ABSTRACT
International law’s role in the creation, exploitation and governance of natural resources is complex and nuanced. How the law relating to resource ownership and use interacts with the law protecting the environment and economic governance is a vital contemporary question. In this chapter I approach this question through a reading of Kim Stanley Robinson’s science fiction novel Red Mars, about the human colonisation of Mars. This novel provides a scenario to ask what law applies, how the law effects action, where the law is broken and what new law might be needed. The first half of the chapter is concerned with that work, then the second half takes a step back to consider international law and new resources more generally, before finishing on an argument for the value of science fiction for thinking about law and technology.
