A comprehensive Checklist for Sci-Fi writers working on Economy. Free worldbuilding resource from Obsidian Tavern.
A believable sci-fi economy requires more than just changing currency names or adding space trade routes. Your economic system should reflect how advanced technology, alien contact, resource scarcity, and human expansion fundamentally reshape value creation, distribution, and consumption. The key is understanding how sci-fi elements create economic pressures that don't exist in contemporary markets.
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Resource Economics & ScarcityHow material abundance, depletion, or discovery drives your economic systemTechnology & LaborHow automation, AI, and technological advancement reshape work and value creationInterplanetary Trade & FinanceEconomic systems spanning multiple worlds with communication and transport delaysAlien & Posthuman EconomicsHow non-human intelligence and values create different economic systems
Pro tips
✦Energy is often the ultimate currency in advanced civilizations—consider how cheap fusion or dyson spheres would reshape all economic relationships
✦Information asymmetry becomes extreme with FTL communication delays—a message from Alpha Centauri takes 4+ years, creating arbitrage opportunities
✦Post-scarcity doesn't mean post-economy—it just shifts scarcity to time, attention, creativity, or social status
✦Automation doesn't eliminate jobs uniformly—consider which human skills remain valuable when AI handles routine tasks
✦Space-based economies face unique logistics: everything must be shipped at enormous cost or manufactured locally with limited materials
Common mistakes to avoid
!Using 20th-century economic models in post-scarcity societies—capitalism and socialism both assume material scarcity
!Ignoring the energy costs of your technology—FTL travel, matter replication, and terraforming require massive power sources
!Creating interstellar trade in bulk commodities without explaining how shipping costs work economically
!Assuming AI will replace all human jobs uniformly instead of targeting specific cognitive tasks while creating new opportunities
!Forgetting that advanced aliens might have completely different concepts of ownership, value, or individual vs. collective benefit
!Making currency that relies on real-time verification across light-years without explaining the communication infrastructure
!Creating post-scarcity societies without explaining what new scarcities drive conflict and character motivation
Remember that your economy should serve your story's themes—whether exploring inequality, scarcity, or human nature. The most memorable sci-fi economies feel inevitable given their technological and social constraints.
