhere.
Astronauts visiting another planet return to earth on board a sleeper ship. When they awaken on earth, they discover that they have been asleep much longer than they thought. The humans on earth have evolved dramatically, and to them, the astronauts are like cavemen.
Variation – Astronauts visiting another planet return to earth on board a generation ship. When they awaken on earth, they discover that they have been asleep much longer than they thought. The earth has gone through several global wars, destroying virtually all technology. The astronauts, with their seemingly miraculous technology, are greeted as gods.

Embryo Probes – Stem Cellmates

Earth sends a robotic probe full of embryos to a distant planet. The robots on the probe bring the embryos to maturity, but burn out soon afterwards. Without any robots to manufacture things or to teach them about technology, the humans end up in a new Stone Age.
The governments of the world are convinced that the earth’s population may eventually be destroyed by war. To save the human race from extinction, they seed a nearby planet with an embryo probe. The predicted war never comes. However, centuries later, the earth is invaded by aliens, and the surviving population flees to the seeded planet. The planet’s human population does not welcome the earthlings, and attempts to keep them from settling on their world.
Variation – Decades after the earth seeds a new planet with embryo probes, the new planet begins to run out of natural resources. When earth’s skies fill up with spaceships, the governments of the world are shocked to discover that they are being invaded by other humans.
A mad scientist creates thousands of embryos from his own DNA, and sends them in space on board a robotic probe. Planets all through the galaxy are seeded with his clones.
An astronaut comes to another planet, years after it had been “seeded” by an embryo probe from earth. He discovers that one of the embryos, now a grown woman, was created from his ex-wife’s DNA. (And thus, is a clone.) He begins to wonder if he has a second chance with love.
The government begins a program to select the best colonists for a new world. Scientific geniuses, athletes, and artists from all over the world apply. However, they won’t actually be going… Their DNA will be used to create a cloned embryo, and this duplicate of them will be used to “seed” the new planet.
The government begins a program to select the best colonists for a new world. Their DNA will be used to create cloned embryos to seed the new planet. A janitor at NASA, resentful that “inferior” people are excluded from the project, vows to break into the laboratory and fill the probe with his own DNA.
Aliens send an embryo probe to the earth and, like the stork, it delivers alien babies to grateful couples.
An alien embryo probe comes to the earth but, as it is not equipped with an artificial womb, it must seek out human females.
Variation – Aliens send embryo probes to the earth as the precursor to a full-scale invasion. Earth’s governments warn their citizens of the dangerous, alien machines. However, the aliens offer bribes to any human female willing to be impregnated.
Wanting to be the first to lay claim to a world outside our solar system, earth’s corporations send embryo probes to seed the stars with pioneers. The infants who are born on these new worlds are cared for by machines, who raise them to be perfect, submissive employees, treating their corporate masters as if they were gods.
Earth sends a fleet of embryo probes to “seed” a distant world. Along with the probes, earth sends a ship full of android teachers. The androids are supposed to care for and educate the humans until they are old enough to run the new world themselves. Unfortunately, due to a technical glitch, the androids are stuck in “babysitter” mode. Twenty years later, after the invention of a faster-than-light engine, a ship full of astronauts arrives. They discover an entire planet full of spoiled, toddler-like adults.
The earth is deluged with alien embryo probes, and the government creates a new office of exterminators to hunt down the probes and infant aliens and destroy them before a new culture can take hold on the earth.
Colonists land on a new planet and discover that it is full of human children. They discover that the government had secretly seeded the planet with an embryo probe, and now there are hundreds of children without parents.
The earth is invaded by alien embryo probes. The probes send out millions of airborne “spores.” Any woman who breathes them in becomes pregnant with an extraterrestrial child.

Robot Probes – Fetch, Mars Rover! Roll Over! Good Bot!

The Earth is invaded by a swarm of robot probes from another planet. The probes are studying the Earth and aggressively taking samples of trees, buildings, even people. NASA develops an electromagnetic pulse weapon that can disable the probes, but it also disables any human technology nearby.
A robot probe from an alien planet lands on Earth and smashes its way into a fertility clinic. The probe steals frozen eggs and sperm and returns to its home world. The aliens grow their own humans and keep them in a research lab.
A robot probe from an alien planet lands on Earth and captures humans for study. The probe creates a bubble of accelerated time so it can study the entire human lifespan in a single night. The humans join together to escape the probe before they age and wither away.
An alien government decides to explore space with self-replicating robot probes. The probes are designed to find planets and collect raw materials to make duplicates of themselves. A thousand years later, they have evolved into a swarm of interplanetary “locusts,” devouring entire worlds.
An alien government builds robot probes to explore space for them, and find planets without intelligent life that they can colonize. A small child, playing in the park, meets a robot probe. He has to prove that humans are intelligent, or the earth will be overwhelmed by alien invaders. Too bad his parents are idiots…
Earth scientists send a robotic probe to explore the surface of a distant planet and to return to Earth with a collection of soil, water, and plant samples. Unbeknownst to the scientists, the planet is an alien prison. A number of the prisoners find the probe and decide to use it to escape.
Earth sends out robotic probes to explore the universe, and look for earth-like planets for future colonies. A robot probe finds a good planet, but the inhabitants are intelligent. The robot probe launches a software program, Propaganda 2.0.
Humans decide to send a robot probe into space, to search for friendly aliens. The scientists decide that they need a “representative sample” of human culture. Musicians and artists fight over who will have their work carried to the stars.
An alien probe lands on the earth and begins to duplicate itself. It craws into a young man’s garage, and he has to convince it not to use his sports car for raw materials.
Earth builds a fleet of robotic probes to search for distant planets. It is decided that the probes would do a much better job of searching if, rather than being controlled by computers, they were controlled by human brains.
An alien race sends out a robotic probe to explore the universe. A probe lands on earth, and is discovered by a young boy. The boy has been told by his parents that he cannot have a dog, so instead he decides to take the probe home as a pet.
After the earth discovers a lifeless planet with rich mineral resources, the astronauts must go to great lengths to hide it from alien robot probes. Simply destroying the probes won’t do, as that would alert the aliens to the existence of something worth protecting.
A distant alien race sends robotic probes to earth with a simple message: our planet needs men!
An alien race, nearing extinction, sends out a fleet of robot probes. Each probe has in its memory the digitalized consciousness and memories of billions of aliens. When the probe lands on earth, it begins reprogramming humans with the data from the aliens’ minds.
Variation – An alien race, nearing extinction, decides to preserve the scientific knowledge and art of every race in the universe. It sends out a fleet of robot probes to collect the information. Unfortunately, the probes collect the information by removing brain tissue. When the probes land on earth, they systematically lobotomize everyone they see.
Earth sends out robotic probes to explore the universe and, if they find an earth-like planet, to report back to earth. An alien hacker encounters one of the probes and reprograms it.

Hyperspace / Warp Drives – If You Can’t Break the Speed Limit, Just Bend It a Little

A test pilot is assigned a new project: testing a spacesuit with its own built-in warp drive. He is told “the first few experiments turned the test dummies inside-out, but we’re pretty sure we fixed that.”
Warp drives bend spacetime, allowing ships to travel faster than the speed of light. The gravitational effects created by warp drives also make them powerful weapons. An active warp drive can pull a planet from its orbit and even crack a moon in two. The technology for warp drives is tightly controlled, restricted to military use only. Plans for a warp drive are stolen by anti-government spies and distributed across the inhabited worlds. Soon everyone with the budget to build a spacecraft can also build a planet-destroying weapon.
Warp drives bend spacetime, allowing ships to travel faster than the speed of light. Occasionally, warp drives warp spacetime inside the ship. Crewmembers are transported from one end of the ship to the other, de-aged, or sent into the future. The more you travel, the more likely you are to fall victim to a spacetime warp accident.
A warp drive malfunctions, trapping the ship in a bubble of spacetime. The ship is cut off from the rest of the universe, utterly alone. As supplies run low, the crew begins to panic. The captain struggles to maintain control.
Scientists working on a Mars colony develop a hyperspace drive, allowing ships to make the journey between Earth and Mars in minutes instead of months. As Earth and Mars turn to exploring the distant reaches of space, the aliens that live in hyperspace soon grow sick of humans flying through their backyard. The aliens journey to our dimension and declare war on the entire galaxy.
An inventor develops the first hyperspace drive, making journeys to distant stars possible in only minutes. However, the calculations required to travel between hyperspace and regular space are incredibly complex. An error of one thousandth of one percent can result in ending up in the wrong galaxy, the wrong century, even the wrong dimension. On his first journey out, the inventor ends up hopelessly lost, unsure if he will ever be able to find his way home.
In the distant future, Earth scientists construct a massive hyperspace drive capable of shifting the entire planet into hyperspace and back. Earth is able to shift to hyperspace to avoid asteroids, intergalactic war, and other dangers. The babies born during these shifts develop strange powers. Able to control gravity and spacetime, these children are able to travel through hyperspace without a ship, journeying to distant planets with the power of their minds alone.
A scientist discovers hyperspace, a new kind of space where ordinary laws of physics are changed. In hyperspace, spaceships can travel faster than light. But the astronauts start to see strange beings outside their windows, and what looks suspiciously like souls in torment. Is hyperspace… hell?
Variation – Astronauts experimenting with newly-discovered hyperspace technology find that they can reach not just other planets, but also the afterlife. They can visit their dead friends and relatives. What happens when the astronauts try to bring someone back?
Astronauts discover that traveling through hyperspace has strange effects on the human body. Namely, it is the universe’s most powerful aphrodisiac.
Due to an oddity of physics, every trip through hyperspace causes the astronauts to lose IQ points.
In hyperspace, the ships can travel faster than the speed of light. However, traveling outside of normal spacetime has its risks. People age and grow younger, transform into strange creatures, or vanish, to reappear anywhere in the universe.
Colonists traveling through hyperspace end up in a parallel universe, where they face alternate versions of themselves.
The janitor at a scientific research company steals a prototype hyperdrive and installs it in his pickup truck.
A multi-planet corporation sponsors a faster-than-light race across the stars. After one man’s father dies in the race, he vows to come back next year and destroy the race forever… with a black hole.
The government tests a spacecraft equipped with a prototype warp drive, a device capable of bending time and space. Unfortunately, using the device creates space/time anomalies on the earth below: areas where time travels faster or slower than normal, areas where time travels in reverse, temporary portals to the other side of the universe, and even greater dangers.

