I've been a bit bored lately and think flexing some creative muscle might be a good idea.

I've created a plot for a sci-fi story which I think would be pretty cool, and it will double up on a "philosophical horror" theme as well.

I provisionally title the storyThe Long Road Home. The story revolves around the maiden voyage of a spaceship equipped with novel gravitational lensing technology, which facilitates faster than light travel by bending the fabric of space-time; basically the ship is like a taffy puller which stretches the fabric of space behind the ship and contracts the space in front.


The ship is populated with a team of astrophysicists, exobiologists, anthropologists etc. whose job is to look for habitable exoplanets behind the solar system for the possibility of migration. However, the activation of the lensing technology creates an anomaly in the fabric of space-time and pulls a massive asteroid into the path of Earth. It strikes Earth and the effect is devastating, total and utter extinction of life on the planet and destruction of the biosphere.

The team on board the ship face an agonising decision. Do they attempt to return to a devastated Earth to look for survivors, or press on into the unknown with finite resources, in search of a new home?


Thoughts? Would you read this story? Is it a novel idea or is there another story like it?

It's nothing in it for the reader/viewer. The reader/viewer needs to feel optimism that the protagonists can save the day. Your scenario really paints a lose or who knows? scenario. If the earth has suffered mass extinction, what's the point of going back? Then your reader is left with them jumping from planet to planet without any real conclusion. You would have to give them a chance to win, and your story as it flows now doesn't.

The point of going back is to look for survivors, and I anticipate they will feel a sense of duty to do this since they are the cause the extinction.


And they have several candidates for habitable exoplanets and that is why they embark on the voyage, but nothing is certain, it is like interstellar where they have to land and study the planet.

There is a chance to win, but a theme of the story is loss, devastation, hopelessness and uncertainty. That is the story.

Needs babes

These are highly intelligent people we're dealing with. They play the numbers and if a world trade center sized asteroid hits the earth the chances of survival are slim to none. Most scientist wouldn't deem it a worthy cause, and just move on. I don't mean to nitpick your elements, but no one cares about the dig, they care about the new fossil that was discovered, then you can roll the clock back and detail all the shortcomings which make the journey worth it in the end. I understand that all of those themes are the story, but you have to swing the emotional pendulum back the other way at some point.

I'd read it. It's going to need a huge amount of research to tie all this together into a believable story, rather than a dodgy fiction work full of holes in the theory though.

In light of your points I will add a plot idea that there are survivors, just that the Earth is ravaged and no longer able to support life. The question becomes whether to head back for them and suffer the cost of resources. Perhaps some could head back some head onwards to a new planet.

Yes, will do extensive amounts of research on gravitational lensing technology, space-time dilation, exoplanets and terraforming etc.