Toby Frost examines the approaches that science fiction takes to the rule of law
Much science fiction is set in a lawless world. Most obviously, there are other planets, whether airless moons or extravagant jungles, where the rule of law simply doesn’t exist. In space, as the saying goes, no-one can hear you scream, let alone apply for permission to appeal. But there are also the dystopias, where the true rule of law is displaced by the rule of brute force.
The police state
From George Orwell’s 1984 to Judge Dredd in the comic 2000 AD, science fiction has been haunted by the police state. What might at first look like an excess of law is usually a lack of it: without precedent to bind them or the courts to provide protection to the citizen, the futuristic police are able to torture and kill as they please. In Margaret Atwood’s dystopia The Handmaid’s Tale, the narrator explains that lawyers are no longer needed when the nation is run by a theocracy representing an angry and infallible god. Again, in Fatherland by Robert
