All Questions

For my non European readers, there is excerpt of what the GDPR means: (emphasis mine) The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy for all ...

So, I've got this idea for a short story. Some researchers find a forgotten manuscript hidden locked away in an ancient tomb. While they are working on it one of them pastes part of the text into a ...

You wake up tomorrow and it's Wednesday again. Everybody remembers it, but whatever was physically done today is undone. Your favorite mug, which the dog knocked over is un-broken. The kid down the ...

Let's say a time traveler from the year 2100 comes back to the year 2015. He has a very important message: [horrible thing] is about to happen soon, and he wants to warn us so we can avoid/prevent it....

Yesterday my 7-year-old daughter asked me: Why can't I do magic for real? I answered: because of the law of conservation of energy! And I briefly explained this law. Thus she grumbled "a single ...

My hero lived his usual life until recently, when he realized that Magic actually exists. So far he has been granted levitation for a short period of time and invisibility for several hours. Both ...

I am time traveller with aim to make world better. Last time I went to the past, all I heard was: "Kill Hitler!" So I went to the past and I must tell you, April 1945 was pretty loud in Berlin! ...

Say you have a hollow sphere, about the size of a (small) grapefruit, comprised of a (let's say red) top half and a (let's say white) bottom half. There's an articulated lid, and an LED on the front. ...

Jimmy is an Eldritch Monstrosity. Jimmy has a Red Ball. Jimmy wants someone to play with him and his Red Ball. All of Jimmy's friends are busy trying to Overturn the Cosmic Order and bring Chaos ...

I just got shoved through a stargate onto a planet I don't know. I was told the gate would open again in exactly one Earth year. I wasn't carrying anything; I don't even have my watch. How do I know ...

I live in a world where magic is common. Most people have enough magic to do simple tasks like lighting a candle or healing minor injuries. Higher magic is very rare, and those individuals mostly ...

I recently played my way through the Mass Effect game series, and one of the ideas I found most intriguing was the emphasis placed on "time capsules" sent from one cycle to the next: not only did ...

I want to make a short story about an Earth just like ours except it's commonly accepted that at the age of 43, the government allows people to have a llama in their house and the government pays for ...

Dragons are a grand classic of fantasy. For this question, let's assume we're talking about the following stereotype: hatches from an ostrich-sized egg and can grow to mountain size if nothing limits ...

Disclaimer: I have edited this question quite heavily to clear up the initial confusion about its scope and intent. Sometime in the near future, there have been some innovative inventions in the ...

Some hundreds of years ago, all humanity was removed from the Americas. In fact, most humans are gone from the world altogether. In the intervening time, nature has overrun the formerly human ...

Warning picture showing dissected Russian Doll My theory I believe that Russian Dolls reproduce asexually. They are born pregnant. At the time of birth, the outer doll dies. What is now the outer ...

Everyone suddenly disappears from earth except 35 people randomly scattered wherever they were before everyone disappeared. How long would it take on average for 2 or more people to meet? What other ...

While exploring a dwarven/dwemer ruin in Skyrim, it occurred to me that the puzzle I was solving made no sense: a series of levers accessible from the direction of the entrance that each caused a wall ...

Often your Towel is something which is very useful to carry around with you, especially in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where you are taught to upgrade your Towel by, say, reinforcing the ...

Yes, I realize this question is a bit ridiculous, and there are no cases of it in reality (that I can find), but with a bit of truth twisting, could it theoretically be possible? In my fantasy world ...

In a world where time travel is possible, but has not been invented yet, would travelers from the future come back to prove it exists? Surely, they would bring that technology back in time to let the ...

Chaos plagues the land. In the West, the King in Orange blusters and bloviates endlessly in barely comprehensible gibberish. Perhaps he is attempting to call forth the Elder Gods? In the East, the ...

The internet is a mesh or "net" of computers, all constantly establishing and re-establishing connections with each other. For this reason, only temporarily do servers go down, before they are back up ...

Over the course of history humanity rode several kinds of animals to war: horses, camels and elephants being the most common. However, bears are not amongst them. So I was wondering, if they could be ...

