Maturity's Dawn

It's when you look back on the fantasy and science fiction games you enjoyed as a youth and wonder, "Wait a minute. How many of those settings and stories were some guy's Dungeons & Dragons/GURPS/Traveller/Vampire: The Masquerade homebrew campaign?" The answer is 86.7%, by the way.

Starting October Early

Since there's nothing going on till Halloween, let's start setting the atmosphere. Did you know that Star Wars books are still coming out? Chilling!

Addendum

It will also pass by harmlessly if you don't ignore it. Maybe. Sure you want to risk it?

The Retreating Horizon

We're supposed to be living in the future, but people are still playing Age of Empires 2, Warcraft 3, and Starcraft 1. What's going on here? Is the the time-dilating effect of a black hole? Yes. One happens to be passing by right now. Ignore it and it will leave harmlessly.

Addendum

Obviously there would be a "Lens" command always available. The player would have no idea what it would do in any given situation. Just like the author!

Adaptation Corner

What's the best video game genre for Lensman? Probably one of those Japanese adventure games in which you pick from Talk, Look, Think, Call, and Investigate over and over till something happens.

The Newest Adventure Starter

People these days think they're too good for sitting in an inn and then an adventure starts. They're wrong insofar as they're not good enough, but either way, we need something that works for everything. The answer is the census takers who get in a mess. Whether somebody's inflating regiment headcounts to skim from the pay, people have been disappearing unreported, or there are more aliens congregating that allowed by the treaty, there's trouble everywhere, every time, for characters of every legal/moral/ethical bent. Don't go thinking the adventure has to do with the census, either. That can just be an excuse to go somewhere and hear about the crashed meteorite.

Happy Fourth of July

And always remember that if you put a country like the United States of America in your fantasy or science fiction novel, people would say it's unrealistic. People to whom you should not listen. They don't want your story to be interesting.

Social Commentary Opportunity

It's almost the Fourth of July, and that means it's time to write about a dystopian future or alternative timeline in which fireworks are banned. Could you imagine such a thing?

Generating New Ideas

When you're stuck as to what kind of story to write, start by thinking of nonsensical genres you could put on the cover somewhere. Catalectic Fantasia. Quasi-Experiential Scientific Opera. Dark Internalization. Shamelessly Speculative Narrativa. With your senses of reasonable storytelling accordingly jarred, true creativity will be possible.

Addendum

People living in space colonies will of course use a little star for the same purpose. Far from being a harbinger of intra-solar war, tensions will be relieved by the existence of these points around which local pride can coalesce harmlessly.

Truly Visionary Science Fiction

When you think about it, there's no real reason people in the future shouldn't replace the period on their keyboards with a little heart. As for the apostrophe, nobody will know what that does fifty years from now, speaking optimistically.

Nintendo Direct Reflection

When one is reminded that Nintendo is making Splatoon, one is compelled to consider where today's popular fantasy and science fiction ideas originate. Do books have any influence, or are they just like TV shows that have lower viewership than mid-tier Youtube channels?

Addendum

Now in games it's different so long as you still get XP, which is why Dragon Quest XII can stride confidently.

The Core Problem With Dream Sequences

Many dislike dreams in fantasy and science fiction. Who, and how many exactly? Shut up. Anyway, in a modern materialistic setting, dreams are comparatively fanciful. In fantasy or science fiction, the stuff in them can simply happen, perhaps in the holodeck or fairy world. If anything, fantasy/scifi dreams often seem mundane, and who wants a mundane interruption in the middle of his thrilling and thought-provoking speculative fiction narrative? Many, but possibly fewer than the many mentioned earlier.

Addendum

Also, definitely be working on a children's book.

Fake Swearing and Such

To check if your invented words and phrases of an impolite nature have real bite, post them in forums, Twitch chat, etc. and see how often you get banned. Never? Save that one for your children's book.

Science Fiction Weaponry

If you just call it a death ray, you don't have to go into the details. Don't worry, the audience will believe that weapons kill people.

The Strange Sources of Xenopaleontological Knowledge

I chased the space pirate all the way to Heraclius, one of those worlds that's nothing but grains and farm drones. I expected him to have some goons, a hideout, or at least a cache with a few guns there, but when I tracked him down, he was doing nothing but staring at a rock stuck on a couple other rocks.
"I remember," he said without turning around. "They argue whether a member of one species can be reborn as another, but it has to be true because I remember. I was a great magus once (for by that name we called those with the strongest psychic talents) and kings bowed to me even in their own palaces of brown-purple marble. They put before me the rich flesh of the uyilla, the delicate hobtgui roots, and I undid their difficulties. But even my wisdom failed when . . . Oh, I see the towers, how they crumble! The dead fill the streets and the wails of the living form inescapable clouds! Iauvne, where have you gone? Plellol ecsa, plellol monsa!"
"Fine, but I'm still going to arrest you."
"Yeah. Yeah, I suppose I should have waited for a convenient time to come here, but you sort of get these ideas in your head, you know?"
I wasn't interested in conversation with scum, so I didn't answer, but I knew all right.
Finis

Addendum

A few of those entries will need to be altered in certain settings. For instance, in a far-future interplanetary milieu, the judge may have invented the space piano.