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1500 questions
34
votes
9 answers
Why would shapeshifters choose to keep an original form?
In any modern story nowadays, shapeshifters always have an original form; Andalites from Animorphs or Mystique from X-men to name a few. It raises the question of why something that can change forms would even bother with an original form. Ignoring…
TrEs-2b
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34
votes
7 answers
How does an AI keep its Human Pets Happy?
It is late in the day, and humanity has made the fateful step: digital transcendence for some. The last few weeks before the Singularity were singularly chaotic, with widespread violence by opponents and supporters alike, and such rapid change that…
Serban Tanasa
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34
votes
6 answers
How would a city styled like Venice be built with lava instead of water?
Imagine a Venice like city, but instead of water, it had lava/magma flowing through it. Would this be possible? Materials? Society changes?
The Man
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34
votes
6 answers
What's the angle of repose for dead zombie bodies?
I'm writing a story where the superhuman heroes fight hundreds of thousands of zombies. The zombies are fast and agile and completely surround the heroes. Dead zombies pile up around them until the zombies are jumping down on top of them. The heroes…
Connor Garcia
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34
votes
12 answers
Velocities in space without using massive numbers
The story I'm writing is about an intragalactic war and is told from several perspectives including the CO of a small warship. Because space is massive, I have run into an issue with presenting distances and speed in a way that makes sense to the…
Imperialist_Hotdog
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34
votes
20 answers
Survive the full moon in a country largely populated by werewolves
You're planning to move to the rich country of Lycania (names are a work in progress, ok?), a country as big as the USA plus half of Canada, where you have been offered a good position which would make you earn far more than your current job, giving…
Michele C
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34
votes
28 answers
Why would space traders pick up and offload their goods from an orbiting platform rather than direct to the planet?
I'm outlining some ideas for a game I'd like to write, that at its core is about interplanetary space-trading (amongst other things, but that's not relevant to the question).
For project-scope reasons I don't want to go down the route of…
Moo-Juice
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34
votes
14 answers
Is mathematics a truly universal language?
The quote has many forms, but is basically "mathematics is a universal language." My question is if this is true? If we met aliens could we use mathematics to talk to them?
The fact that we could show them we know what 10 is doesn't seem like much…
chaiboy
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34
votes
17 answers
Pragmatically, what is the ideal shape for enchanted jewelry to take?
Enchanted jewelry is a major mainstay of basically any genre of fiction involving magic. It comes in many forms, but the concept is the same: wear it, and it gives you certain powers or protects you in some way.
Which got me wondering: there are…
Cyrus Drake
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34
votes
31 answers
A subset of humanity is immortal, how do I stop them from financially dominating?
Modern earth, no magic. Only difference is that a small percentage (~1%) of the population are biologically immortal, they can die by accidents/murder/etc but are immune to old age and disease (they will spend forever in perfect health).
My question…
cypher
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34
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19 answers
Why do my monster minions all have obvious weak points that instantly kill them?
A malevolent force is lurking the shadows creating monsters to be its army and take over the world. WHY in the world does it put a highlighted weak point on all of them? It makes sense from a writers' and heroes' perspective: each enemy has a…
LiveInAmbeR
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34
votes
11 answers
How would a female immortal be able to hide while keeping their name down the centuries?
A common trope with immortality is that the immortal character hides their true nature by faking their death every so often and pretend to be one of their descendants. They end up adding a "III" or "IV" to their name and claim to have a "strong…
user2352714
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10 answers
Can we get rid of all illnesses by a year of Total Extreme Quarantine?
Earth-Year: 2618.
Location: Planet Hope, Proxima Centauri.
Terraformation status: 97.8% Earth-like.
Population: 128.596.
The residents of this planet live in a paradise-like environment. The gravity and atmosphere is almost identical to Earth. 25%…
Neinstein
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34
votes
20 answers
My planet has a long period orbit. How can I make the seasons change faster in order to shorten the length of a calendar year on it?
I wanted a habitable planet around a binary star system, so I conjured up a system that let me have one.
The problem that I'm facing is that the goldilocks orbital parameters for this planed ended up being 6.5 au from the stars barycenter, with an…
Darth Biomech
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34
votes
11 answers
How can I indicate a third dimension on a map of outer space?
I'm working on a map of several star systems (with the stars, planets, etc. not to scale with the map), and I'd like to show that they don't all lie in the same plane. Some orbits are perpendicular to the plane of the viewer, while others are flat,…
HDE 226868
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