OVERRULED

I had the honor of co-authoring a short story with Sarah A. Hoyt of Darkship fame for an anthology of legal science fiction, Overruled.  It was tremendous fun working with someone of Sarah’s caliber;  and–not to put too fine a point on it–it’s pretty cool to make a sale to an anthology.

One thing we lawyers don’t get credit for is how protective we feel about our clients.  So when the secret group of settlers leaves for Mars, who agrees to stay behind to ensure they get supplies?  The  lawyer.   License to Live is his story.

This one is right in my lane.  I’m a space lawyer in the day job, and License to Live looks at the Outer Space Treaty, which says that countries have to regulate their citizens in outer space.  Plenty of people think this means private citizens can’t go to space without a license.  The way U.S. law works, however, Congress needs to pass a law saying a particular activity needs to be regulated (and by what agency, and for what purposes) before that treaty provision applies to the private sector doing that activity.  If you want to geek out, I have a brief article here which gives more detail.  If you really want to go wild on geeking out, the full paper is here.

One other confession.  When I do talks about whether and how the Outer Space Treaty applies to private activities in outer space, I use my college roommate’s story from her psych class to make a point about categories.  So Judge Ney is named after J.M. Ney-Grimm.

Pick up your copy of Overruled here.  It’s got stories by Robert A. Heinlein, Larry Correia, Larry Niven, and many more.  I’m looking forward to receiving my author copies so I can start reading.

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