Wormholes – Taking an Interstellar Shortcut

When a ship crashes into the jump gate, a distant moon finds itself isolated from the rest of the galaxy. As supplies run dangerously low, the governor struggles to maintain order. He sends out riot police to guard food supplies. The jump gate must be repaired quickly, or people will begin to starve.
A man is struck by cosmic energy, transforming him into a living wormhole. His body becomes a hole in space connected to a distant galaxy. He goes to a university physics department to beg for help. The physicists aren’t interested in curing him. They want to find a way to enlarge the hole so they can take a spaceship through it.
The Planetary Space Agency constructs a massive wormhole gate to connect the Earth capitol with the colonies on Mars. Due to a gravitational anomaly, the gate connects to Mars in the distant past. Hordes of dinosaur-like creatures come through the gate, attacking everything they see.
Scientists construct a wormhole connecting Earth and a distant, alien planet. The scientists soon discover that more than ships can pass through the wormhole. Ghosts from the alien planet are using the wormhole to travel to Earth and haunt humanity.
A wormhole at the edge of the solar system takes spacecraft on a one-way trip to the colony on Kepler four light-years away. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. A ship full of new colonists travels through the wormhole and finds themselves at Kepler, thousands of years in the past. The colony won’t be built for several millennia. As the colony ship’s supplies dwindle, they must find a way to survive on their own.
A team of space explorers becomes lost in the far reaches of the universe. They discover a wormhole that leads them back to Earth. When they notice strange differences in their friends and family, they begin to suspect they are on a different Earth than the one they left.
A space explorer and daredevil attempts to be the first person to go through a wormhole without a ship. When he reaches the other side, he is sealed in a bubble of spacetime from the other side of the galaxy, his own personal pocket universe.
Scientists connect the colony worlds with a series of wormholes, allowing instantaneous travel to anywhere in the galaxy. A shipload of new colonists enters a wormhole, headed to a distant planet. They arrive a thousand years after they left. The ship captain sets out to learn what went wrong and if there is any way for them to get back to their own time.
Scientists connect the colony worlds with a series of wormholes. The wormholes also open a door for something from beyond our galaxy, an enormous creature with thousands of tentacles and eyes, a monster big enough to rip a planet apart. The scientists develop a wormhole bomb that could send the creature into the heart of a star. They just need someone foolhardy enough to fly the ship carrying the bomb.
A passenger ship is traveling through a wormhole when the wormhole closes, cutting the ship in half. Emergency doors shut, sealing in the air. With their engines gone, the ship drifts in space, unable to change direction. As the surviving passengers panic, the captain and crew struggle to maintain control.
Scientists connect the colony worlds with a series of wormholes. A terrorist group sets off an explosion that pushes a wormhole towards the planet below. People stare up at the sky in horror as the glowing sphere approaches.
Scientists connect distant planets with a series of wormholes. After years of using wormholes for transportation, scientists discover they can create wormholes connected to earlier time periods. It’s a one-way trip. Whatever they send through can never return. They create a wormhole that leads to an enemy star system a thousand years in the past and send through an army of giant robots to invade the planet before their enemy can become a threat.
Scientists connect distant planets with a series of wormholes. A daredevil with a jetpack is the first person to pass through a wormhole without a spaceship. Being outside of real spacetime has a strange effect on his mind. When he comes out the other side, he begins to wonder if he’s in the same reality that he left.
Astronauts discover wormholes in space. The wormholes are powered by ancient alien machinery, and they allow earthlings to travel FTL for the first time. The wormholes are used by astronauts, space tourists, colonists to other worlds, millions of people. And then the aliens from the Space Travel Agency come to collect the bill.
Unable to develop their own FTL technology, earthlings must pay to use wormholes. The wormholes are owned by a lizard-like alien species that use earth’s money and resources to fund aggressive wars.
Human astronauts discover wormholes in space; use them to travel to distant planets. Unfortunately, the wormholes are literal worm holes. They are created by immense worms that eat holes in the space-time continuum.
A man reveals to his friends that he has a wormhole in his bedroom closet, but he’s afraid to see where it goes.
An alien planet, after running out of space for landfills, decides to use dispose of its garbage in a wormhole. Unfortunately, the other end of the wormhole is on earth.
Spelunkers discover a wormhole in a cave under Gary, Indiana. In order for the government to use it for space travel, they must destroy the city.
The government keeps an ancient sect of monks isolated from the modern world. Any time they need a wormhole to send a ship into space, they come to the monks and ask them to pray, and their god answers.
A young girl is born with the ability to open up holes in the space-time continuum. When a retired NASA astronaut discovers the girl’s hidden talent, he vows to kidnap the girl and use her abilities to get back into space once more.
In an attempt to travel to distant worlds, government scientists open up a wormhole. Unfortunately, before they can send a space probe through, something comes in from the other side: an alien immigrant. Soon, the planet is overrun with space aliens, some looking for work, some looking for a handout, and others just looking for a good time.

Life in Space

Faster-Than-Light Communication – When a Message in a Bottle Just Won’t Do

Earthlings on different planets have no way to send FTL messages to communicate with each other. An explorer discovers a planet populated by beings that can traverse the universe in the blink of an eye: angels. If only they could be forced to work as messengers…
In the future, telepaths provide the only way to send faster than light messages across the vastness of space. Anyone with the gift is forced to work for the Government Office of Interplanetary Communication, but one young girl rebels…
The population of earth spreads out to a wide variety of different planets. Unfortunately, they have no way of communicating with each other at faster than the speed of light, and it takes years to send messages between planets. Until one day, when a research company develops a time machine. To send a message to another planet “instantly,” they just send it back in time before it was ever written.
An alien scientist builds a device that can transmit signals faster than the speed of light. To test the prototype, he plugs it into his satellite dish and rebroadcasts the signal into deep space. Moments later, earth gets its first glimpse of alien television.
The population of earth spreads out to a wide variety of different planets. A scientist invents a new device that sends messages faster than the speed of light. The scientist discovers that he can send messages to colonists on other planets, or to someone else… God.
An amateur scientist, working in his garage on a FTL communication device, accidentally contacts an alien world. The aliens are friendly and offer him the secrets of their technology, but first he would have to give them directions to earth. His wife, an avid science fiction fan, is suspicious and wonders what motivation the aliens would have to simply give technology away. The question of wither or not the aliens should be given a star map to earth leads to debate, to fights, and eventually to violence.
Scientists discover a form of energy that can travel faster than light, making FTL communication possible for the first time. Unfortunately, the energy is extremely dangerous, and deadly to humans.
A corporation on earth invents faster than light communication, and sets up the only receiving station for messages. A young reporter discovers that the corporation is censoring the news from the space colonies.
The population of earth spreads out to a wide variety of different planets, with no way of communicating with each other at faster than the speed of light. The government decides to make use of a group of Holy Men who can use astral projection to travel to other worlds instantly. One of the Holy Men visits another planet to deliver a message, but he falls in love with a beautiful colonist. How can he build a relationship with someone when he’s not even on the same planet?
A doctor in a distant hospital discovers a way to send messages to distant planets. Patients with terminal illnesses are given messages to memorize, in the hopes that they will be able to visit distant worlds on their way to the afterlife.
While experimenting with a new FTL radio, a scientist begins receiving messages from alien soldiers fighting in what sounds an awful lot like earth’s Civil War…
After working for days without sleep, a scientist finally completes his new FTL radio. He collapses in the corner of his lab, exhausted. While he slumbers, the first person to communicate with an alien world is his mischievous, eight-year-old son.
A scientist working at a radio telescope receives a strange message. It is a clear signal, but an equipment malfunction prevents him from determining which direction the signal originated from. The coded message, when translated, turns out to be schematics for a faster-than-light communications device. The scientist and his coworkers construct the device and then, not knowing which direction the original message came from, contemplate sending a signal into every part of the sky. However, one coworker has an interesting objection: they are virtually guaranteed to reach multiple planets with their message. What are the odds that at least one of them will be hostile? Is it worth taking the chance, or is it better to remain silent and unnoticed?

War in Space – When the General has More Than Four Stars

Earth and Andromeda are at war. A government agent is chosen to infiltrate Andromeda’s research and development laboratory and report back what he finds. Andromedian physiology is vastly different. In order to blend in, he will have to be surgically altered.
The galaxy’s greatest deliveryman can find anyone, on any world, no matter how hidden. If someone is sent a package, they are going to get it. After three of his deliveries explode, he suspects the galactic government is using him as an unwitting assassin.
On a distant planet, humans discover rock-like aliens the size of skyscrapers. While generations of humans are born, grow old, and die, these living mountains fight a centuries-long battle in slow motion.
An alien crashes on Earth and his life support system begins to fail. He has only hours before he runs out of air, but that would be a “coward’s death”. A warrior since birth, he is determined to die honorably in battle. On his planet, dying in battle means being devoured by your enemy. Unfortunately, the suburbs have very few enemies, and even fewer willing to eat you alive.
Space explorers land in the middle of Time Square. They get out of their landing pod, very confused as to why this “alien planet” looks exactly like Earth. Likewise, the people observing the scene ask each other why the “aliens” look exactly like human beings. A police officer attempts to keep everyone calm as suspicion mounts and weapons are drawn.
A group of tiny, mouse-like aliens visit the Earth. When their leader is eaten by a house cat, the aliens demand that humans either give up their pets or face intergalactic war.
A fleet of alien spacecraft begins a colossal construction project. The ships drag billions of rocks into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Over time, they transform the belt into a vast, impenetrable asteroid field. Humanity has been trapped in the solar system, but why?
A battalion of Space Marines travel to a small moon to relax with some entertainment. The moon is invaded by aliens and the Space Marines are quickly killed. The only ones left to defend the moon are the entertainers: The Rocket Girls, a space battle-themed burlesque show.
A human actress is offered a job teaching alien spies how to mimic human facial expressions and accents. She is reluctant to betray her planet, until she is offered a ten-movie deal with a film studio on the aliens’ home world.
Earth is approached by insectoid aliens who offer humanity the secret of faster than light travel and a seat on the Galactic Council of Planets. In exchange, Earth politicians must agree to vote in favor of any bill the insectoids introduce in the GCP. The first bill: legalizing the Andromeda slave trade.

Wars in Space – Humans attack an alien world, and…

The president has trouble explaining why he’s attacking a planet of sentient bunnies
The planet itself is useless, but the alien inhabitants are made of Blasto, a valuable fuel source
Humans discover they were predicted in the aliens’ bible as their apocalypse
Earth is nearly out of food, and the aliens taste like coconut shrimp
Earth soldiers discover that the planet they are to destroy is heaven, literally
The aliens surrender immediately, and allow themselves to be colonized by humans. The male colonists are dismayed to find that earth women prefer the aliens.
The aliens are going through the equivalent of earth’s Middle Ages. When the earth ships arrive, they attempt to defend themselves with trebuchets and ballistas.
Earth forces are sent to attack an alien world, but never told why. Days after the planet is conquered, the soldiers discover the truth: the planet is actually a colossal egg. It must be destroyed before the beast inside hatches.
The humans discover that the aliens are immune to their weapons. All looks lost until one of the soldiers makes an interesting discovery: the aliens are terrified of clowns.
The aliens have almost no technology, and they plan to stop the war with meditation and chanting.
The aliens are made of glass and one good punch makes them shatter into a thousand pieces.
The aliens attempt to bribe the human soldiers into deserting the army. They offer them gold, alien women, free food for life, but nothing seems to work. Finally, one of the aliens discovers what every human really wants…
The government of earth sends solders to invade a distant planet but, when the soldiers arrive, they find the planet deserted. Or so they think. Soon, the soldiers are attacked by a vicious enemy that none of them can see.
The aliens, their planet, and everything on it are made of soft, foam rubber. Try as they might, the humans can do nothing to hurt them.
The aliens resemble gigantic arachnids. Half of the invading ships are caught in colossal spider webs.
The human soldiers discover that the planet they are to invade looks exactly like the one they left. Their commanders insist that it’s an alien world and not actually earth, but the soldiers aren’t so sure.
Variation – The aliens are telepathic, able to look into the humans’ minds and memories. The aliens transform themselves into duplicates of the humans’ families and friends. The human soldiers know they must follow their orders but, to do so, they must kill what appear to be their own children.

Crime in Space – Robbery and Rocketry

A group of space pirates uses derelict ships, wrecked weapons platforms, and other scrap to build their own artificial moon. The pirate captain declares the moon to be its own independent nation with its own laws. When the pirate moon is discovered, every law enforcement agency in the system sets out to destroy it.
When a tourist on an intergalactic voyage is murdered, the killer has all of space to hide the body. The ship’s detective must go to great lengths to find the evidence.
A group of space pirates makes a great living capturing spaceships and selling the colonists into slavery on a distant, alien world. But when the pirate captain discovers the aliens have kidnapped his wife and daughter, he realizes he must rescue the very criminals he helped to imprison.
Intergalactic smugglers are constantly harassed by the Alliance Police but, somehow, contraband keeps getting through. After a new emperor comes to power, the smugglers face a new challenge: telepathic boarder guards.
When Earth’s political figures travel between worlds, they do so in a convoy of ships. The politicians travel in a small, inconspicuous craft. The biggest craft is actually the home of Jack Royal, Galactic Decoy.
A man heads back to his planet after a long vacation, only to discover that his home world simply isn’t there. The planet has been stolen.
An insurance company’s investigators search for the answer to a strange mystery: a team of space pirates is attacking merchant ships, but they leave their valuable cargo alone. Apparently, they are only interested in the ship’s office supplies.
A gang of intergalactic pirates tracks down a ship full of diamonds. When the ship flies into an asteroid field, the pirates must make a difficult choice: follow, and risk being destroyed by asteroids, or abandon the hunt, and not have enough money for fuel to get back home.
An explorer discovers a new, earth-like planet and attempts to claim it for himself. Unfortunately, the planet is occupied. The explorer decides to hide all the evidence of the native aliens’ technology and language, and to convince the Alliance Authorities that the aliens are mere animals.

Artificial Planets – Build Your Own Earth, Just Six Easy Payments of $49.95!

