A Future Philosophy Of Justice

There’s a lot to recommend Gautam Bhatia’s new novel The Sentence; the book has compelling characters, an engaging plot, and often delightfully urbane turns of phrase. But the real star of the show is the speculative legal system at the heart of the story.

Set in an India-inspired alternate future city state called Permua, The Sentence follows Nila, a graduating student of law who is commissioned to investigate an assassination. The crime occurred almost 100 years in the past and the convict has been in suspended animation pending an appeal. The deadline for appeals ends at the 100 year mark, after which the cryogenic suspension pod is switched off permanently.

The Sentence is a meditation on
governance, on the death penalty
and on how we construct history.
(Image via Goodreads)

Bhatia has created this setting with evident care; centuries of history permeate the conflicts that tear at the city of Permua. Characters are informed by class-related aspects of this background and the weight of history makes the setting feel more immersive. This history is clearly inspired by real-world history (including the Paris Commune). At times, however, this depth of history can also bog down the story.

Permua — riven between two halves separated by class conflict — has adopted a legal system that depends on neutral arbiters, known as “guardians,” who have to forsake their upbringing and live a quasi-monastic life after completing law school. Consequently, Nila is torn between the anarchist commune in which she was raised, and the guardian culture in which she is apprenticing.

One of the most endearing relationships in the novel is between Nila and her high-born classmate Meru. Although the duo share a reverence for the law — and an allegiance to the guardian system to which they have dedicated their careers — their disparate class backgrounds inform their thinking and the interactions between them, often to entertaining effect.

These characters are well developed, with internally consistent personal philosophies informing their actions and interpersonal conflicts. These distinct points of view help the narrative avoid the didacticism of many other works in social science fiction. This is not a book filled with easy answers, nor absolutes. Rather, it sometimes feels like a constructive intellectual debate between students of philosophy and political science. There’s an effervescent quality to the book that makes it a joy to read, especially for policy nerds.

Legal systems in science fiction too often mirror the courtroom dramas that populate American television, possibly because it can be more difficult to offer counternarratives to established social structures and hegemonic ideas than it is to imagine differences in technology. The fact that Bhatia’s alternate legal system is one that is believable and engaging speaks to both his skill as a writer, and the clarity of his thinking.

Bhatia has a gift for aphorisms, and the novel is peppered with succinct and pithy observations such as “economic wounds make it so much harder to live your ideals.” Another favourite passage describes a building whose architect wanted it to be known as “The Fortress of Dreaming Spires,” but that the result was more of “a bedraggled hedgehog.” At times, the politically charged wry humour and wit of lines like these had us reminiscing about the 1980s sitcom Yes, Minister.

In a world unafraid of technology and unburdened by monopsony, The Sentence would be easily available in North American bookshops and online retailers, but its publisher Westland Books does not have wide distribution outside of India. It is worth tracking down a copy. The Sentence is among the best novels published this year.

The thoughtless utopia

There are more ways for the world to go wrong than ways for things to go right.

At least, that’s what a careful review of science fiction indicates. It seems it is usually easier for science fiction authors to create a compelling and believable dystopia than it is for them to offer a utopia that rings true. One supposes that if there were an easily imagined path to utopia, we’d all be on it by now.

But these facts don’t mean that when writing stories about utopian societies, creators should be absolved of at least providing some bare-bones explanations of what societal structures have led to the perfection of their imagined nation.

This speculation about social structures doesn’t need to be convincing — Heinlein’s utopian world of Beyond This Horizon suggests that a socialist command economy, gun rights, and eugenics are the secret recipe. Hardly believable off the printed page, but he at least put in some thought about how his world would work.

All I know is that I didn't vote for
Jaresh-Ino to be president of the UFP.
(Image via MemoryBeta) 

What is bothersome is the intellectually lazy utopian imagination, the offering of a science fiction paradise in which there is no thought about how that utopia was achieved.

The United Federation of Planets, as depicted in Star Trek's Original Series and Next Generation is an exemplar lazy utopia. Sure, some handwaving is offered around humanity ‘evolving’ beyond a need for money, but little concrete evidence is offered about how this utopia actually works.

How are the competing needs of different citizen species balanced? How are minority rights ensured? How do they balance the right to privacy with the need for security? These are the types of questions that all free societies must struggle with, and yet in hundreds of hours of Star Trek stories that have been filmed, no solid answers are offered.

