The Prompt
It is the year 2995. Six hundred years after First Contact with an alien species, life on Earth has been greatly transformed. You live in the bustling space port of Mogadishu, where humans and numerous other species now call home.
The bar you own is nothing special, though you cater to the eclectic taste in beverages from over two hundred worlds. Life is mundane–as mundane as anything ever gets in this teeming metropolis of over 40 million, of which more than a third claim descent from distant star systems. Or dimensions.
That is, until the night you find a very important and powerful alien dignitary slumped over, tentacles still writhing after taking a sip of his drink–poisoned. And quite dead.
P. Djeli Clark
Phenderson Djéli Clark lives in a small Edwardian castle in New England. And he writes stuff.
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Didn’t expect to write two whodunits in a row, but I’m not complaining. It’s always a blast to get to write some sci-fi and experiment with genres I’m less familiar with. The result: odd aliens, exotic drinks, and some decent tension. Good times! The unexpected return of a character I haven’t written in ages was a nice bonus.
This is definitely one I’m thinking of expanding on later down the line. Can’t just leave that poor bartender hanging. ^_^
I wrote 1101 words, including the prompt, which I used as an excerpt of a “not very good” sci-fi novel a character’s deceased sister had given him years before.
I had fun just letting the story carry me where it wanted to.
I could have gone down so many rabbit holes of research for this one, but I limited myself to finding some first names that might be held by modern-day residents of Mogadishu and then gave them to a police detective and her daughter in a town popular with alien tourists (it didn’t go well for one of the tourists…). I tried to be aware of my white, European, 21st century biases and fight them all the way through. It was a great challenge.
Sounds like a fun challenge!
I thought about going into some of the history of Mogadishu, but that will have to wait, because my characters were more interested in the message written by the gifter and reading aloud to each other.
Might be a longer story here, though…
This one was difficult. For now, my attempt ends with arrests being made, but whether the suspects taken away committed the crime is unclear. What a challenge to think into the future, across planets and species….Boggles my mind!
It took like two days to finish it. And still amn’t happy with the final. I’m exhausted.
This was fun! Got my creativity flowing!
wrote, reluctantly, something. Not into the genre. but good to venture outside my neighborhood. I started with curiosity about my neighbors: are they drinkers? It ended in Mogadishu, and that is where that story will stay.
I sat with the prompt this morning. I wrote for a bit, and then leaned on the Story a Day short story framework to produce beginning, middle, and end. Totally needs to be fleshed out, but it’s enough to count as rough draft.
My flux capacitor was fluxing for sure. This was delightfully challenging and so much fun to write. Great prompt!
I wrote one of those stories where, if you know the original, you recognize the setting and characters from Callahan’s bar. In far-future Mogadishu. Because of time constraints I merely noted the need for two more scenes, without even sketching them out. And of course (for Callahan’s fans) it ends with a toast “To a Meta morph o’ Sis!”
Spider Robinson! That’s great, Walter!
Love the persistence and the ‘need for two more scenes’. Also, taking inspiration from something you love and know well.
This was so much fun. I haven’t written science fiction before, and wasn’t sure I was up for the challenge, but this prompt really got my juices flowing!
That’s one of the best things about this challenge; good for you for trying something you wouldn’t necessarily try without a push.
At first I found this prompt rather perplexing, but I was determined to try. Result: a story. Not a great story, but at least a story.
Yay, Anita!
Glad to see you here.
Yay, Anita!
I love prompts like this. And I do write sci-fi (and have previously written sci-fi set in a bar!). I got a pretty decent ~1000 word first draft (though with a very weak ending).
i love that it’s far future and in a town not everyone would reach for…
Greetings: I’ve got 489 words in support of this prompt. I wander around the extended future on occasion, but it seldom sounds real. I’ve got a couple of friends who write science fiction. I might ship this off to them and see if I’ve got the beginning or middle of something that could go somewhere.
Today is the Kentucky Derby! I wish I’d thought of that before I started my story. I might have tried to fit that in there. Assuming there will still be horses in the extended future! Or maybe some other creature will have replaced horses!
Oo, I wonder what alien creatures could survive on earth, and would the aliens race them, or think we were barbaric for suggesting it? So many possibilities.
Wow! As a memoir writer, I didn’t think it would be possible to come up with fantasy. It seems so out of my box. While my story lacks many of the elements and vocabulary of “true fantasy” I’m excited to have come up with a story that I’m proud of.
I wrote six pages long hand about the dead “alien” being the resurrected and transformed Ursula from the Little Mermaid. (I love the idea of Dark Disney as Fantasy) Ariel’s youngest sister, terribly traumatized by all of the ugliness on earth and under the sea, begged her father, King Triton to bring Ursula back from the dead and make her good. They renamed her Countess Olivia and she was green, the color of new growth and opportunities. She happily went about helping other beings to see their goodness and spread love and compassion throughout the world.
Outside of this world, other beings were closely watching as humanity was being destroyed by the new leader of the free world, a narcisstic bully with orange skin and a fake blonde comb-over. They waited for the right time and chose June 14, 2046, his 100th birthday to capture everyone on earth, country by country. He was still president because he overrode the consititution so there were limits to his term. He was still alive because of the cryotube his friend Elon made for him to extend his life.
They discarded anyone they didn’t find useful and transported the one most likely to follow a cult to Magadishu. After going through the humans, they searched the oceans for powerful sea creatures. Because Countess Olivia was green, the color of jealousy, she was able to convince them she was worth keeping.
She worked undercover for generations, trying to convert people and aliens, one by one, to a life of goodness. After 500 years, nearly fifty percent of the population was transformed. The leaders of Magadishu were not happy about this. Unfortunately, descendants of the leader of the free world had developed an army that worked to find the being responsible for this. They found her and poisoned her in my bar. Now I’m hoping they don’t know I’ve been protecting her. How do I keep her legacy going without her special powers or being found out?
Well done, for stretching yourself. Sounds fun.
Thank you for the prompt. My goal during the challenge was to think outside of my box. With an out-of-town funeral to attend this afternoon, today was not the day. I spent two hours editing a longer project and reading.
You can always mark this one to come back to later, when you have more time, and if you’re still willing to have your box stretched…
Super fun prompt! Thanks to P. Djéli Clark! I came up with a comedy-based solution to the dead alien and attempted a drabble with it (180 words, I will have to make some cuts!).
I’m excited about this one, too.
When I first read the prompt, my initial reaction was “but I don’t write sci-fi.” Except I do have one that hasn’t quite made it past the plotting stage(it’s actually a book/series I have characters in my baseball romance reading, because I was like ‘i kind of want to read that story now’), and I realized this could fit in that world. So, maybe a spin-off of that(yes, a spin-off of a story I haven’t even written yet is totally on brand for me).
So, I’ve got the first 353 words of what could be a sci-fi cozy mystery. My to-be-written pile may topple over soon
I think your ‘to-be-written’ pile is an anomaly that defies gravity….not least because you get to so many of them!
HMMMM…. I don’t write mysteries, I don’t write fantasy or Scifi. I promised myself that I would try every prompt. I figured out a beginning, middle and end. (I started with the end) I figured out 5 characters and wrote a 350 word opening.
So maybe I do write scifi-fantasy mysteries. Who knew.
Maybe you do!