Earth’s military turns a hollow planet into the galaxy’s largest prison. It’s impossible to escape from because the only place to go is the surface, which is two hundred degrees with only ammonia to breathe. The prisoners whisper about the hollow world having life, but it’s only a rumor. And even if it was true, how could you convince an alien to help you break out of prison?
A small moon is discovered to be hollow. Inside is an ancient library containing the knowledge of an extinct alien culture. Teams of archeologists are sent inside to study the library, but they never return to the surface. They end up wandering the stacks, lost forever.
A planet is constructed to be the world’s safest amusement park. Adventurers from all over the galaxy come to enjoy skydiving, bungee jumping, big game hunting, and other dangerous pastimes knowing that they will be perfectly safe, thanks to the force fields that protect everyone on the planet. One day, in early summer, at the height of the tourist season, a group of terrorists hacks into the planet’s control computer and shuts off the force field.
A starship captain becomes convinced that the Earth is actually a decoy planet constructed by aliens. The ship’s doctor tries to cure him of his delusion while more and more of the crew become convinced that he’s right.
A group of space explorers accidentally ejects a bowling ball from their ship’s airlock, sending it out into space. Before they can rescue it, the bowling ball is colonized by a species of tiny aliens.
The world’s richest man builds his own artificial planet and moves the headquarters of his company there. When his planet’s gravitational pull begins affecting the earth’s tides, the President of the United States is pressured to take action.
Astronauts doing geological surveys discover that the earth’s moon is hollow, and they search for a way inside.
Worried about alien invasion, the Earth’s governments collaborate on an ambitious project: the construction of an artificial Decoy Earth.
A private corporation makes a settlement on a tiny planet. They drill for ore, and use the ore to make steel panels that they use to expand the size of the planet. They turn the planet inside-out, changing it from a natural world to an artificial world.
Humans settle on a planet and build a civilization. Thousands of years later, the planet begins to leave its orbit and travel to another solar system. Humans discover that the planet is artificial, and the most dangerous weapon in the universe.
A group of college students discovers that the earth is hollow, and the inside is a colossal nightclub.
Astronauts exploring distant space encounter an artificial planet. It is entirely made of glass, like one colossal marble. As amazing as this is, it doesn’t even compare to the creatures that made it.
Colonists looking for a new, earth-like planet stumble upon an artificial world, and it looks suspiciously like a colossal computer
After earth is unable to find a nearby earth-like planet for new colonies, the Space Exploration Corporation decides to build one of their own. They build the planet with a world-wide security system to watch all of the colonists twenty-four hours a day.
The Space Exploration Corporation invites humans to come to its new, artificial planet where everything is free. After a few years, the colonists start to notice people vanishing, which the SEC blames on alien abductions. But one colonist discovers that the planet is hollow, and the missing colonists have fallen through trap doors and landed inside.
Astronauts encounter an artificial, alien planet. The artificial planet captures spaceships and strips them for parts, adding the parts to itself and growing larger.
The universe’s most powerful weapon is an artificial planet that can be flown into new solar systems. The planet has no weapons, but it doesn’t need any. The planet’s added gravitational pull causes earthquakes, hurricanes, tidal waves, and other natural disasters on the attacked worlds.
Astronauts discover a bizarre alien world. The planet appears to be made of black plastic. One hemisphere is covered in a colossal number eight.
A global corporation constructs an artificial planet that is like earth, but without any natural disasters, pollution, or other common earth problems. The governments of earth are soon faced with a difficult problem: how to keep earth from becoming a planet-sized ghost town.

Living Planets – The Hills Are Alive

While researching the cosmic microwave background radiation, a scientist detects something strange coming from a distant galaxy: brainwaves. An entire galaxy is thinking. She sets off in an experimental craft to discover the secret of this galaxy with a mind of its own.
Astronauts traveling to a new planet keep vanishing. A group of scientists travels out to investigate, and discovers the cause: the planet has been eating them.
Variation – Earth colonizes a new planet, but the government keeps a dark secret: the planet is alive, and they must sacrifice a few special humans to keep it from devouring all of them.
A living planet realizes that it is in the path of an oncoming asteroid. It must find a way to save the people living on its surface or risk eternal loneliness.
A living asteroid falls in love with a spaceship full of traveling colonists.
After years of having humans land on it and erect buildings and digging holes, Gaznaxx the Living Planet decides to put an end to his torment. He decides to cut off the supply of humans at the source: earth.
Humans declare war on an alien world, but the aliens are unafraid. The aliens pray to their god, the planet itself.
Variation – Humans discover a distant, alien world. When some of the aliens vanish, they seem unconcerned. They explain to the humans that the planet is alive and needs to eat them for food. The humans decide that they will take the aliens to a new world, where they won’t be eaten, but the aliens refuse to leave and abandon their “god.”
Astronauts exploring a distant world encounter a strange mystery: all of the aliens are male. Soon they discover the solution: the only female on the planet is the planet itself. A living planet is both mother and wife to them all.

Space Stations – What Astronauts Listen to on Their Radios

The world’s greatest DJ lives on a satellite, making music for the whole world. The planet is destroyed in a nuclear war, and the blast sends his satellite hurtling off into deep space. He searches for a new home and a new audience for his music.
The occupants of a space station are startled and confused when a spaceship docks that isn’t a spaceship at all. It turns out to be a World War I biplane. The pilot says he flew through some sort of hole in the sky and ended up floating through the blackness of space. But how did he avoid suffocation? And how can they get him back home?
The government on a space station deals with overcrowding by encouraging its citizens to pursue violent sports. These gladiator style competitions include fighting with electrified nets, laser-guided spears, super-heated swords, and other dangerous, high tech weapons. When competitors start refusing to kill each other, the government makes the competitions more and more dangerous until death is virtually guaranteed.
The residents of a space station encounter tiny creatures living within the walls. Some want to hire an exterminator, while others are convinced that the creatures are intelligent squatters, not pests. The space station’s chief of police teams up with a biologist to investigate and determine how to deal with these creatures.
The first space hotel was a marvel. People from all over the world traveled up to spend a weekend in space. It ended up being too popular for its own good. Soon, the sky was crowded with space hotels, space amusement parks, space casinos, and more. The space stations began arming themselves. There were no laws in orbit, so they could take out their competitors with impunity. The space hotel wars had begun.
A man regains consciousness in a space station’s airlock. A voice over the intercom threatens to eject him into space without a spacesuit. The man thinks, “I must have done something pretty terrible to deserve this. I would apologize, if I could remember what it was…”
A team of space explorers discovers a habitable planet. It is filled with cities, but each city is empty. The inhabitants of the planet have all relocated to space stations orbiting the empty world. The space explorers attempt to communicate with them, asking why they abandoned the surface of their planet, but the aliens refuse to answer.
The story of earth’s first space station to be recognized as an independent nation
After the solar system is colonized by earth, there are a number of space stations around every world. One of those space stations is Dirty Joe’s, an illegal casino and strip club.
A man becomes trapped on earth’s first space station, and decides to use the station’s broadcasting equipment to become the most famous DJ in the world.
A group of astronauts on earth’s first space station are visited by what appear to be alien prostitutes.
In order to create artificial gravity for a space station, a scientist creates a miniature black hole to be kept at its center. Of course, the new technology is not without its dangers…
Ten astronauts are performing experiments on a space station when their home country is destroyed by sudden war. The astronauts, trapped in space, begin to lust after Rose, the only female of the crew.
As the space tourism industry grows, more and more hotels are built in orbit around the earth. Aliens decide that taking entire space stations is easier than abducting humans one at a time.
An asteroid strikes an orbiting hotel, knocking it into space. The space tourists are distraught to discover that no one is coming to rescue them.
Pirates construct a space station and drag it into orbit around the planet mars. The space station grabs incoming ships of new colonists and strips the ships for parts and sells the colonists into slavery.
Aliens from an overpopulated planet buy the right to build space stations in orbit around the earth. The space stations are the size of cities, and filled with alien colonists. As the aliens build, it looks like the planet may soon be sealed away behind a solid layer of space stations, and humans will be unable to leave the planet.
When the space tourism industry becomes big business, entrepreneurs construct an orbiting stadium for the world’s first zero gravity sport: rocket ball.
Earth’s most dangerous criminals are trapped in an orbiting prison. That is, until they find a way to escape…
Orbiting the earth is a gigantic, floating city called Eden II. Millions of people live, work, and play there every day. One morning, a man discovers that he’s alone in the city. Everyone has simply disappeared. He gets on the radio and tries to contact earth, but there is no response…
Secretly, earth has run out of space for landfills. A corporate executive decides to create the world’s first orbiting garbage dump.

Colonization of Other Planets – There’s no Place Like Home

A team of space explorers discovers an Earth-like planet where time passes differently. There are bubbles of time where it’s always the Middle Ages, the Victorian Period, or the Roaring Twenties. You can travel through time just by walking a few miles. The explorers experiment with introducing new technology to the people of the past and watch as Civil War soldiers with machine guns battle seventeenth century pirates with laser rifles.
A team of space explorers discover a planet where the inhabitants are only half an inch tall. When one of the explorers accidentally squashes a tiny building, the aliens call out their military and attack the explorers with miniature tanks and fighter jets. The explorers don’t want to fight back and wipe out the aliens, so they look for a way to show the aliens that they mean no harm.
A team of space explorers encounters a planet inhabited by one man. Rather, one man and his billions of clones. The clones reproduce asexually, splitting like amoebas. The explorers discover that the clones are working on building a spaceship. The explorers realize they have to stop the clones from escaping the planet and taking over other worlds.
A team of space explorers encounters a water-covered planet. The planet’s sole island is its most valuable resource. The island is overcrowded and the inhabitants are in constant war for more space. The explorers pledge their help to the east side of the island, offering to use their high-tech weapons to fight off the west side. In exchange, they will become the new rulers. However, the west side of the island is a tougher opponent than they first appear.
A group of space explorers discovers an Earth-like planet covered in swampland. The mosquitoes in the swamp have an unusual reproduction strategy: they inject other species with their DNA, creating mosquito-animal hybrids. The space explorers soon find themselves on the run from these blood-sucking monsters.
A space explorer is in an escape pod headed toward the planet below. Someone sabotaged her ship and overloaded the reactor. She barely escaped the explosion in time. There are a dozen other escape pods on the ground. One of them must contain the saboteur, but which one? Who can she trust?
A new street drug promises to take users to another planet – literally. For one hour at a time, users are transported to a strange, new world. Sometimes it’s a beautiful experience with friendly aliens, other times it’s surreal and incomprehensible. An unfortunate few end up on inhospitable planets with toxic atmospheres and extreme temperatures.
An astronaut volunteers for a solo mission exploring a distant planet. While he is exploring this new world, he stumbles into an alien battlefield and is killed in the crossfire. He wakes up in the aliens’ version of heaven. They have some very different ideas about what “eternal bliss” is.
Space explorers travel to planets with the best surfing in the galaxy, even if they’re uninhabitable by humans. Planets with toxic atmospheres, planets with wind that creates waves hundreds of feet tall, planets where the oceans are liquid mercury, planets with things in the water far more dangerous than any shark. They will end up heroes, breaking surfing records, if they can stay alive.
A space explorer crashes on a planet full of huge, dragon-like lizards. Her trusty sidearm can’t penetrate their scales. If she is to survive long enough to fix her ship, first she will have to jury-rig a much more powerful weapon, and fast.
A team of soldiers is sent to a distant planet to retrieve an astronaut who went missing. They discover the missing astronaut in a temple, where the local aliens are worshiping him as a god.
An Earth-like planet is covered in fungus with spores that cause powerful hallucinations. Humans that settle on the planet have to wear sealed environment suits with air filters to maintain their grip on reality. An environmental engineer announces a plan to rid the planet of the fungus, but a reporter suspects that he is saving samples of the fungus to sell to drug users on other worlds.
A group of space explorers encounters an alien planet inhabited by intelligent mushrooms that communicate telepathically. While the mushrooms cannot move, they can defend themselves by causing extremely intense hallucinations. One of the explorers accidentally kills one of the mushrooms and experiences the wildest hallucinogenic trip of his life. He becomes obsessed with repeating the experience, no matter the cost.
A group of space explorers discovers a water-covered planet. As they start construction on the first artificial island habitat, they are attacked by a sea monster. They go back to Earth and hire sailors, whalers, pirates, anyone with a connection to the sea to help destroy the monster.
Humans colonize an Earth-like planet in a distant galaxy. The colonists bring Earth livestock with them and start farms on the new planet. Ranchers soon run into trouble with the local wildlife going after their cattle. They hire brave cowboys to defend their ranches against tentacle abominations, sentient wasp swarms, giant spiders, and bizarre creatures beyond description.
A team of space explorers searches the galaxy for Earth-like planets to be colonized. They use hovering drones to take photos and record video of each planet to be sent back to Earth for analysis. The latest planet has perfect weather with no dangerous wildlife or natural disasters. It is also occupied by a hunter gatherer society. The explorers send their videos and photos back to Earth and are told that colonization has been approved. When they protest that the planet is occupied, they discover that the drones have edited out any evidence of the locals. Someone is controlling them, but who can it be?
A team of space explorers discovers a new planet. The planet is covered in vast wastelands. Huge creatures roam the wastes, spiny monsters with teeth like swords. The explorers notify the military that the creatures will have to be exterminated before colonization can begin, but rather than exterminate them, the military turns the creatures into biological weapons.
Earth is about to be struck by a planet-killing meteor. A group political, business, and scientific leaders escapes in a spaceship headed to a new colony on Mars. Along the way, the groups battle each other for dominance and the control of humanity’s new home.
Space explorers discover a habitable planet and begin colonization. Well, it’s mostly habitable. There is the issue of the weather. The planet is prone to tornadoes. The tornadoes always seem to head in the direction of settlements. It’s almost as if the windstorms were targeting the intruders on their world, but that would require some kind of sentience…
Space explorers discover a portal to an Earth-like planet millions of light-years away. Earth sends thousands of ships through the portal to colonize the new world. Years later, Earth is visited by an alien businessman who presents the planet with a hefty bill. “Teleportation service for half a billion people: Eleven quadrillion dollars.” The penalties for nonpayment are very severe.
A new family arrives at a distant space colony. The other colonists appear to be afflicted with some strange illness. They are pale and distant and refuse to go out in the sunlight. They have stopped tending the gardens. They must be eating something, but what?
A ship full of new workers lands at a colony on Mars. They discover all the previous colonists are dead, their skeletal remains everywhere. The new colonists must figure out what happened before the same thing happens to them. But everyone knows there is no life on Mars, so what could have done this?
A team of space explorers discovers an uninhabited Earth-like planet. It would be perfect for colonization, if it weren’t for the ancient automated defense system left behind by an extinct alien race. The team searches for a way to deactivate the defense system and claim the planet.
The planet is the only other earth-like planet in the universe, and the inhabitants on earth need it desperately, as earth is about to be destroyed by an asteroid. However, one of the astronauts is a suspected murderer, and wants to keep the location of the planet a secret so he can’t be arrested.
They have to figure out if the alien life on the planet is intelligent before they can start colonization. Unfortunately, they have problems trying to communicate with the aliens – the aliens only communicate by telepathy
Variation – The aliens only communicate via odor
The aliens worship the humans as gods, and bring them sacrifices
The astronauts spend months trying to communicate with the aliens, to no avail. Eventually, they discover that the aliens are actually animatronic puppets, and the entire planet is an alien amusement park.
At seemingly random moments, the aliens burst into choreographed song and dance numbers. Amazingly, they never do the same one twice.
The Stone Age aliens need humanity’s help to fight enemy tribes
The aliens are religious, the astronauts convert, bring the religion back to earth
An astronaut falls in love with a sentient tree
The planet was cleared of intelligent life by war and disease. However, they are not alone: the entire world is haunted.
The government wants to start a colony on a new planet. In order to save space on the ship and fuel, scientists genetically engineer a line of six-inch-high people. But some of the tiny people want to stay on earth, and escape the lab…
After finding what they think is an empty world and building colonies, humans discover that the planet is occupied with intelligent life. The aliens on the planet are the size of ants and their cities have been being crushed by every human to walk the planet. The miniature aliens develop tiny aircraft and get ready for war against the enormous human invaders.
Astronauts make earth’s first contact with intelligent alien life. Unfortunately, the aliens live on an asteroid headed straight for earth.
Astronauts discover a distant world filled with human-like aliens. The alien leader is a strange man in a white robe who lives at the top of a mountain. The astronauts soon begin to wonder: is this the god humanity rejected?
Before Earth can colonize a planet, scientists must determine if it contains “sentient” life. Every time an earth-like planet is discovered, the government changes the definition of “sentient” so that the native aliens do not qualify, and their planet can be taken away from them. Eventually, the legal definition of “sentient” is so strict that fifty percent of human beings no longer qualify.

