

Masked terrror ... Hugo Weaving as V in the film adaptation of V for Vendetta

This week the Rackstraw Press publishes a book designed to break the law. Every one of the 25 stories in the rather guilelessly entitled sci-fi anthology, Glorifying Terrorism, engages in a practice expressly criminalized by the 2006 Terrorism Act. Presumably the collection's publishers would be delighted with a high-profile prosecution, although I doubt even today's Home Office would be so thuggish.

Although this is a splendid way to make a point about free speech, we should remember that this isn't new ground - on the contrary, science fiction has been busily glorifying terrorism for at least the last 12 months. On television we've had Battlestar Galactica; in the cinemas V For Vendetta; in comic racks Marvel's Civil War. Every one of these shows isolated heroes resorting to violence (even suicide bombing, in Battlestar Galactica's case) against a powerful oppressor.

Advocates of science fiction as serious literature often claim that, rather like comedy, the genre can express what no one else is allowed to say: the absurdity of its superheroes and robots and aliens is supposed to be enough to disguise any transgression from the superficial glance of the censor. Really, however, if today's science fiction shocks anyone, it will usually only be with its imagination, not with its morality.

So we should be happy that in 2006 science fiction pulled on its balaclava. Whether or not we can wring out the slightest sympathy for suicide bombers from Iraq or Palestine or Leeds, we should certainly be forced to try, if only to clarify our thinking. And while mainstream authors such as Updike and Amis and Rushdie have tried to take us into the mind of terrorists, they stopped short of what would have been far more disturbing and effective: making their plotters into likeable heroes and seducing us into a unwary emotional involvement with their struggle.

Only science fiction has gone that far, and for this - even more than for decrying the theft of our civil liberties - it deserves our rapt attention.