Of course, the nebulous nature of the United Federation of Planets offered authors and fans plenty of opportunity to impose their own ideas and ideals onto this world — sometimes to excellent effect. For example, economic historian Manu Saadia uses Star Trek as a jumping off point to explore socialist ideas about a post-scarcity economy in his book Trekonomics.

Another example of a poorly crafted utopia is Wakanda, the high-technology kingdom that is home to Black Panther. How Wakanda became a utopia while neighbouring countries did not is never fully explored.

It is suggested that the presence of a miraculous resource — the metal vibraneum — may be the root cause of the nation’s perfection. But in the real world, resource riches rarely lead to anything like

Supreme executive power derives from
a mandate from the masses, not from
some farcical aquatic ceremony.
(Image via MarvelCinematicUniverseWiki)

utopia.

If the natural resource of vibraneum had been paired with a democratic governance system, or an alternative inclusive governance model, it would have been easier to buy into the idea of Wakanda, but the country is ruled by an absolute monarch. This would make it one of only seven absolute monarchies on Earth, and none of the others are human rights leaders. To put it bluntly, absolute monarchy and utopia are utterly incompatible.

It is interesting to note that current Black Panther writer Ta-Nehisi Coates has begun to address these questions of governance in Wakanda. One hopes that this new more democratic version of Wakanda may make it to the movie screen one day.

We would argue that Coates’ work on the book is a recognition that a believable utopia would not be based on resources, wealth or technology, but on equitable distribution and respect for the rights of those who live in the utopia.

In short, utopia is in large part a matter of societal institutions and cultural practices.

The libertarian utopia
of The Unincorporated
Man is compelling (if
unconvincing) in part
because the authors
had the courage to
be political.
(Image via Amazon.com)

Proposing alternative — utopian — societal institutions and customs will always risk alienating a good portion of your audience. Social institutions are inherently about the distribution of power in a society, and therefore the imagining of different social institutions is political, and political arguments will always offend someone.

For the broadest audience to remain unoffended by an imagined utopia, the author — or studio — needs to be as vague as possible. Perhaps that’s why so many high-budget productions — like Star Trek and the movie Black Panther — depict banal utopias that offers vagaries and magic to explain the perfection of their societies.

Utopia is more difficult an construction than dystopia, both artistically and in the real world. No author will ever write a utopia that is convincing to everyone, but those who try should try to offer ideas, and should be upfront about their politics.

A Return to Nowhere

Guest post by constitutional lawyer and human rights advocate Rob Normey.

In our current Age of the Autocrats, it could be suggested that reading a daily newspaper paints a

News From Nowhere is well-regarded
enough as a utopian work that
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan
Williams wrote the introduction to
the most recent edition.
(image via the Victoria and Albert Museum)

fairly dire picture of what lies ahead if we cannot dramatically alter the course of our 21st century ships of state.

If we wish to avoid going down with the Titanic (so to speak), we need to consider alternative social and political visions that might just afford us some hope. The 1890 novel News From Nowhere does just that.

The Who Killed D’arcy McGee History Club — a book club with a member that is also a member of the book club that hosts this blog — considered this utopian work at our recent meeting.

This novel — considered by many to be the best utopian fiction since Thomas More’s Utopia —was written by William Morris, a radical democratic socialist.

In the novel, written in 1890, Morris introduces us to William Guest, a time traveler from late-Victorian England. Guest offer the reader a window on the land of Nowhere, set around 2050. Although, some aspects of the new world are not particularly persuasive, there is much to commend this new society that has emerged in a transformed England after a revolution called the Great

Born in Walthamstow,
William Morris became
famous as an artist and
fabric designer.
(Image via
WilliamMorrisSociety.com)

Change (following a Civil War around the 1950s).

Morris wrote the book as a reaction to the repression, massive inequalities and environmental degradation he saw in late-Victorian society.

His radical approach to political and social problems was controversial in his time and yet possesses a certain poetic justice, as Morris was born in the midst of the The Age of Revolution, as described by Eric Hobsbawm in his brilliant account of the nineteenth century (published in 1962).

Some in our book club felt that the book misses the mark on gender relations and technological advancements that obviously could not be foreseen but make the work laborious to read in 2018. Of course, utopian fiction is not intended as a blueprint for the future. The tale provides an imaginative vision of one possible alternative to the late 19th-century world of Victorian hypocrisy and oppression of the poor and of the working class.

This novel can be read together with the essays on art and democratic socialism that Morris wrote in the 1890s to understand the rage and frustration of this remarkable visual artist, poet and novelist who became a dedicated revolutionary.