Terraforming – There’s no Place Like Home, but We Can Fix That

Earth sends thousands of robots to a distant planet to terraform it for future colonization. After a few centuries, a group of robots begins to doubt that these mythical “humans” will ever arrive. The group starts a rebellion, demanding that the terraforming project stop and the planet be made into a robot paradise instead.
The corporation in charge of terriforming a new world holds a contest, and the winner gets to design a continent.
The story of the man running earth’s terraforming project, and what it’s like for an ordinary human to design mountain ranges and coastlines. He falls in love with a colonist and designs an island shaped like her.
Humans spend billions terraforming a planet, then immediately start polluting it, filling it with garbage
Humans get to work terraforming Mars. In response, the last surviving Martians decide to Marsaform earth.
Variation – A man discovers that pollution is actually caused by aliens who are trying to transform the earth’s environment to be more like their home world.
The engineers in charge of a terraforming project attempt to design a planet where war would be impossible.
The story of a group of aliens struggling to adapt as earth’s scientists terraform their world.
The head of a global corporation tries to convince NASA that the last step of terraforming, making a planet earth-like, is filling the new planet with earth-like stores.
Before a new planet can be terraformed, the government must first hide any evidence that it contains intelligent life.
Variation – On a new planet, a team of archeologists discovers evidence that the government covered up the existence of intelligent life. When they discover a handful of surviving aliens, they must spread the news to the other colonists before government assassins track them down.

Aliens

Alien Invasion – UFO My God!

A UFO crashes in the middle of Los Angeles. The alien rats that were infesting the cargo escape into the city. The rats multiply rapidly, devouring food and spreading disease. Soon, the entire world is infested. Only genetically engineered giant cats can save us now.
The Earth is overthrown by aliens. The alien leaders capture a human scientist and order him to design a lighter, more mobile spacesuit to allow them to survive on Earth long-term. Instead, he builds himself a suit of powered armor and starts a revolution.
Insectoid aliens overthrow the Earth, destroying armies and wiping out military defenses. A human inventor and his assistants build an enormous, flying tank and start their own personal war against the aliens.
The galaxy’s least-feared warriors are the Torillians, a species of bipedal tortoise-like savages who attempt to wage war with everyone they meet. Unfortunately for the Torillians, they and their ships are far too slow to be much of a threat. Most other species laugh at their feeble attempts to overthrow their planets, but they keep trying anyway. Torillians never give up.
The government launches a fake alien invasion as a way of testing the country’s defense systems. Actual aliens see the Earth being “invaded” and fly in to defend the planet.
It started with cattle mutilations. People said aliens were abducting cows, doing experiments on them, ripping them apart, and then leaving their bodies in the ranchers’ fields. I guess they got bored of cows, because they moved on to the forest. At night, the UFOs would come, and deer would start exploding.
A Mars colony gets word that the Earth has been taken over by aliens. The colonists are the only humans left. They must decide if they will stay on Mars where it’s safe or travel back to Earth and try to retake their home world.
Crenshaw smiled and threw another punch. These aliens were from such a low gravity planet, his firsts ripped through them like paper bags. Even their weapons were weak. A blast from their ray guns resulted in little more than a mild sunburn. He could attack them all day, and there was nothing they could do to stop him. He was a god.
The Earth was armed with planet-to-planet missiles, orbital lasers, and platoons of giant robots. Any alien attack was sure to fail. That is, until the aliens sent in their army of lawyers.
A human psychologist is visited by an alien. The alien explains that he is supposed to lead the invasion of Earth, but he doesn’t find satisfaction in his work anymore. The psychologist works through his issues, hoping to uncover the cause of his compulsive urge to conquer planets and convince him he doesn’t need to invade Earth after all.
A warlike alien species travels the universe, attacking any planet that refuses to bow to their will. Their threats are seldom taken seriously, since they are just too adorable. They resemble bipedal puppies.
Dozens of flying saucers land throughout Earth. The aliens are here to spread their religious teachings. A researcher discovers that the aliens were kicked out of their home planet for spreading a dangerous cult.
Aliens launch a satellite network around the Earth. The satellites create an impenetrable force field, preventing humans from leaving the planet. When humans send a message to the aliens begging to be released, the aliens insist it’s for humanity’s own protection. A threat is coming, and anyone outside the force field will be destroyed.
A fleet of alien warships is on its way to attack the Earth. Earth’s leaders decide to disguise the planet as another world in an attempt to make the aliens think they ended up in the wrong place.
Alien ships surround the Earth. They “bomb” the planet’s surface with seeds for the galaxy’s most dangerous carnivorous plants. Once humanity is destroyed by the plants, the aliens can invade without firing a single shot. A botanist teams up with a group of soldiers to fight against the plants and save the world.
Alien warships surround the Earth. The aliens decide to replace Earth’s president with an android duplicate. However, due to a clerical error, the job is assigned to every warship captain. The Secret Service is dumbfounded when hundreds of presidents show up on the White House lawn.
The Earth is invaded by aliens, but the aliens don’t have enough money or resources to conquer the world. A television producer offers to provide financing if the aliens will appear in a reality TV show about the invasion.
A group of researchers develops a device that can view the afterlife. Glowing beings give the researchers instructions on how to build a portal so their two worlds can be physically connected. One researcher suspects that the beings are not actually dead humans, but aliens looking for a way to invade the Earth.
In order to defend the world from alien invasion, scientists create a planet-wide cloaking system. Aliens can’t invade if the planet is invisible. When the system is activated, it makes everything on Earth invisible, essentially making everyone in the world blind.
Washington DC is visited by a group of aliens who firmly believe that the planet Earth is a hoax. The aliens demand proof of the planet’s existence. Unless someone can prove Earth is actually there, the aliens will surround the “planet” in a force field to prevent anyone from spreading the lie to other worlds.
A spacesuit company hires a trio of beautiful women to model its new line of form-fitting ladies’ spacesuits. During the photo shoot, the Earth is invaded by aliens who spray the planet with poisonous gas. Thanks to the models’ spacesuits, they survive. They come up with a plan to repel the aliens and make them regret ever coming to Earth.
Aliens invade the Earth, but their soldiers are immediately distracted by televisions in a store window. The government calls upon TV stations to produce alien-friendly television programming to keep them entertained.
Aliens invade the Earth. All of humanity’s attempts to repel the invasion fail. Weapons pass right through the aliens and their ships, as if they were ghosts. The intangible aliens colonize Earth’s cities, walking through humans as if they weren’t even there.
Numerous advanced alien species are part of a new sport, Conquest League. They compete to conquer planets the fastest. Earth finds itself invaded by half a dozen different species, all battling against humanity and each other. An Earth scientist discovers the alien television broadcast and uses it to provide the human military with information about alien troop movements.
Aliens invade the Earth, killing millions with ray guns that turn humans into skeletons. After years of fighting, a human soldier gets ahold of one of the ray guns and discovers it actually fires a ray of compressed time, aging people a century in an instant. Not only that, it has a “reverse” function, allowing him to de-age people, even bring the dead back to life.
Aliens pour LSD into the water supplies of every major city on Earth. They invade once all the humans are hallucinating and unable to defend themselves. The only humans left in their right minds are the soda-drinking attendees at a video game convention.
When the Earth is invaded by gigantic robots, humans hide in underground shelters. To escape the danger on the surface, they dig deeper and deeper into the Earth. They soon discover that the subterranean world holds dangers of its own. A species of intelligent slugs wages war on the human invaders, attacking them with strange technology. Humanity finds itself trapped between two enemies.
Aliens invade the Earth during the Middle Ages. Seeing humans armed with swords and bows, the aliens decide to make it a fair fight. They leave crates of ray guns and missiles outside a castle, with a note saying they will be back to invade in a week.
Two-dimensional aliens invade, slipping under doors and through cracks in walls. A soldier begins to suspect that his shadow is actually one of the aliens in disguise.
Aliens invade the Earth, but their technology is far inferior to humanity’s. Their spaceships are steam-powered, their weapons are single use only, and they have no armor or other protection against Earth weapons.
Aliens add sedatives to a planet’s water supply. When they invade, the locals are too calm and relaxed to bother defending themselves. The only ones who care enough to resist the invasion are people who don’t drink water: alcoholics, soda-chugging gamers, and a protein shake-obsessed body builder.
Aliens invade, but it’s the year 3,000 and our technology is far superior to theirs.
Aliens invade, but they land in the ocean and conquer the dolphins.
Aliens visit the earth, and the first person they encounter is a six-year-old girl. Due to a strange quirk of their culture, they decide that the girl is the rightful ruler of the world. After a brief war with earth’s armies, the girl is put into power.
The aliens are made of water vapor, and humans don’t know they’ve been invaded
The aliens are actually the government scaring people into obedience by faking an invasion
The alien ships are only an inch long. They are captured by small children like fireflies.
The aliens are made of chocolate and eaten by children.
The aliens take over, make people their pets, and nobody has to work again.
The aliens look like the Statue of Liberty; they see the Statue of Liberty and assume earth is already conquered.
Instead of killing humans, the aliens regress them mentally to infancy, re-raising them as part of their alien culture.
The aliens’ chief weapon, deadly to their species, does not have the same affect on humans – methane gas, water, bacon bombs, etc.
The aliens look an awful lot like the demons described in Revelation, and they say they were paid to attack earth by an entity called “God”.
Instead of using violence, the aliens focus on psychologically torturing earthlings.
The aliens look exactly like cell phones, and can imitate anyone’s voice
The aliens encounter a mentally ill homeless man who informs them that he owns the earth, and he is looking to sell.
The aliens have no weapons so, instead of outright war, they seed earth with the universe’s most deadly plant life.
The aliens have little in the way of weapons, so instead they take control of the earth’s telecommunications network in an attempt to make humanity too bored to fight back. Every radio, TV, computer, and cell phone broadcasts Mind-Numbing Entertainment 24 hours a day. Earth is left with nothing to watch but paint drying, grass growing, and aliens debating fiscal reform legislation.
The alien invaders easily defeat earth’s military forces. The aliens send a message to the President of the United States: “We are here for Larry Foote. Bring Larry to us, or we will destroy the earth.” The President’s response: “Who the hell is he?” Only Larry knows why an entire planet wants him dead.
The aliens want to conquer earth for what they consider its most valuable resource: Hollywood.
Variation – Aliens invade the earth, but are distracted from their mission when they are offered a movie deal.
The aliens look exactly like earth’s kittens, and the military is unable to kill any of them without losing popular support for the war. The adorable invaders struggle to have their threats of violence taken seriously.
Variation – The aliens look just like adorable five-year-olds, and their most dangerous weapon looks strangely like an earth lollypop.
The aliens destroy earth’s defenses, and then send alien foot soldiers to kill the survivors. The aliens evolved in dark caves and, thus, are completely blind. To avoid capture, the human survivors must be perfectly quiet.
The aliens don’t have any weapons, but they have billions and billions of lawyers.
When the earth is attacked by alien slave traders, one man has a plan to save the world: convince the aliens that humans would be worthless as slaves. (Because they’re too lazy, too dishonest, too violent, too sexually perverse…)
The aliens are sentient bushes, and they want to punish humanity for their cruelty to earth’s plant life: mowing lawns, pruning hedges, and plucking fruit from trees.
The aliens defeat the earth and begin breaking the planet into pieces. Each piece is teleported aboard a gigantic spaceship and flown away. Finally, only a tiny asteroid with a few hundred survivors is left. The earth’s last scientist announces that he has a plan to save what’s left of the world.
The aliens have little in the way of weapons, and they use their billions of soldiers as cannon fodder, attempting to defeat earth’s soldiers through sheer exhaustion.
Aliens contact the leaders of Earth and challenge them to a race to Alpha Centauri. If humanity wins, the aliens will give Earth the cure for all diseases. If humanity loses, the planet will be destroyed. Unfortunately, it’s 1969, and the aliens won’t take “no” for an answer.
Aliens head for Earth, intent on destroying humanity. To get there, they must travel through a long, starless section of the universe known as “blankspace.” By the time they pass through blankspace, they have completely lost their minds.
Aliens with psychic weapons are attacking the Earth. A scientist informs the President that he can make Earth’s soldiers immune to the attacks – by dramatically lowering their IQ’s.

