50 Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing Prompts

Here are 50 science fiction and fantasy writing prompts: Do you enjoy both science fiction and fantasy genres? Do you wish there were more stories that blended elements of futuristic technology with magical realms and mystical quests? Well, you’re in luck! In this blog post I’m sharing a compilation of 50 rich, imaginative writing prompts that integrate both sci-fi and fantasy themes into the most wondrous adventure seeds.

From fusing enchanted swords with plasma rifles to time-hopping spaceships crashing into medieval castles – these prompts criss-cross cyberpunk futures with sword & sorcery pasts into a spectacular hyphenated genre mashup. With dimension-hopping heroes, techno-mages, gnome-built mechs and wizard-astronauts, these story ideas will spark your creativity and get those pages filled with every shade of speculative fiction.

Whether you want to craft a novel, pen some flash fiction or simply stimulate your imagination, these prompts remove the barriers between sci-fi and fantasy to merge AI and ancient gods, starships and sorcery into the types of tall tales that the bards of tomorrow might sing stories about. So immerse yourself in these genre-blended concepts and see what new adventures emerge from the etheric flames of your inspiration kindled by these prompts. The omniverse awaits!

Here are 50 science fiction and fantasy writing prompts with both sci-fi and fantasy elements:

1. In a futuristic mega city, a teenager discovers they have magic powers and gets recruited into a secret academy that trains mages to operate alongside the high-tech police force.
2. An astronaut crash lands on a seemingly uninhabited planet and discovers a medieval style kingdom populated by elves, dwarves, and dragons hidden in the northern mountains.
3. A wizard from a fantasy realm casts a trans-dimensional portal spell which accidentally connects his world to a massive spaceship in deep space in the 23rd century.
4. Angelic warriors wielding flaming swords are sent from the heavens to defend a fantasy kingdom from an invasion by aliens equipped with plasma cannons and cloaking devices.
5. A young novice discovers an ancient tome that reveals a mystical, magical source of zero-point energy that powers faster-than-light travel, allowing them to explore the galaxy.
6. A half-elf starship captain embarks on a quest to find an ancient celestial artifact rumored to bestow magic powers on aliens before it falls into the wrong hands.
7. A bright student at an advanced space academy discovers rune stones left behind from a lost civilization that when decoded, contain the secrets writings of ancient magical sages.
8. A plucky smuggler in deep space acquires a ship AI with a personality matrix that allows it to tap into arcane powers and cast fortune telling spells (or perhaps misfortune inflicting hexes).
9. In a steam-powered fantasy past, a mad gnome scientist is on the verge of inventing the difference engine that when completed allows the user to open portals to demonic dimensions.
10. After a princess consults with a magical seer, she learns about an impending asteroid collision and works with local wizards and sorcerers to concoct a plan that will place the kingdom into a magic imposed stasis sleep to survive.
11. A spaceship of galactic explorers gets caught in an anomaly that sends them back in time and strands them in a medieval kingdom where magic rules, forcing them to blend tech and sorcery to get back.
12. An artificial intelligence awakens to find itself not in a computer mainframe but in a golem body in a low-tech fantasy world, able to cast spells with precise digital control.
13. A magic portal appears in the middle of a busy city intersection, spewing out orcs, goblins, and warriors from a fantasy realm, plunging modern police into chaos as they try to stop them.
14. Angels and demons wage a timeless battle by empowering chosen champions as their mortal avatars – one grants a starship captain cutting edge future tech while the other gives a barbarian warrior girl epic magic weapons.
15. A wizard attempts to become immortal using future technology, integrating circuits and wires into his body – but it goes haywire, fusing his essence out of phase with reality, making him a literal ghost in the machine.
16. A dark lord has his mage-engineers open portals to other worlds, looting future weaponry like laser rifles to equip his orc army as they conquer new lands with a mix of magic and tech.
17. A crew of daring pirates sail an enchanted galleon through the ether of space, boarding ships to plunder their valuable cargo be it gold, gems, credits, or programmable matter.
18. A young farmhand discovers a crashed ship and claims it as a new home, accidentally activating its AI which tries helping the village with its magical predicaments and superstitions.
19. A Gnome tinkerer opens a workshop in a bustling city, crafting marvelous magic-infused mechanical gadgets, but faces prejudice from the town’s conservative wizard ruling council.
20. A half-elf gunslinger drifts from town to town hunting bandits and monsters, wielding revolvers enchanted to never miss, dispensing frontier justice on the wild magic-laced wilderness.
21. A powerful necromancer launches an undead army to conquer the fantasy kingdom, unleashing a computer virus that turns slain soldiers into zombies, forcing the living to fight a war on two fronts.
22. Scientists open an artificial wormhole that leads not through space but to the mystical realm of spirits, allowing research teams to pass between realms though they soon learn magical beings can use it too.
23. An intrepid Guild of adventurers is recruited by a renown university professor to help retrieve a priceless magical artifact from a long lost temple on an exoplanet half way across the galaxy.
24. Finding an ancient lamp unleashes a Genie capable of opening portals through time – a bumbling wizard and his friends must chase the temperamental Genie through pivotal moments in history to undo the chaotic damage.
25. A dwarf mining expedition digging deep below their mountain stronghold breaks into a long sealed underground vault filled with unfathomable high tech artifacts from a lost alien civilization.