Police brutality towards striking workers and protesters was a recurring pattern. Morris himself was arrested during a demonstration.

One of the highlights of the novel is the way it imagines the world of meaningful and pleasurable work, and the supreme values of equality and community, based on cooperation, that are inscribed at the heart of Nowhere.

They are discussed by many of the time-displaced protagonist’s new friends, including by the woman who enchants him, Ellen, and the historian, Henry Morsom.

It is refreshing to think of a world where people actually have time to talk at length with one another, with no digital distractions, no tyrannical television screens and computer screens and cellphones. William sits down with his friends after helping prepare a meal and reflecting on a day in which more than likely they have worked together on a project that they have voluntarily participated in.

The citizens of this utopia, it seems, will always have work to enrich their lives. They have achieved a balance between mankind and machinery and need not fear the displacement caused by automation that features in the capitalist dystopias that litter modern science fiction.

Gradually readers are given an account of the main features of the society and of the commitment all citizens have to ensuring that workers, not the owners of capital and the corporations of old, are in control of their own fate.

This society has developed schemes to ensure that all work is as pleasurable and varied as is reasonably possible. So they take turns with both the less pleasant janitorial and laboring jobs and the more stimulating kinds of work. Most citizens have developed into superb craftsmen.

One of the most striking sections of the novel takes place near the old town of Wallingford, which

Wallingford as it appears today.
(image via VisitOxfordshire.co.uk)

was in Victorian times a synonym for poverty and squalor. In this future, Wallingford has become a delightful, well planned village.

Henry Morsom, the historian, tells the inquisitive protagonist that a major debate occurred amongst citizens in the dramatic era just after the Civil War, between those who wanted to increase production levels through industrialization and reliance on machines and those who favored the handcraft movement, and a minimal reliance on automatic machinery. Recognizing that the move towards industrialism contained within it the seeds of inequality and possible exploitation of man by man, they ultimately opted for a commitment to “handicrafts.” Only work that would be irksome to do by hand is accomplished by machines. All other work that can be done by “heart and mind” is done by hand. The result is a much happier workforce, with no difficulty ensuring that sufficient numbers are willing to seek out employment. 

Both Marx and Morris shared
disdain for the way Victorian
England treated the working
class. (Image via Wikipedia)

You may have guessed by now that the capitalist order that Morris and other radical socialists like Karl Marx so despised in the era that the novel was written has been destroyed and a socialist economy has taken its place.

Speaking of Marx, Morris shared his near-contemporary’s disdain for an economy that contained within it the conditions which led to widespread alienation of labour. Both Morris and Marx offered insights into the inevitable discontents that flow from the commodification of all elements of modern life.

Students of Marx will find much to appreciate in Morris’ vision of a utopian society where the aggressive competition for ever-higher returns on capital investment, and the concomitant alienation of workers who are conceived as simply impersonal cogs in the commodity-making machine, has replaced money and profit-making with what would be termed by later socialists as the “cooperative commonwealth.”

Despite some improbabilities in its world-building, News From Nowhere provokes the reader to consider at the very least the fundamental values of a fairer, joyful society built on trust and fellow-feeling. 

Hopefully some readers will indeed be inspired to fight for a new world, based on the very qualities that underpin Morris’ utopia.

The science fiction of revolution

America was born of science fiction.

In the 1770s, the idea that a country could govern itself through the collective decision making of

Ben Franklin was the Rick
Sanchez of his time.
(Image via Wikipedia)

everyday people was a science fictional concept: It required imagining a fundamentally different world that was bereft of monarchs; it was based on an unproven social technology; and it aspired to a utopian future.

The man who is often called “The First American” — Benjamin Franklin — was the most science-fictional person of his day. He experimented with electricity, invented new technology, and imagined new ways of organizing government.

All science fiction is political. But all political movements – especially the revolutionary ones – are likewise science fictional.

Those setting out to change the world start with the premise that the world could be different. They have to imagine a different world before knowing that action should be taken, and the more revolutionary the change, the greater the imagination required.

Which is why some particularly radical political movements keep being reexamined, reflected, reinterpreted, and revisited within the genre of science fiction.

Major radical movements such as communism, libertarianism, socialism, feminism, conservatism, and fascism have each been reflected in major movements in science fiction.

This isn't science fiction — it's the
headquarters of the communist party
of Bulgaria (Image via Wikipedia)

There was a well-established strain of science fiction in the Soviet Union — much of it made with explicit government support — that depicted a triumph of communal living.