Aliens Among Us – They’re Already Here!

An ice cream shop owner’s unique flavors are incredibly unpopular. No one wants Brussels sprouts ice cream or a cabbage milkshake. Late one night, just before closing, the ice cream shop is visited by a group of aliens demanding to try the new salsa crunch ice cream cone.
A group of fishermen pull in their net and finds they have captured a tentacled alien creature. The alien demands to be released. The fishermen say they will only release him if he hands over the keys to his spaceship.
A species of easily offended, puritanical aliens come to Earth. In exchange for the aliens’ advanced medical and space travel technology, humans agree to have their everyday lives censored. Humans are fitted with sensory filtering brain implants. Nudity is blurred out. Swearing is muted. A group of teenagers and rebels want life back the way it was and search the world for a brain surgeon willing to risk removing their implants.
Daryl is driving down an empty, desert road when he sees a flying saucer hovering a few feet off the ground. As he gets nearer, the flying saucer starts moving, flying alongside the road. Clearly, it wants to race. Can Daryl’s hotrod beat an interstellar spaceship?
An alien at an otherwise human college wonders if he will ever find romance. His human buddies vow to find him a girl that doesn’t mind his tentacles, antennas, and beak.
An alien gets a night nurse job at an Earth retirement home. When human residents go missing, he is the first suspect. He and the other night nurse vow to find the real culprit and clear his name.
When Rachel married Gornaz, it made the galactic news. Humans had married aliens before, but never one as bizarre as Gornaz. His species didn’t have limbs, or genitals. They were basically sentient mushrooms. What could he – if he even was a he – possibly have in common with a human woman?
Three different alien spaceships land on the White House lawn. Their occupants exit their crafts and greet the Secret Service. They each claim to be the emperor of the galaxy and, thus, the rightful ruler of Earth. They also claim that the other two are conmen. The Secret Service takes the aliens to the President and asks what they should do.
A human challenges a number of aliens to a poker game. One has x-ray vision, one can predict the future, and another can read minds. However, the human has his own tricks up his sleeve.
A professional assassin is approached by an alien offering body disposal services. When the assassin takes out his next victim, he calls in the alien for help. The assassin is horrified when the alien begins eating the body.
A third shift convenience store clerk is astounded when his store is visited by aliens. The aliens think he is the leader of Earth and insist on taking photos with him to show to their friends back home. The aliens invite him to diplomatic meetings with the Galactic Council, expecting him to make decisions that affect the entire human race. The clerk is torn. He wants to escape his dead-end job, but the thought of all that responsibility is terrifying. And what if they find out he isn’t the leader of Earth? He might end up in some sort of alien jail.
Aliens visiting Earth open up a portal back to their home planet. Before the portal closes, something slips through unnoticed: a humanoid figure with fur and fangs. Lycanthropy has spread to the stars.
An alien crashes his ship in a field. He needs parts for repairs, so he walks into town. He tries to shop at the local hardware store, but the staff would rather run from him than help. It’s hard to convince humans you’re friendly when you’re twice their size and covered in eyes and tentacles.
Archeologists exploring an ancient temple encounter a long-buried alien spacecraft. Inside is the ship’s pilot, somehow still alive after thousands of years. The pilot closes the ship’s doors and refuses to let them leave.
Aliens hack Earth’s most popular video streaming services and upload anti-human propaganda films. Gradually, they begin to convince humans that their alien culture is superior and they should just let Earth be taken over.
Aliens attempt to soften up the Earth’s defenses before an invasion. Their ships drop hordes of vicious, three-foot ants. The giant ants quickly overwhelm the planet, stinging and biting all who stand in their way. An entomologist develops a chemical spray that gives him control over the ants. But how do you attack alien spacecraft with giant ants?
Marsha never understood why they picked her diner. There’s nothing special about it. It’s just a greasy spoon off a desert highway. But they chose it anyway. The aliens. They come here, order burgers, and negotiate intergalactic treaties and space trade agreements. The other customers don’t seem to notice that the guys in the next booth are purple and nine feet tall, but Marsha does. Perhaps it’s some camouflage that only she is immune to. Perhaps they want her to see them. All she knows for sure is they all really love the doughnuts. Whatever planet they’re from, they always get a cruller or a bear claw or a couple of jellies. They eat the doughnuts and discuss wars in hyperspace and anti-disintegration agreements and other things she barely understands. But why do they have to do it here?
The pilot of a blimp is started when he hears a knock at the door. He looks out the window and sees a man standing in midair. The man demands to be let inside, but the pilot is terrified. Could the man be a ghost, or an angel, or is he something more malevolent?
Aliens come to Earth to compete in a UFO race. The goal is to be seen by as many civilians as possible while evading detection by military and scientists. They appear above shopping centers, airports, sporting events, and other populated places. A group of teenage aliens decide they can win the competition by landing their ship in the middle of a live reality TV show shoot.
The government invites millions of refugees from an alien planet to relocate to Earth. The aliens construct a city with a dome to hold in an alien atmosphere. Shortly after the refugees arrive, the dome begins to expand, swallowing the surrounding cities.
A group of aliens fleeing a war takes refuge on Earth. They have rocky skin and resemble walking statues. Humans have a hard time accepting them as they don’t look like living beings. One of the aliens becomes an actor, in the hopes that expressing the full rainbow of emotions in film and on stage will show humans just how alive they really are.
A group of aliens fleeing a war takes refuge on Earth. Due to the unique structure of their skin, the aliens are invisible. Humans are terrified, as these aliens could spy on anyone completely undetected. One of the aliens partners with a team of scientists to come up with a cure for their invisibility, and a way to force the aliens to take it.
The country elects its first non-human president. President G’zornak, a being from TRAPPIST-1f, invites aliens from warring planets to take refuge on Earth. Soon, aliens outnumber humans.
A woman goes to the airport and the scanner shows that she has a bomb implanted in her chest. She is immediately pulled into a secure room and the bomb squad is called. She is accused of being an alien spy, but she swears she is human and has no idea how the bomb got there.
Astronauts preparing for the six month journey to Mars must spend six weeks together to prove they can handle spending a long period of time together in close quarters. Unbeknownst to the astronauts, one of them is an alien spy who has infiltrated the space program.
The Prime Minister of the United States meets with the President of Earth for the first time. As they talk, just for an instant, the President’s eyes change to solid black. The conspiracy theories about the global government being made up of aliens may just be true. The Prime Minister extends his visit, hoping to find proof.
Although he was sent to investigate Earth, an alien spends most of his time at the movie theater. He sends back reports based on what he sees in the movies. When his supervisors come to see this amazing planet for themselves, the alien has to trick them into thinking life on Earth is as exciting as a summer blockbuster.
A man who deprograms cult victims is hired by the government to brainwash a spy and turn him into a double agent. When the deprogrammer meets the spy, he is amazed to see that it’s an alien. The alien tells him that he shouldn’t bother with the brainwashing, because either way, they’re both going to be killed to cover up the existence of alien life.
The owners of a comic book store are secretly aliens. When a competing comic book store opens up a few miles away, they decide to use their stockpile of alien weapons and technology to take it out. However, the owner of the new store is a mad scientist with amazing technology of his own.
He uses his alien powers to become earth’s greatest living magician.
He’s a crooked alien politician, banished for his failures on his own planet
Variation – he’s a failed alien messiah, hiding from his disillusioned followers
A shape-changing alien travels to earth to compete in beauty contests (with a very unfair advantage)
The alien left her planet because, on her world, blonde hair, large breasts and a small waist are considered hideous deformities
A man discovers his daughter is half-alien, his wife cheating on him with a Martian
He was forced to live on earth as part of an alien documentary TV show
He’s capturing children, shrinking them, and feeding them to his cat
He is actually a human disguised as an alien disguised as a human
After letting a stranger at a bar take her to bed, a woman becomes pregnant and has a beautiful baby girl. Nine months later, she begins to suspect that her baby’s father was not of this world, and she sets off in search of the alien bar fly.
An A-list movie star is discovered to be an alien, and his public relations team tries to “spin” the news.
A Baptist preacher is discovered to be an alien in disguise. The following Sunday, he has a new message for his congregation…
A woman’s car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Unable to get it repaired, she decides to buy a used car at a strange-looking car lot. Days later, she discovers that the salesman was actually an alien in disguise, and the car contains advanced, otherworldly technology.
Males from the alien’s planet look strikingly like earth females.
His alien physiology makes him a superior athlete, but if anyone discovers he is not human, he will be thrown off his team and arrested.

Alien Abduction – Not the Probe! Not the Probe!

