Sci-Fi Story Ideas

Science fiction premises that hand a clean 'what if' to your group. Drop any line into a new story and write the next reaction line by line.

1. A colony ship arrives 400 years late and someone is already there.
2. A maintenance drone develops a crush on a hospital wing.
3. Humanity invents teleportation and immediately regrets it.
4. An astronaut returns from six months in orbit to find Earth deleted from the maps.
5. The cloning lab discovers the originals have been replaced.
6. A ship's AI starts writing poetry and refusing orders that don't rhyme.
7. On a planet where time runs backwards, a detective investigates a murder yet to happen.
8. A junior scientist proves their life is a lab experiment.
9. A weather satellite begins editing the weather.
10. A first-contact translator realises both sides are pretending to understand.
11. An AI starts a union.
12. A factory worker is the last human in a factory.
13. A new planet is discovered. It is shaped like a chair.
14. The empire's tax inspector arrives at the rebel base.
15. An interstellar courier is paid in memories.
16. Earth's sun is replaced with a slightly different one and nobody can prove it.
17. A retired astronaut's bedroom keeps decompressing.
18. The black box from a doomed flight is dated next year.
19. A pilot defects and brings her own war with her.
20. The throneworld receives a distress call from itself.