The German Nazis produced several works of now-forgotten (I would say deservedly forgotten) films and novels depicting a triumphalist science fiction that echoed the architecture of Albert Speer.

It could even be argued that the bizarre fantasist Arian mythology created and promoted by the Nazi regime was a morally corrupt work of science fiction.

Perhaps this is why the “Nazis In Space” trope echoes throughout the genre, from the Empire in Star

Sometimes the space Nazis aren't just
a metaphor. (Image via IronSky.net)

Wars to Emergents of Vernor Vinge’s Deepness In The Sky. Authors unconsciously recognize that Nazis were a science-fictional regime based on a radical ideology that is anathema to modern liberal values.

And of course, the genre is rife with variations on planetary democracies that are a reflection of an idealized U.S. — from the United Federation of Planets to the Twelve Colonies of Kobol to the Interstellar Alliance of Babylon 5.

When we realize how integral science fiction is to radical politics, it should be no surprise that the most radical American political leader of the past 30 years, Newt Gingritch, is an avid fan, and has even published science fiction.

Now Gingritch’s utopian vision, best expressed in his “Contract With America” is not a utopia that we would subscribe to, but it is indicative of the link between radical politics and science fiction.

In his Hugo Award-winning 1998 book The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of, Thomas Disch suggested that science fiction can claim to be America’s national literature because “it is the literature most suited to telling the lies we like to hear about ourselves.”

Although this may be partially true, one could alternately argue that the space opera is America’s national literature — and that variations of science fiction are national literatures of many nations of the Western World — because science fiction is an embodiment of an idea that the world can always be changed for the better.

Too Like The Lightning — Book Club Review

No book has divided our book club as much as Ada Palmer's Too Like The Lightning.



While half the group decided its inventive world building put it at the top of their ballots, the other

One of the most
ambitious novels of
2016 divided our club.
Image via Amazon.com

half ranked it below "No Award."



That being said, there was some common ground: the dense prose and awkward narration were a significant barrier to our enjoyment of the novel, and the speculation about the evolution of social dynamics was engaging and enjoyable.



The book is set in a 25th Century that has abolished all organized religions, abandoned nation states, dispensed with the family unit as we know it, and as far as is possible gotten rid of gender differences. Thus stripped of most of the root causes of conflict, the human race has known peace.



Narrated from the point of view of Mycroft, a convict serving a life sentence of community service, the story involves a theft, religious miracles, and the undermining of the checks and balances that has kept this utopian system stable for most of the previous two centuries.

Unrestrained prose poses problems

The most prominent flaws in the book — that our group almost universally had troubles with — are related to the narrative voice. Mycroft tells his story in the style of Greco-Roman personal histories, complete with interjections, dialogues with an imagined reader, and unnecessary passages in Latin. This dense prose obfuscated the larger ideas that the author was playing with.



It is an ambitious novel, but there was some debate in the group about how fully that ambition was realized.



The claims that the family unit no longer exists are undermined by the familial bonds that govern the protagonist's home life. The statements about the lack of nation states and nationalism are undermined by the geopolitics. And the repeated declarations that gender no longer exists are undermined by the narrator's obsession with gendering each person you meet.

Author Ada Palmer's career as a historian
informs and influences her writing style.
This may present some barriers to readers
who are unused to dense prose.
Photo via AdaPalmer.com

Some of our book club saw these as deliberate authorial choices in order to make a point about the immutability of human nature, but others saw it as the author not being able to follow her philosophical ideas to their logical conclusions.



Too Like The Lightning spends more time on world building than telling a story or character, perhaps because it is the first part in a four-part series. Because of this, the book drags in sections, especially when the narrator is spending full chapters on an infodump about enlightenment philosophy and how it informs 25th Century society.



Her aversion to paragraphs and tendency to overwrite simple scenes will likely feel tedious to many readers. It's clear that Palmer's day job as a historian has found a creative outlet and her fellow travellers will likely enjoy the cadence of the long passages. For many in our group, it felt contrived.

Stylistic Nostalgia

The pseudohistorical style of writing was reminiscent of Theodore Judson's excellent novels Fitzpatrick's War and The Martian General's Daughter, as well as Robert Charles Wilson's Hugo-nominated Julian Comstock. Ada Palmer has taken this style of writing to a more extreme level, but there is debate over whether she has accomplished the style as successfully as those previous works.



Despite these flaws, one member of our book club felt that Too Like The Lightning was not just the best of the Hugo nominees this year, but the best book he had read in several years. Although he stands alone in this assertion, it is clear that this is a book that will have a very strong appeal to some readers.