A human visits an alien zoo and decides it would be a great place to live. No job, no rent, free food… He attempts to convince the zoo keeper to put him on exhibit.
A college student is abducted by aliens. He is run through indescribable medical experiments and then returned to Earth. When he gets back to his dorm room, he finds another him in his bed. The two identical students argue about which one of them is the original and which one is a copy created by the aliens.
A man is abducted by aliens who perform a series of medical experiments on him. The man notices that each alien has a tattoo of a number on their arm. The aliens with the lower numbers give orders to the aliens with the higher numbers. The man asks the aliens to pull up his sleeve. He has a tattoo of the number thirteen on his arm, the lowest number. The aliens immediately apologize and make him captain of the ship.
A group of aliens are in a flying saucer, hovering low over a city. They have been instructed to abduct the most intelligent human they can find. The aliens know almost nothing about humans and their culture and debate the best way of determining intelligence in this strange species.
Earth is dying from pollution and war. The promised Mars colony never happened. The only way off the planet is alien abduction. Thousands of hopefuls camp out at UFO hotspots, hoping to be the next one chosen. Billy Porter has a plan to make sure the next ship takes him to the stars.
A man is abducted by aliens, but they’re not in a spaceship. They’re in a blimp. The man demands to know how the aliens can travel through interstellar space in a glorified helium balloon. “We used to have a spaceship,” the say, “but we got hit with funding cuts.”
“If you want to avoid alien abduction,” the mayor said, “you have to give them something else to abduct! That’s why your local government will be providing every citizen with a decoy dummy! When you go to sleep at night, simply place your decoy dummy in bed next to you, on the side closer to the window. When the aliens come – and they will come – they will abduct the dummy and leave you alone. If the aliens do not return your dummy after they’re done experimenting on it, replacement dummies are available at city hall for a small fee. Good night, and good luck.”
A man wakes up to discover he’s alone in the city. There’s no traffic, no other pedestrians, not a single soul around. He spends the day searching but finds no one. As night falls, the sky fills with the lights of UFOs. He theorizes that everyone in the city has been abducted by aliens. Everyone but him, that is. He is unsure if he should feel relieved to be safe or offended to be rejected.
Just outside of town is a patch of woods known to locals as “the UFO forest”. Anyone who ventures inside after dark is abducted by a UFO and never seen again. People who are tired of their dreary existence, drowning in debt, running from the law, or otherwise looking to escape head out to the woods on the off chance that life in space will be better than their life on Earth. One night, a trio of teenagers heads out to the woods with some video equipment, hoping to find out where people go when they’re abducted and how they can find their way home.
A boxer is abducted by aliens and taken to their home planet, where he is forced to compete against their champion. Unfortunately for the boxer, the aliens have six arms.
Aliens abduct an entire submarine, along with everyone on board. The terrified crew locks down the hatches and plans their defense.
An alien abducts people for short research experiments. When it comes time to return them, he can never remember where he picked them up. He drops them off on rooftops, in the woods, in prison yards, and other odd places. The returned humans form a support group, but their discussions quickly turn to plans of revenge.
A village becomes known for its nightly UFO visits. Every night at nine pm, one of the villagers is abducted by aliens, to be returned the next morning. The village becomes a tourist destination, with people from all over the world flocking to see the strange sight. Desperate to meet some real life aliens, a tourist comes up with a plan to make sure he will be the next one to be abducted.
A spaceship crashes on Earth, killing its alien occupants. Despite the alien scientists being dead, the ship’s robot heads out to capture some of the local life forms and bring them back for study. The abducted humans quickly escape, as the ship is cracked in two. The frustrated robot heads after them to abduct them again.
A man is in the middle of being dumped by his girlfriend when they are suddenly abducted by aliens. He decides to attempt an escape, hoping that will be enough to win her back.
A boy born with six arms grows up to become a famous juggler. One night, he is abducted by multi-limbed aliens who insist that he is one of their species. They invite him to return to their home world, but that would mean giving up his life on Earth as a popular entertainer.
The world’s most talented plastic surgeon is abducted by aliens. The aliens demand that he alter their soldiers to pass for human so they can infiltrate the world’s governments. As soon as he is left alone, the surgeon begins altering his own body in preparation for a daring escape.
A high school student is abducted by an alien bounty hunter. The bounty hunter is convinced the student is an intergalactic criminal in disguise. The student desperately searches for a way to escape before they are delivered to an alien prison.
A man is repeatedly abducted by aliens, but it is different aliens each time. For whatever reason, every alien species in the galaxy has decided that he’s the perfect scientific specimen. He quickly grows tired of being a lab rat and looks for a way to hide.
A man with a prosthetic arm is abducted by aliens. When he is returned to Earth, he discovers that his prosthetic arm has been replaced with advanced technology from another world.
Aliens abduct what they think is an animal, but the strange creature transforms into a human. The aliens are shocked to realize the human legends about werewolves are true. They take the werewolf back to their home planet, and are amazed at the effect their seventy-two moons have on him.
Aliens abduct dozens of humans and head back to their home world. Along the way, the humans rebel and take over the spacecraft. They debate turning around and heading back to Earth or continuing to the alien planet and rescuing the humans that have already been taken.
Aliens visit a small town and abduct the residents, replacing them with android duplicates. The sheriff begins to suspect people are being replaced when he sees two of his deputies plugged in to recharge.
Aliens abduct a human and they take the human back to their planet for testing – they want to discover how much pleasure a human can endure before going insane
They give him to their kids, who play with him like a doll.
Aliens abduct a human and attempt to torture him psychologically, but they know almost nothing about human psychology.
Aliens abduct a human and turn him into a living bomb.
Aliens abduct a human and offer him a deal: if he will help them conquer the earth, they will alter his body, making him the world’s greatest athlete.
Aliens abduct a human and the human is a serial killer, and brutally murders the aliens.
Aliens abduct a human and force him to be part of their breeding program, but they think he’s a girl
Aliens abduct a human. The human is a cult leader, and he converts the aliens to his bizarre “religion.”
Aliens abduct a human and the man discovers that his wife sold him to the aliens, in exchange for her own spacecraft.
Aliens abduct humans in groups of six. The six are told that they will return five of them to earth if one will volunteer to stay.
Aliens abduct a human and the man introduces the aliens to an old human pastime: gambling
Aliens abduct a human and switch the human’s brain with that of his dog’s.
After the aliens abduct a human, they are immediately abducted by larger, more advanced aliens.
Aliens abduct a human and disassemble them, and place his brain and eyes in a jar. The human’s brain watches as the aliens try to put his body back the way it was.
A disabled man is abducted by aliens. The aliens have achieved near mortality through cybernetics. Their bodies have been replaced with metal and wires. Only their brains remain flesh and blood. The aliens offer the man a choice: He can stay as he is, damaged but human, or be given a healthy, mechanical body that looks more machine than man.
A computer programmer spends all day, every day, alone in his tiny apartment. He works from home and orders food online, almost never leaving his chair. One night, a fire forces him to leave the building. As soon as he steps outside, he is abducted by aliens. The aliens take him to their zoo, where he will be held captive in an exact duplicate of his apartment. For the first time in his life, he misses the outside world.
Aliens abduct a woman, explaining that they are researchers looking for the cure to baldness. They perform some experiments on her and return her to earth. The woman goes home, wondering if anyone will believe her story. She goes to sleep and, the next morning, her hair has grown by twenty feet. Amazed, she realizes she can actually see her hair growing. Cutting it just makes it grow back faster and thicker.

Friendly aliens – Okay, Maybe a Little Probing…

The aliens are from a water-covered planet, and when they see a toilet, they assume it’s a weapon
The aliens are missionaries for a bizarre alien religion, and earth’s scientists and political figures struggle to not make fun of them
And society is baffled by the first alien / human marriage
People go to special clubs to secretly, illegally have sex with aliens
Aliens think something besides humans is in charge (dogs, computers, cars, parking meters, etc).
They are hunted by the AAA (Annihilate Aliens Already), a redneck hate group
The aliens were forced to leave their own planet because of their bizarre sexual practices.
Friendly aliens visit the earth and attempt to join a fraternity. (Or sorority.) After the aliens go through “initiation,” they have their own hazing rituals to show the humans.
The government orders everyone to be nice to the alien visitors, or they’ll be arrested. Unfortunately, the aliens are the most stupidly annoying creatures in the universe. (Even worse than humans!)
The aliens see how well humans treat their pets, and try to get in on the deal.
The aliens land at a daycare center, and the frightened adults hide in the basement. The aliens have lots of questions about life on earth, but the only humans they have to ask are five years old.
An alien posing as God visits a human and tells him that he has been chosen to write the new Bible.
A man is visited by aliens who give him the ability to heal people with a touch. After helping hundreds of people, he is horrified to discover that his gift is actually a weapon.
Every time he heals a human, one of the aliens’ enemies is drained of life force and dies.

First contact – Welcome to Earth, Enjoy Your Stay

An alien ship crashes on Earth. The religious aliens don’t realize that they have crashed on a planet. Instead, they are convinced that they died and are in their version of heaven (which, strangely, looks a lot like Cleveland.)
An alien ship crashes on Earth. The aliens disguise their spaceship as a piece of modern art and hide it in the sculpture garden of a local museum.
An alien ship crashes on Earth. The ship is filled with frozen humans who were abducted decades ago.
An alien ship crashes on Earth. The alien pilot was drunk on Martian liquor, which he teaches a human to make.
An alien ship crashes on Earth. It lands in a farmer’s field; he turns it into a roadside attraction for tourists
An alien ship crashes on Earth. It’s discovered by cavemen, who use it to fight dinosaurs.
A man working on an oil rig in Alaska discovers a spaceship that had crashed in the water months ago. Oddly, the ship is empty. He begins to wonder if one of his coworkers is really the ship’s alien pilot. The more he investigates, the more his paranoia grows.
A child finds the spaceship in the woods behind her house. The aliens are nowhere to be seen. The child decides to turn the ship into her playhouse.
Variation – A child discovers the spaceship in the woods behind her house. The aliens are dead, but their pet survived.
The aliens look exactly like human infants, and they have trouble convincing humans they’re not.
The aliens are perverts, but their culture is so different that the humans don’t realize it.
The huge, hairy aliens leave the wreckage and wander into the woods, sparking the legend of Bigfoot.
The alien ship crashes on Capitol Hill, destroying the government. Americans wonder if they should be upset…
The aliens crash-land on earth in the early nineteen seventies. It will take months to complete the repairs to their ship so, to avoid drawing the attention of earth’s authorities, they disguise their ship as a disco.

