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[ferreiradaselva]

I'm writing this topic to share with you my resources for writing a science fiction story.

Science Fiction Sub-Genres

Sub-Genre	Description
Military Science-Fiction	Applies to stories that depicts armed forces at war, influenced by the advanced technology, featuring soldiers as characters.
Cyberpunk Science-Fiction	The plot is often centered on a conflict among hackers, artificial intelligences, and corporations(see corporatocracy), on a near distopic future.
Soft Science-Fiction	The focus is the human interaction, their relationships and fellings, placing in the background the technological details and physical laws.
Hard Science-Fiction	Feature a technological emphasis and it is scientifically precise.

Themes and Concepts

Transhumanism - Is a emerging philosophy that analyzes and promotes the use of science and technology, especially biotechnology, neurotechnology, and nanotechnology, to overcome human limitations (intellectually, physically and psychologically) and thus  improving the human condition.
Artificial Inteligence - Is a branch of the science devoted to seek methods to develop rational capacity of humans into artificial beings, making them able to think.
Biorobotics and Cybernetics - Biorobotics refer to the study of the creation of robots that emulate or simulate living biological organisms, it is also used in reverse: making biological organisms manipulatable and functional as robots. Cybernetics is an approach for exploring regulatory systems, their structures, constraints, and possibilities. It is applicable when a system has a closed signal loop, that is, it gives information to the system and recieve information from the system. The control and communication between biological organs and a machine is an example.
Terraforming and Colonization - Terraforming of a planet, moon, or other body is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying its atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology to be similar to the biosphere of Earth, in order to make it habitable by humans. The colonization of Mars is an example.
Space Travel -
Hyperspace -
Cyberspace -
Alien Invasion -
First Contact -
Ancient Astronauts Gods -
Astrobiology -
Von Neumann Architecture -

Military Hierarchy
If your are writing a military plot, you will need ranks("rates" to be more right). In Science-Fiction, the hierarchy used for space fleets is the hierarchy of the Navy, and it is often based on the British Royal Navy. An good example is the hierarchy of Honor Harrington.

Creating Alien Species
The evolution process works different in different conditions. If a creature was shaped in a different world, it will, most likely, be different from the creatures of Earth. Unless you give a good explanation about the similarities between the alien specie and the terrestrial creatures(humanoid alien, in this case), like in StarCraft(Protoss, Zergs and maybe the Humans are creation of the Xel'Naga), or like in Alien(Xenomorphs, Predator, Space Jockey, and Humans are anatomically close), you need to be scientifically reasonable when creating your alien:

Article: Creating scientifically plausible alien life-form


There are more, but I will translate for english later... 

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

please use spaces in between letters and the initial parenthesis

e.g. it's not(this

it's (this)

[Capntastic]

The problem with using those wiki pages as resources is that a lot of them (like hyperspace) are just lists of how other science fiction franchises implement them.

What's more, unless you're doing Hard Scifi, realistic implementation of (technology/aliens/physics quirks) isn't anywhere near as important or interesting as what is initiated by it.

[SundownKid]

I don't see how this is that different than TVTropes, being that it's just a list of tropes. Maybe it would be better off with a list of actual places for science fiction related art and writing.

[Oskuro]

Two sites I find invaluable:

StarDestroyer.Net

Atomic Rockets

[moi]

If you go this way your story will be boring and cliche
science fiction should be about exploring original ideas rather than trying to exploit tropes.

this kind of encyclopedic work would be more suited to fantasy

[Oskuro]

Actually, putting some work into making a story internally consistent is the hallmark of a good writer.

You need to know the rules before you can break them. Or else the story comes up as an incoherent mess.


Of course, all the resources in the world won't help if you don't have an interesting story to tell.

science fiction should be about exploring original ideas rather than trying to exploit tropes.

No, stop, don't go there. A genre is not "about" anything.

The only requirement for a piece to be "Science Fiction" is to have fictional scientific/technological elements as an important part of the overall structure.

Apart from that (Which is only a label, nothing else), it can be about anything. About any story or theme you wish to explore.

[moi]

Actually, putting some work into making a story internally consistent is the hallmark of a good writer.

There is a difference between making a story internally consistent and this

Military Hierarchy
If your are writing a military plot, you will need ranks("rates" to be more right). In Science-Fiction, the hierarchy used for space fleets is the hierarchy of the Navy, and it is often based on the British Royal Navy. An good example is the hierarchy of Honor Harrington.

And yes a genre is always about something but I won't debate this

[ferreiradaselva]

I think Oskuro got the point. You can make an original plot of science fiction, but to be science fiction you will need to be consistent and loyal with the science.
For example, if you will create a story with a thinking robot, and make philosophical questions about what is being human and what is not, you will need to understand what is Von Neuman Machine, and even read about WHAT IS and IF DOES EXIST consciousness (belive me, this word is very hard to define).

[ferreiradaselva]

this kind of encyclopedic work would be more suited to fantasy

But fantasy is the genre in which you do not need to bind  yourself to anything!

[Oskuro]

Depends. Tolkien, for example, bound himself pretty tightly to his pre-designed fantasy universe (which he designed to fit in a bunch of fantasy languages he had come up with. Linguists are such geeks).

Your mileage may vary, but I find his storytelling isn't as strong as his world crafting.

J.K. Rowling, on the other hand, didn't pre-define much of her universe, which suits her more flexible writing style, but leaves a sizable amount of inconsistencies in the Harry Potter series.


So yeah, fantasy is like any other genre, only that you use the word magic where you'd use the word science. A lot.

moi said:

And yes a genre is always about something but I won't debate this

I would debate, but the Wikipedia article has a very comprehensive explanation, with plenty of references. Bolded bits for your pleasure:

Genre is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or entertainment, e.g. music, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented and the use of old ones are discontinued.

Mind you, I'm not saying you are wrong in your definition, but rather that it isn't being applied to the right scope.

For example, while Sci-Fi encompasses any and all stories with the faintest of scientifical/technological elements, if you were to refine the definition, to, for example, science-fiction procedural action romance, then you'd be right, under such tighter definition, stories that fall under said label have to be about something specific.

In other words, genre is a bitch to define. As the Wiki article points out, there's been plenty of discussion on the subject, including this little gem:

The phrase "tyranny of genre" comes from genre theorist Richard Coe, who wrote that "the 'tyranny of genre' is normally taken to signify how generic structures constrain individual creativity" (Coe 188). If genre functions as a taxonomic classification system, it could constrain individual creativity, since "the presence of many of the conventional features of a genre will allow a strong genre identification; the presence of fewer features, or the presence of features of other genres, will result in a weak or ambiguous genre identification"

 

[Graham-]

If you go this way your story will be boring and cliche
science fiction should be about exploring original ideas rather than trying to exploit tropes.

this kind of encyclopedic work would be more suited to fantasy

I think it's all right to line up sources if you find them interesting. Generally it's a good idea to base your work off those that came before you. That's how a medium grows. Whether you bend your work to be personal is a separate question.

That's a burn to fantasy btw. I don't think you even intended it.