We SF writers aren't just allowed to stack the deck: we're required to do it. We can sidestep the laws of physics, invent ecologies to order, create new systems of magic, religion, and metaphysics---and yes, postulate new definitions of ethos as needed.

Therefore, it would be a serious mistake to use science fiction as an ethical blueprint for real life. To prove this point, I've grabbed a half-dozen books at random off my reading shelf, and I now present to you summaries of the core ethics of each story, along with a few of the drawbacks of applying these ethics to reality.

Basis: the world is corrupt, all authority is suspect, and techno-anarchists are the only ones plugged into The Truth.

Drawback: it's darn hard to have ethics without morals. The belief that only just laws need to be obeyed (once "just" is defined in entirely self-referential terms) quickly slides into believing only laws you like need to be obeyed, and you wind up spending a lot of time sitting in your friends' apartments, sucking on a bong, listening to depressing music, and whining about how badly the world treats you. In between getting fired from minimum-wage jobs.

Basis: the world is poorer off without magic, and There Are Powers Unseen that move us, if only we could tune in to them.

Drawback: pure shamanistic silliness. You start out buying crystals, charting your horoscope, and correcting everyone's spelling to "magick," and end up watching "Sightings" with the same reverence usually reserved for "The 700 Club."

Basis: the world is an unforgiving place full of Cold Equations, where heroes are routinely forced to make ethical decisions and choose paths they know lead to Certain Doom. But they choose those paths all the same, because, "We may be dead, but dammit, we'll be right."

Drawback: real life doesn't offer many opportunities for dramatic choices like this. People living this ethic spend their lives wandering around looking for hopeless causes to embrace and last stands to make, eventually winding up voting for Pat Robertson because, "We may lose the election and destroy the party, but dammit, we'll be right."

Basis: the world could be paradise, if only we lived in a society based entirely on mutual respect for each other's rights and mutual consent in all relationships, backed up by everybody carrying really really big guns.

Drawback: real life in any modern urban environ does not permit this kind of prickly self-defensive posture. People practicing this technique develop a compelling urge to stockpile MRE's, apply for concealed carry permits, and go to work for the Post Office.

Basis: there is no evil, only misunderstood good, so if it feels good, do it.

Drawback: Ack! Ick! Ugh!

Basis: standard-issue SoCal 12-Step EmpowermentSpeak

Drawback: oh, how can I possibly begin to critique this load of fuzzy-minded claptrap?

• By observing that it regularly indulges in fantastic feats of tortured situational justification, in order to attempt to appear totally nonjudgmental and value-neutral?

• By noting that it consistently conveys the message, "It's okay to steal from those who can afford it?" (A direct contravention of Paramount's actual policies, by the way.)

• By pointing out that the Federation is actually a thinly veiled and attractively portrayed technocratic police state, thus supporting one of Aristotle's less-reputable dicta: "All good resides in the State"?

Or should I just stick to describing the episode in which David Ogden Stiers plays an elderly alien scientist: gifted, intelligent, warm, humane; but it's his 65th birthday, and in this culture, when you turn 65, they chuck you into the volcano. Stiers isn't sure he's ready to croak, so the crew of the Enterprise gets involved, and in the end they decide he should go into the volcano, because that's what is culturally correct for these people?

I leave it to you, as any time I think critically about the Cult of Trekkism, I fall speechless.