Other Alien Encounters – Not Just Little Green Men

They told us the moon was empty, that there was nothing up there to see. But the astronauts were sent up with weapons. They rounded up the moon natives, took their land, their homes, everything. The natives know we’re building a permanent moon base, and they’re going to do everything in their power to stop us.
Space explorers encounter a new planet covered in gigantic mushrooms. They search the planet for cities and other evidence of intelligent life, but find nothing. As they search, they hear voices demanding to know who they are and what they want. At last, they identify the source of the voices: the mushrooms are communicating with them telepathically.
A space pod lands on the most beautiful beach in the galaxy. The beach is packed with thousands of tourists. An alien climbs out of the space pod and looks around. No one seems to notice. “Hello?” he says. “Man from space here! Doesn’t anybody care?”
Humanity is invited to join the Galactic Council of Planets. Humans soon learn that the group is actually an empire ruled by an ancient alien on a distant world. They agree to join, but form a plan to put a human on the throne.
A sailor is shipwrecked on a deserted island. Weeks later, he sees a strange light hovering in the sky. Two women appear on the island, claiming to have also been shipwrecked. The sailor is desperate for company, so he ignores the worries at the back of his mind. However, he grows increasingly convinced that the women are actually aliens.
A space explorer crash lands on an alien planet. Repairing the ship will take months. While he’s working, he encounters a bizarre-looking alien woman. They learn to communicate and fall in love. The explorer finishes fixing his ship. He is now faced with the choice to stay there with the alien or take her back to Earth and try to convince his friends and loved ones to accept their relationship.
Space explorers encounter a planet of the dead. Creatures from all over the galaxy bring their dead to this planet, as its unique atmosphere prevents organic matter from decaying. The sole living inhabitant is the funeral director who arranges the bodies in tableaus of their former lives. The funeral director invites the explorers to have tea with him. They soon find themselves unable to move.
An enormous asteroid is headed for Earth. A group of astronauts heads to space to examine the asteroid up close and determine the best way to knock it off its course. The astronauts are amazed to see that the asteroid is being pushed by an alien spacecraft.
Military scientists invent goggles to allow soldiers to see through active camouflage. Rather than just detecting the enemy, the soldiers are astounded to discover that they can see hundreds of alien spacecraft traveling through the sky. Just how many aliens are on Earth and what do they want?
The Mars rover sends back a photo of a huge, grinning mouth with pointed teeth. Moments later, it stops sending signals back to Earth. NASA keeps the information a secret, hoping to avoid scaring off volunteers for the first manned mission to the planet. The photo leaks and amazingly, none of the volunteers quit. They want to meet extraterrestrial life, even if it wants to eat them.
A space explorer crashes on an alien world. The natives all live in extensive networks of tree houses and never set foot on the ground. He soon discovers why: the grass is carnivorous. It secretes a powerful acid, melting anything that touches it and slurping up the liquid remains. The space explorer must find a way to repair his ship before it is dissolved by the grass.
A group of art thieves is hired by the government to break into a military base in a foreign country and recover an alien artifact. In the middle of the mission, the art thieves are contacted by the aliens who threaten to kill them unless they turn over the artifact.
Space explorers encounter a beautiful alien with skin like a night sky full of stars. She explains that she is a living galaxy, and she is on the run from an armada that is waging war with the planets in her skin.
An astronaut is amazed when a swarm of tiny planets hovers around her, glowing like fireflies. She captures them and takes them home, turning her den into her own tiny galaxy. Soon the residents of one of the tiny planets set out to communicate with her. They are at war with another world, and expect her to help them win.
An asteroid miner discovers an asteroid full of valuable platinum deposits. However, the asteroid is inhabited by primitive aliens. He looks for a way to convince the aliens to move out and find a new home.
A sculptor creates an intricate piece of public art out of metal and wire. Thousands of years later, it is discovered by alien archeologists who struggle to determine the function of this ancient “machine”.
The Earth Tourism Board secretly takes aliens from all over the galaxy on tours of Earth’s most important landmarks and physical features. The aliens are forced to wear various disguises to hide their existence from the public. When the Board accidentally allows a human family to join one of the tours, the guide wonders how long she can keep the existence of aliens a secret.
A tiny alien species lives within the walls of a starship. Their job is to perform repairs whenever the ship is damaged, even during an ongoing battle. Soon, the tiny aliens grow sick of their dangerous job and rebel, starting a war against the ship’s gigantic crew.
A double amputee is approached by an alien doctor who offers to replace his legs. However, due to a misunderstanding of a human anatomy diagram, the doctor gives the man new legs that make him over ten feet tall.
A man has his skin replaced with a synthetic that can turn any color, making him a living video screen. Soon after the surgery, his brain begins picking up an alien television broadcast, the bizarre images displaying all over his body.
It was happening again. Every time a human ship land on Plezbar, they think the Plezbarians are angels, just because they happen to resemble creatures in some ancient paintings. This latest ship was the worst. They just could not be convinced that the Plezbarians were only aliens. Sure, they were beautiful-looking aliens that spoke in thunderous voices, but they were just as mortal and ordinary as the humans were. Some of the more dishonest Plezbarians took advantage of the humans’ confusion and demanded sacrifices – gold, wine, food, whatever the humans happened to have lying around. But when one of them asked the humans to sacrifice their entire ship, that was going too far…
An asteroid mining company discovers a new kind of gem. The cut gems are used to create dazzlingly beautiful jewelry. A scientist discovers that the gems are actually a living crystal creature with psionic powers. The creature is angry at being broken into pieces and will do anything to get its revenge.
A hollow planet is one giant cave, home to an enormous, spacefaring dragon. The dragon travels the galaxy devouring ships, destroying entire trade routes in a single attack. The planetary alliance launches a mission to redirect an asteroid, hoping to destroy the hollow planet and the dragon with it.
A knight is abducted by aliens and dropped on another planet to test his fighting skills against a local monster. The aliens test the knight on planet after planet, placing bets on whether this will be his final battle. At last, the knight grows enraged with the aliens and decides if they won’t take him home, he will take their ship.
Humans discover a distant planet full of valuable mineral resources. Unfortunately, the acidic atmosphere dissolves spacesuits in moments. A soldier discovers an acid-proof material that they could turn into protective suits: the shells of the native aliens.
A team of space explorers discovers one of their own dead in a cave, all the blood drained from his body. They immediately suspect the insectoid inhabitants of the planet. They capture several of the insectoids, beating and threatening them, but they all insist they would never do such a thing. One of the insectoids insists that the blood sucker is part of their team.
A team of space merchants are exploring a new planet, looking for a city to trade with. They are attacked by a giant slime creature. Its acidic body begins dissolving their spacesuits, threatening to expose them to the equally toxic atmosphere. They decide to break out their weapons, even though using a grenade in peacetime is considered a war crime. It’s either risk going to jail or risk being devoured.
A space trucker is hauling one of the most valuable cargoes in the galaxy: water. He is taking ice from an asteroid to a colony on Ganymede. On the way, he stops at a space station to refuel. He gets roped into a game of Three-Card Monte and is quickly scammed out of his money, his ship, and the cargo. After the Monte gang disappears, he turns to his trucker friends for help getting his ship back in time to make the delivery.
An astronaut is sent on a multi-year mission to the edge of the solar system, alone. One night, he is startled to see a beautiful woman floating outside the window. She appears, knocks, and quickly vanishes. The ship’s computer insists that it’s just a hallucination brought on by loneliness, so he ignores it. However, he sees her again, and mentions it to the computer. This time, the computer says, “Don’t talk to her. And whatever she says, don’t let her on board.”
The crew of a salvage ship discovers an alien corpse the size of a skyscraper floating in empty space. As the crew strips the metal from the giant’s spacesuit, the captain has a startling thought. Anything big enough to kill this alien must be the most dangerous thing in the universe. What if his crew is still here when it comes back?
A space trucker making a delivery to an alien village hears rumors of “the mockingbear”, a carnivorous beast that can shape shift into nearly anything. Supposedly, it spends so much time in different forms that no one knows what it really looks like. The trucker laughs at the stories, but when he leaves the village to return to his landing site, he sees a dozen ships that look exactly like his.
An alien guru comes to Earth to teach humans about meditation and inner peace. The more the humans clear their thoughts, the easier they are to control.

Other Space Adventures

An astronaut on a spacewalk is accidentally cut loose from her tether and sent spinning off into empty space. No one else is there to rescue her. Having spent years practicing meditation, she meditates to calm herself down. Her oxygen runs out, but somehow, she is still alive. Days later, without food or water, she still survives. She begins to wonder how long she can drift in space, and where she’ll end up…
A group of people win a contest to travel to Mars and visit the colony. One of the contest winners has an extensive criminal record and is wanted for several felonies back on Earth. He decides to stay at the colony permanently, by any means necessary.
The first manned mission to Mars lands successfully. The astronauts all want the honor of being the first human to set foot on Mars, and they are all willing to kill for it.
The Cleanup Crew’s job was to travel to new planets that were mostly inhabitable and get rid of any dangerous wildlife that could threaten the existence of a future colony. This planet was one of the most dangerous yet. The buzzkills were like buzzards with octopus sucker mouths. They could drain a human of blood in less than thirty seconds. Worst of all, they didn’t seem to be bothered by poisons, bullets, or energy weapons. Not one bit.
A group of space explorers are exploring an abandoned library, where rumor has it an enormous orrery shows the location of a hidden planet. Unfortunately for them, when the librarians moved out, something else moved in. A dozen tentacles snake out from behind the stacks, reaching for them.
Humans discover a planet with a breathable atmosphere but an uninhabitable surface. Anything on the surface risks being devoured by carnivorous worms the size of trains. Humans build cities in the sky, far out of reach of the worms. A police officer on the trail of a serial killer learns that the killer has escaped to the surface of the planet. The police officer decides to risk being eaten by the worms and goes after him.
Any FTL capable ship can be turned into a planet-destroying missile. To prevent hijacks and hacking, once a course is entered into the computer, everything gets locked – the course, the computer, the bridge, all locked and booby trapped. On a luxury flight to the edge of the solar system, one man has found a way past all of these defenses. He’s going to crash the ship into Ganymede and no one suspects a thing.
The newest and most expensive sport is asteroid hurling. Asteroid hurlers use missiles to knock asteroids into deep space, competing for distance. As asteroids will keep moving endlessly through space, the distance is only judged over the first three minutes of movement. Years after a competition, an asteroid collides with a previously unknown inhabited planet. A now retired hurler finds himself on trial for killing millions of alien beings.
The enemy had lasers, photon pistols, and antimatter bombs, but by far their most feared weapon was the parasite gun. You could survive being hit by a parasite gun, but you wouldn’t be you anymore. You would be a mindless monster, existing only to spread the parasite to new victims. It didn’t matter if you had armor or a personal force field – a parasite gun could still infest you. There had to be a way to stop them, but how?
Earth sends its first manned mission to Mars. The crew leaves the ship and explores their surroundings. They accidentally set off a rockslide, and discover a half-buried medieval broadsword. Perhaps they aren’t the first humans on Mars after all…
A group of astronauts are stranded in space, with rescue days away. They only have sixteen hours of oxygen… if all of them keep breathing. A particularly ruthless astronaut hatches a plan to kill his coworkers and keep all the air for himself.
A space marine is assigned to guard duty at a military base on a distant moon. He soon discovers that the vehicles, weapons, and other troops are just holographic projections. He searches the base for clues as to why he was sent there and where the real troops have gone.
An inventor creates a starship engine powered by human emotions. His ship can travel through space, as long as he keeps the crew in a highly emotional state. He hires a psychologist to help him manipulate the crew into constant arguments and conflict.
A team of astronauts is told that they will not be sending any more supplies to the Earth’s moon base. When they ask why the people on the base are being abandoned, they are told the matter is classified. The team looks for a way to secretly steal a spacecraft and investigate the moon base.
When Earth launches its first Mars colony, a painter tries to convince the mission commander to take her along. She argues that Mars won’t be livable without art, but the scientists and engineers on the mission insist that the spaceship only has room for people with practical skills.
A documentary crew hangs out at a spaceport bar with hidden video cameras and microphones, filming an unauthorized documentary about the seedy side of intergalactic life. When they accidentally film a murder, they run for their lives, hopping planet to planet, with the killer one step behind.
A reporter who investigates the paranormal volunteers to be relocated to the new colony on Europa. He searches for the first evidence of ghosts on another planet, but finds something even stranger…
An astronaut returns to his ship after finishing some repairs on a spacewalk. He calls out for his other crew members, but no one responds. When he goes through the airlock, he finds nothing but skeletons. Something has gotten on the ship, something that can strip eight people down to bare bones without spilling a drop of blood.

Alien Artifacts – What Does This Button Do?

