Category: Science and Aliens

Case I of First Contact, an Article by Torn MacAlester

This arti­cle is the first fol­low-on to a series on first con­tact.     This is part of a series of arti­cles about sci­ence fic­tion world build­ing: From the moment the first exper­i­ments with radio began, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of detect­ing alien trans­mis­sions became real. If there was an advanced civ­i­liza­tion on Mars, it would be […]

Worldbuilding for Science Fiction 8 Apr 2025

In the sub-genre of hard sci­ence fic­tion, an attempt is made to ensure that the sci­ence in the sto­ry is some­what cor­rect. One issue that I have been fol­low­ing is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of life on exo­plan­ets. Anton gives a won­der­ful update on the DMS pos­si­bil­i­ty on K2-18b. — Even though the detec­tion has been questioned. […]

Worldbuilding 1: Articles by Torn MacAlester

World Build­ing for Sci­ence Fic­tion­Im­age by Snap­wire on pex­els I want­ed to share some insight into the world build­ing process that I am using in my sci­ence fic­tion sto­ries. First off, most would call my sci­ence fic­tion as ‘Hard’ sci­ence fic­tion because of my use of sci­en­tif­ic rig­or when devel­op­ing my sto­ries. For myself, it’s […]

A Paradox: A Description of the Fermi Paradox by Torn MacAlester

It Starts With A Para­dox­Part 2 of World Build­ing for Sci­ence Fic­tion Part 2—It Starts With A Para­dox   by Torn MacAlester     Pho­to by Rakice­vic Nenad from Pex­els The Fer­mi Para­dox The Fer­mi para­dox tries to answer: Where are they (the aliens)? It looks at how fast trav­el is across the galaxy.  It says […]

Worlds of Science Fiction

I’ve been study­ing the sci­ence behind the worlds of sci­ence fic­tion with the inten­tion of using it for world build­ing. I’ve writ­ten a series of arti­cles intro­duc­ing these sci­ence con­cepts.  My inten­tion as a sci­ence fic­tion writer was to build a set­ting where at first glance par­al­leled the real uni­verse. Con­se­quent­ly, I tried to use […]

Next Page »