The power of True Names over demons is unbelievable: A Lamashtu demon can drain you of your blood in under 5 seconds, blend into shadows, and travel at the speed of darkness. Yet it will crumple like ...

Santa is Satan, after all the clue is right there in the name. But why? What reason would the font of all evil and the generally unpleasant one have to pretend to be a jolly fat man and give away ...

A common topic in alternate history fiction works is the question what would have happened if a major war had been won by the other side. These usually focus on the events after the war, and the ...

A recurring theme is how an artificial intelligence that was built with completely reasonable and positive goals instead does great harm to the world. However I'm now thinking about the reverse: A ...

So when I say everything, I mean everything. Humans, animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, all dead. If the bacteria and other detritovores and decomposers can't decompose anything since they themselves ...

Rynn is not flashy at all. In fact, you would be forgiven to think she's a bit of an introvert. Sure, the people in the town are strangely reluctant to talk to you about her, but you are a newcomer, ...

DISCLAIMER: Any resemblance to other starships (living or dead) is purely coincidental. The starship 'Exciting Undertaking' is a brand new ship about to set off on a five and a bit year mission to ...

How many humans are needed in order to sustain and grow a steady population in a habitable area? Assume resources are adequate and the environment is favorable. To further refine this question, let'...

***** Xenobiology expedition 'Profundity': Log entry 504 ***** Glass Ants are a fascinating species. We discovered them on an arid desert world last visited by humanity aeons ago. They seem to have ...

Creating an entire world is a daunting prospect, though something I've thought about often. Ideas about different regions, religions, people, history and relationships all blending into a cohesive ...

I've got a group of magical people living mostly incognito in an ancient society. They look and act exactly the same as regular people, but they are really magicians, and a side effect of having those ...

In the 1955 science fiction short story, The Tunnel under the World How would I know if my consciousness had been uploaded into a miniature robot living in a replica town? What would be the most ...

Joe is an average bloke, who has a passive superpower that he's lived with all his life. People believe everything he says. Implicitly, unquestioningly and absolutely. If he says that black is ...

In order to define the best vehicle these inputs have to be taken into account: The zombies are the classical ones, "the walking dead" ones are a perfect example (definitely killed only by headshot, ...

Inspired by this question about a time traveller. So, I've travelled to the medieval age. Think 12th / 13th century Europe. Unlike the time traveller in the other question, I did bring batteries for ...

It's been a good year for me as an Evil Overlord. Lots of princess kidnapping turned into sizable ransoms, several of my Doomsday Devices were sold for high prices at auction, and my Minions have been ...

Mechs are really just giant usually bipedal walking tin cans with their human pilot inside. I mean, shoot the legs and they can't move much anymore. Not really realistic. Regardless, in a futuristic ...

I am a Dragon and I have an infestation problem in my world. Currently, I am the single one of my kind and your representation of a dragon in movie Desolation of Smaug is fairly accurate only there's ...

Yup. All my pigeons are now spoons. I knew my court alchemist was a sore loser, but I still think it's inappropriate to do that for a chess game. He vanished and I no longer have any means to ...

As is well known, all of Santa's presents are manufactured by elves at the North Pole. However, a lot of presents are protected by various IP rights. Be it Adidas clothing, a DVD of the newest ...

T-Rex Forever LLC has a mating pair of Tyrannosaurus rex. They're a bit shady on how they got them, time travel, cloning...they won't say. Third-party biologists and paleontologists have examined ...

I'm developing a simulation where characters, "users", are interacting over a virtual communication network. "Users" have the option to engage in any activity they want at any time, as long as the ...

In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Thirty Days", there was a planet made completely out of water, which is the inspiration for this question. However, that planet was held together by an artificial ...

Which body in the Solar System is the best candidate for being an artificial construct, placed there by a Kardashev Type II Civilization? Some notes: The purpose of this body is to monitor earth, ...

In settings with space travel we often see stories that rely on ships encountering each other, such as space piracy (which means you need to know where to wait in ambush), or distress signals that ...