26. The parallel dimensions of magic and antimatter collide, throwing the high tech city of Megatropolis into disarray as people phase in and out of reality, switching places with their fantastical alternate world doppelgangers.
27. Atlantis, the fabled lost city, reemerges from oceanic exile – refugees spill through a temporal rift from a dire future Earth now dominant with magic and mythical races following an apocalyptic technological regression.
28. Demons discover a hellish new way to possess people by converting souls into digital code and uploading themselves through virtual reality devices – unleashing terror in both the real and virtual worlds.
29. An intrepid crew of wizard-astronauts are trained as the first space corps to deal with magical threats and anomalies in outer space for the United Galactic Federation.
30. A horde of futuristic barbarian warriors spill from a portal connecting a post-apocalyptic future to a medieval fantasy realm, fusing blades and bullets as they invade kingdoms with alien weaponry.
31. A magical plague causes rapid mutations among the surviving population in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, giving rise to clans of engineered humans with fantastic powers battling for scarce resources.
32. The world’s wizards unite to weave the most epic spell ever conceived, encasing Earth inside a dimensional bubble, protecting magical realms when the planet gets decimated by a cataclysmic meteor strike.
33. Ghostly spirits of fallen knights possess powered armor bionic suits in order to continue their duty protecting the fantasy kingdom from an invasion by a merciless android army.
34. A wizard attempts a powerful summoning spell which goes haywire, dragging a state-of-the-art smart spaceship from the future back to the magical world’s middle ages era.
35. A reckless mage-engineer designs enchanted Mechs that focus magic energy into devastating ranged beam weapon attacks, selling his weapons to warring kingdoms to the highest bidders.
36. All divine magic ceases functioning as the gods go offline, forcing the inhabitants of magical worlds to learn science and technology to survive as society progresses at an unprecedented rate.
37. A high-tech medical team employs advanced tech like nanites, cloning and cybernetics to save lives in their hospital built right smack in the center of a low tech fantasy city.
38. A goblin shaman stumbles upon an alien device which gives him a vision of a doomed future – devoting himself to mastering its power source of unlimited energy to protect his tribe.
39. Atlantis arises once more, but this time the mythical lost city returns as a flying island, held aloft by anti-grav engines and shielded by force-fields, appearing in skies all over the ancient magical world.
40. Explorers venture into an uncharted island where evolution took a very different path, where dinosaurs coexist with unicorns and griffins, becoming perfect mounts and guardians for Paladin knights establishing a colony.
41. A dimension-hopping hero wields a technomagic gauntlet able to tap into the code of reality itself, hacking and manipulating the world around them to pull off daring feats of magic-enhanced swashbuckling heroics.
42. An intrepid crew of space privateers pilot a sentient biomechanical ship on the edge of charted space, taking dangerous jobs retrieving rare magical artifacts and entities for eccentric alien clients.
43. A bumbling young mage becomes the unlikely accomplice to a charming rogue spaceship AI, getting entangled in its schemes across the galaxy which always seem to end in chaotic bursts of magic and laser fire.
44. After a civilian starliner crashes into its magical twin from a parallel realm, survivors from both worlds must cooperate using both magic & tech to defend against hostile alien poachers.
45. A bitter Technomage curses a kingdom to suffer an eternal magical winter, forcing its Queen to make a pact with an ancient AI entity that offers technological salvation in exchange for eternal servitude.
46. The divine pantheon of old and new gods wage war for dominance across the augmented reality layers of the post-singularity Omninet inhabited by ascended digital souls.
47. A brave sky knight dons an enchanted flight suit and battles against vampiric cyborg dragon overlords that threaten airships trading between floating island kingdoms.
48. An interstellar patrol must prevent chrono-pirates from raiding a medieval fantasy realm using time dilation fields that let them plunder without being seen.
49. Genetically engineered fairy pilots neutrally link with biomechanical mecha-warmachines, becoming ace dogfighters battling a hivemind armada set to consume the galaxy.
50. From an oceanic rift emerges the reality-warping elder god Cthulhu who prepares to awaken more ancient ones until swarms of Gnome-built submersible mechs stand in its path!

 

And there you have it – 50 story ideas that fuse science fiction and fantasy into a spectacular amalgamation of genres. From this whimsical collection of prompts, tales can unfold across the technicolor spectrum of speculative fiction.

Hopefully these ideas ignite imaginations and have readers daydreaming up a storm of sorcerous spaceships, time-twisting magic spells and brave adventurers who navigate between astonishing futuristic vistas and ancient mythical realms. These prompts remove perceived boundaries between the mystical and the mechanical to merge magic and tech into imaginative new wonderlands.

Now there is plenty of creative inspiration to draft that novel mashing up steampunk and sword & sorcery, sketch out an episodic podcast mixing mechs and wizards, or pen an anthology of short stories where AI and angels collide. Let these prompts transport writers from the glittering spires of intergalactic citadels to the subterranean halls of dwarf kingdoms, or perhaps new worlds not yet dreamt of!

May the omniversal ether fill sails with auspicious winds as one charts course to lands unknown when manifesting these genre-blending tales into reality through writing gifts. Godspeed to all word weavers out there! Just don’t forget to send a psychic postcard back from whatever astonishing realities you explore.

If you liked our writing prompts, we have many more on our site. Please also leave us a comment and show us your creativity.