r/rational

15K archived posts · Nov 2009 – Sep 2026

Rational Fiction

r/rational

A place for discussion of rational fiction.

Created Nov 25, 2009

26KMembers (last snapshot)

15KArchived posts

A subreddit dedicated to the discussion of works of rational and rationalist fiction. A general description of the genre and a listing of major works can be found on the TVTropes page or our excellent wiki.

##Characteristics of Rational Fiction:

"Rationality" is a specific quality of any fictional work, independent of genres and settings. It describes the extent to which the work explores thoughtful behaviour of people in honest pursuit of their goals, as well as consequences of their behaviour on the fictional world or the story's plot. In highly-rational fiction, realistic intellectual agency is put above established literary tropes, and all other aspects of the narrative.

Highly-rational fiction could include one or more of the following features:

Focus on intelligent characters solving problems through creative applications of their knowledge and resources.
Examination of goals and motives: the story makes reasons behind characters' decisions clear.
Intellectual pay-off: the story's climax features a satisfying intelligent solution to its problems.
Aspiring rationalism: the story heavily focuses on characters' thinking, or their attempts to improve their reasoning abilities. This is a feature of rationalist fiction, a subcategory of rational fiction.
Thoughtful worldbuilding: the fictional world follows known, consistent rules, as a consequence of rational background characters exploring it or building realistic social structures.

Presence of these particular features is not necessary: overall impression of the work is more important.

Adjacent tropes: Rational stories tend to include certain narrative elements. Though their presence doesn't make a story more rational, this community highly enjoys them. Most important ones include:

Fair-Play Whodunnit: story's mysteries could be solved by attentive readers ahead of time.
Absence of Deus Ex Machina: established story rules are never broken.
Deconstruction: genre tropes are re-imagined in a more realistic manner.
Munchkinry: characters attempt to exploit their world's rules in creative, non-intuitive ways.
Genre Savviness: characters are familiar with common genre tropes and try to avoid or exploit them.

##Subreddit Rules

Post links to or discussion of rational fiction only; otherwise use one of the weekly discussion threads.
Reposting of complete stories is allowed.
Post your own work at most weekly.
Keep r/rational pleasant and on-topic.
No discussion whatsoever of US politics.
Moderator discretion for everything else.

##Other information

Wise readers give the best feedback.

Spoiler tags like this >!one!< are written >!like this!<.

Aspiring authors or connoisseurs may wish to read Yudkowsky's guide to writing rationalist fiction.

You can use standard tags in your post title to improve Reddit's search function:

Is the story [RT] rational or [RST] rationalist? Or is your post [META] discussion about r/rational?
Is the story a [WIP] work in progress, or [C] complete?
Optional genre tags: [HSF] hard scifi, [HF] hard fantasy, [DC] deconstruction, [EDU] educational, [MK] munchkinism, [TH] transhumanism, [FF] fanfic

##Related communities:

Discord Channel

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