Too Few 💩 Science Fiction Emojis

If you can't call the Ghostbusters, who you gonna call?

Have you ever wanted to put some SF-themed emojis into your messages? You’ve probably been frustrated over how few options exist. I certainly have! Just so we are all talking the same language, here are the ones I found that could plausibly have an SF meaning.

👽 👾 🤖 🖖 🦾 🦿 👁 🧑‍🚀 🧟 🦠 🍄 🌍 🛰 🚀 🛸 🌕 🪐 🌠 🌌 ☄ ⚗ 🧪 🧫 🧬 🔬 🔭 📡 ☢ ☣

Total count is thirty. Sure, there are a few variants of astronaut by gender and skin tone. Zombies have gender also, and the Earth globe has three variants, but this SF set pales by comparison to smilies (101) and faces (140).

Science Fiction has been around since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1818, and much longer for liberal interpretations of what SF means. With all the memorable characters, space ships, weapons, and aliens invented in the past two hundred years, we should have a ball pit full of SF emojis. So why don’t we have more SF emoji examples?

The answer is, it’s up to us to change that. No international standards body exists to invent new emoji art. Individuals or groups propose new emojis to the Unicode Consortium. That non-profit evaluates proposals and accepts or rejects according to their rules. The UC does not invent emoji characters by their own initiative.

Visit Unicode’s emoji proposal page for the submission process. It has several gating criteria, including repeatable data on usage and verifiable public interest in terms that describe the new emoji. In other words, they want data proving people need the emoji because related words appear often in conversation. You must also submit art with the package. That last requirement is a barrier for me. I can sketch, but my digital art talents are less than rudimentary. If you have the skills Unicode requires, please consider creating some new SF emojis. Or put together a team of people to make it happen.