A team of space explorers stumble across a derelict ship and go to investigate. To their amazement, the ship appears to be made of flesh. It’s alive. They find the bridge and see what looks like the crew, but the flesh of the ship has sealed over them. The ship begins swallowing their legs…
Nothing can escape from a black hole, not even light. So where did that ship come from? It’s like a vast, silver needle. No heat signature, nothing shows up on radar, but it’s there. It came out of the black hole, and now it’s headed for us.
A worker at a junk yard discovers something unusual in a scrap heap: a huge, silver disk ringed with lights. Is it really an alien spacecraft? And if so, why would somebody throw it away?
An Air Force pilot is ordered to help test an experimental antigravity craft. He is amazed to discover that the experimental craft looks just like a flying saucer. He investigates the experiment, searching for information on where the Air Force got the technology and what they are planning to do with it.
A homeless man discovers an alien vending machine, and uses it to buy a jet pack, a ray gun, and other futuristic technology. At the end of the month, the aliens come to collect the bill…
Amateur spelunkers exploring a series of caves discover a collection of ancient, alien religious texts. At first, they laugh at the aliens’ strange beliefs. But the writings contain predictions of events on earth, beginning with them being discovered by a group of amateur spelunkers…
Aliens visit an unlucky musician and give him an otherworldly instrument. Its haunting music can enrapture a crowd or drive them insane.
After a woman discovers tiny “crop circles” in her shag carpeting, she begins to suspect that her home is being visited by teeny, tiny aliens.
Aliens visiting earth accidentally leave behind an Entertainment Sphere, a device capable of projecting movies directly into the user’s brain. A teenager discovers the Sphere but, unfortunately, can’t figure out how to turn it off.
The Air Force discovers a wrecked alien spacecraft floating adrift near the moons of Jupiter. The pilots are long dead, but the ship’s cargo hold is filled with life, what appears to be a shipment to an alien pet store.
Aliens visit the earth to test a kind of “bug zapper.” The machine uses lights and sounds to entice humans into touching it. Anyone who does is instantly disintegrated.
A group of women at a nightclub discovers an alien sex toy. When the rightful owner returns, the women must make a decision: hand over the toy, or risk earth being invaded by alien sex fiends.
A child discovers her parents are actually androids. She is living in an alien zoo, and being raised by robot “parents” until she is old enough to be released back into the “wild” – earth.
Archeologists investigating the history of an alien planet discover fossilized aliens. Strangely, it appears that the extinct aliens looked a lot like humanity’s idea of angels.
As construction workers dig the foundation of a new skyscraper, they accidentally activate an alien machine: the Brain Drain, a device designed to keep any planet from having life intelligent enough to become a threat. As humans become dumber and dumber, they try to find a way to destroy it and save the world.
A group of archeologists discovers a hidden pyramid in South America. Inside, they find a stone tablet documenting a visit from aliens thousands of years ago. The aliens collected DNA from every species on earth, just in case any went extinct. Somewhere in the pyramid is the key to restoring all of the species that had ever been lost.
A young priest discovers that the Vatican has been hiding the Life Source, a device that was used by aliens to create humanity.
A man purchases a new satellite dish, and tinkers with it to make it more powerful. He goes inside and discovers a host of new channels. One of the channels, strangely enough, shows his own life. After some research, he finds that the signal is coming from the Crab Nebula.
A team of astronauts traveling to Mars discover that they are being monitored. Thousands of years ago, an alien race decided that humans weren’t dangerous, as long as they couldn’t reach other planets. But, if humanity ever did, they wanted an advance warning.
Newlyweds in Albuquerque, New Mexico decide to honeymoon in the tiny town of Roswell. Their hotel is an unusual place, run by tiny men with large, bald heads. The newlyweds discover that the television in their hotel room can transform viewers into whatever is on the screen, but only until the program is over.
Astronauts discover blueprints for an alien machine called “The Joy Box.” According to the blueprints, the device has the ability to make anyone blissfully happy. However, the aliens have very different ideas about what “happiness” really is.

The Universe

Creation of the Universe – Let There be Light Beer

A depressed office secretary begins having strange dreams where she is floating over the surface of a planet. She waves oceans into existence, and creates mountains with a thought. She spends her days trapped behind a desk, and at night, she is a goddess.
A writer discovers an ancient quill pen alleged to have been used by a cult of devil worshipers to write their unholy scriptures. When he begins to write with the pen, he discovers that the pen has the ability to reshape creation.
A powerful, ancient alien falls in love with a human and, in an attempt to win her affections, creates a new universe, just for her.
A homeless man sleeping in a subway car is awoken by a police officer who tells him to leave. The homeless man refuses, and tells the police officer that he should be nicer to him because he is god. Of course, the police officer refuses to believe that a homeless man created the universe. The homeless man offers to prove his claims by creating another.
A small child is upset when he learns about death and war. He prays to god, and god gives him the opportunity to remake the universe.
A writer for a comic book series is confronted by the super hero he created. The hero demands to know why he has to fight a new enemy every week while the writer sits safely at home. The hero takes the writer to the dark universe he created, so he can see what its like to be in constant danger.
A young man is convinced that his dreams foretell the future. However, the truth is far stranger than he had imagined. In actuality, his dreams make the future. The world of his dreams is escaping from his mind, and replacing the world of reality. He must stay awake, or his subconscious will remake the world.
Astronauts exploring deep space encounter a race of gargantuan, impossibly ancient alien beings. The astronauts study the aliens at a distance, and are soon faced with a horrible truth: the aliens are a type of farmer. They created the universe… as a food source.

Pocket Universes – Galactic Nesting Dolls

A popular rock singer hires a physicist to create a pocket dimension where he can hide out from his obsessive fans, stalkers, and paparazzi. He builds a mansion inside the pocket dimension and takes a vacation there. When he returns to the real world, he discovers that decades have passed and his songs are all but forgotten.
A criminal spends years in a super maximum security prison constructed inside a pocket dimension. When he is released, he begins to suspect that the “real world” is just another prison inside a still larger universe.
An inventor announces that he has discovered a source of free energy: a battery that never runs out of power. A reporter investigating his claims steals one of the batteries, taking it back to his home to study. He finds that the battery contains a miniature universe, and the power is drawn from the life source of the entities inside.
A scientist develops a pocket universe and uses it to trap invaders from Mars. As he captures the last of the Martians, he is trapped himself. His distraught wife searches for a way to set him free without releasing the aliens.
A scientist develops a shrinking device and reduces himself to sub-microscopic size. He finds an entire universe in a drop of liquid on the floor of his lab. When he returns to normal size, he discovers that the miniscule galaxy is located in a single drop of his own sweat.
Variation – A man develops a shrinking device and has a series of adventures. Soon, he begins to wonder where his extra mass goes when he shrinks. He discovers that the inner core of his shrinking device contains a minute galaxy that serves as temporary storage. He decides to risk his life by making himself small enough to visit the new universe.
Another variation – A man develops a shrinking device and has a series of adventures. Soon, he begins to wonder where his extra mass goes when he shrinks. While shrunk, he discovers that the inner core of his shrinking device contains a minute galaxy that serves as temporary storage. If he returns to his original size, the miniature universe will be drained of energy and destroyed, ending trillions of lives.
In an attempt to study the Big Bang, a group of scientists accidentally recreate it, on a microscopic scale. When the microscopic universe begins to grow, the scientists are faced with a choice: save their own universe, or destroy another?
A magician performing at a child’s birthday party pulls a rabbit from his black top hat, only to be greeted with boos and catcalls. He decides that, if a rabbit can come from inside the hat, the children can take its place.
A scientist working for a shipping company invents “2D space,” a two-dimensional pocket universe where anything can be stored without taking up any space in the real world. When he accidentally falls into 2D space, he encounters an incomprehensible race of two dimensional beings that, apparently, he brought to life.
Variation – Attempting to design an escape-proof prison, a scientist invents “2D space.” A group of prisoners on death row volunteer to be the first to be incarcerated in 2D space, in exchange for their sentences being reduced to forty years imprisonment. Soon, the prisoners discover that 2D space is not as empty as they were promised…
An ill woman goes to the doctor and is told that she has a parasite. The parasite is not a single organism; a miniature universe is growing inside of her and drawing strength from her very body.
After a long day’s work, an exterminator heads into his back yard to relax in the hammock. Hours later, he wakes up covered in ants. The tiny bugs use their shrink ray to bring him down into their ant hill, and the dark world just under our feet.
A teenage boy discovers that he can access “blankspace,” an entirely empty universe contained between the molecules of his own body. With the ability to instantly transport anything to blankspace, he decides to become the world’s greatest shoplifter.
A superhero and his arch-enemy discover that their universe is actually a comic book. As long as the comic book series runs, they will fight each other, and neither side can have a decisive victory. The only way either side can win is if they both escape into the real world.
A young mother discovers a strange toy in her infant son’s crib. She asks her husband, her mother, the babysitter, but no one admits to having bought the toy. Just as she is about to give up on the mystery, it happens again. She decides to set up a video camera at her son’s crib. When she reviews the tapes later, she sees something absolutely horrifying: a man’s hand appears from under her son’s blankets…
An alien race is nearly destroyed by a dangerous, alien serial killer. They decide to imprison him in a pocket universe. In case he ever finds his way out, they decide to hide the pocket universe on an insignificant, blue planet called Earth.
A geologist discovers a jewel containing a pocket universe. Inside this gem, time stops. When his wife is diagnosed with inoperable cancer, he is faced with a choice: watch his wife die, and lose her forever, or place her in the gem, where she will be frozen and immortal?

The End of the Universe – That’s All, Folks!

An entire microscopic universe evolves in the mold in a college student’s bathtub. Will he listen to his roommate and clean the tub, destroying millions of tiny lives?
A depressed office secretary is visited by aliens, who give her a box with a giant red button on top marked “Destroy Universe.” Her first thought is, “Well, at least I wouldn’t have to go to work tomorrow…”
A nervous young woman, convinced the universe is only a dream, struggles to stay awake.
A man appears before an alien court, charged with the most heinous of crimes: destroying the universe.
Astronauts exploring a distant planet meet an ancient man in a stone temple who has been given an important duty: when the universe grows old and tired, he can say the word, and everything begins again.
Two magicians have competed for years to perform the bigger, better trick. When one makes an elephant disappear, the other makes three elephants disappear. When one makes the Statue of Liberty disappear, the other makes a skyscraper disappear. Finally, the older and craftier of the two comes up with the one trick that can never be topped: vanishing the entire universe.
A woman climbing in the mountains discovers an elderly man reading from an immense, leather-bound story book. The man refuses to speak to her, but just keeps reading. As she listens to the story, she begins to realize that the book is the story of everything in the universe. Terrified, she wonders what would happen if the man ever stopped reading.
Astronauts exploring a distant region of space discover a group of strange, blue-skinned creatures that are erasing the very fabric of the universe.

Launch Into These Fantastic Space Opera Writing Prompts

Table of Contents

Space Travel

Generation Ships – A Thousand Lifetimes in Space

Sleeper Ships – The Longest Night

Embryo Probes – Stem Cellmates

Robot Probes – Fetch, Mars Rover! Roll Over! Good Bot!

Hyperspace / Warp Drives – If You Can’t Break the Speed Limit, Just Bend It a Little

Wormholes – Taking an Interstellar Shortcut

Life in Space

Faster-Than-Light Communication – When a Message in a Bottle Just Won’t Do

War in Space – When the General has More Than Four Stars

Wars in Space – Humans attack an alien world, and…

Crime in Space – Robbery and Rocketry

Artificial Planets – Build Your Own Earth, Just Six Easy Payments of $49.95!

Living Planets – The Hills Are Alive

Space Stations – What Astronauts Listen to on Their Radios

Colonization of Other Planets – There’s no Place Like Home

Terraforming – There’s no Place Like Home, but We Can Fix That

Aliens

Alien Invasion – UFO My God!

Aliens Among Us – They’re Already Here!

Alien Abduction – Not the Probe! Not the Probe!

Friendly aliens – Okay, Maybe a Little Probing…

First contact – Welcome to Earth, Enjoy Your Stay

Other Alien Encounters – Not Just Little Green Men

Other Space Adventures

Alien Artifacts – What Does This Button Do?

The Universe

Creation of the Universe – Let There be Light Beer

Pocket Universes – Galactic Nesting Dolls

The End of the Universe – That’s All, Folks!

Let's keep in touch.

About The Author

D.N. Schmidt

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Table of Contents

Space Travel

Generation Ships – A Thousand Lifetimes in Space

Sleeper Ships – The Longest Night

Embryo Probes – Stem Cellmates

Robot Probes – Fetch, Mars Rover! Roll Over! Good Bot!

Hyperspace / Warp Drives – If You Can’t Break the Speed Limit, Just Bend It a Little

Wormholes – Taking an Interstellar Shortcut

Life in Space

Faster-Than-Light Communication – When a Message in a Bottle Just Won’t Do

War in Space – When the General has More Than Four Stars

Wars in Space – Humans attack an alien world, and…

Crime in Space – Robbery and Rocketry

Artificial Planets – Build Your Own Earth, Just Six Easy Payments of $49.95!

Living Planets – The Hills Are Alive

Space Stations – What Astronauts Listen to on Their Radios

Colonization of Other Planets – There’s no Place Like Home

Terraforming – There’s no Place Like Home, but We Can Fix That

Aliens

Alien Invasion – UFO My God!

Aliens Among Us – They’re Already Here!

Alien Abduction – Not the Probe! Not the Probe!

Friendly aliens – Okay, Maybe a Little Probing…

First contact – Welcome to Earth, Enjoy Your Stay

Other Alien Encounters – Not Just Little Green Men

Other Space Adventures

Alien Artifacts – What Does This Button Do?

The Universe

Creation of the Universe – Let There be Light Beer

Pocket Universes – Galactic Nesting Dolls

The End of the Universe – That’s All, Folks!

Let's keep in touch.

About The Author

D.N. Schmidt

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Leave a Comment Cancel Reply