Found in the slush pile

Miss Snark, a pseudonymous literary agent, has some purported excerpts from Asimov's slushpile. Because the excerpts are limited to sentences, they pretty much have to fall under #4 on the Slushkiller list to be worth quoting, but I actually have a small fondness for

"Something must have happened, since it's not like her to come back naked and not aware of anything."

As well as

Onion oil! I couldn't imagine anyting worse than a daily bath in onion oil.

However, I rather suspect that the stories I'm imagining to go with those sentences aren't the ones that they were submitted with.

Law and SF

Quite a while ago, Chad and I were talking and noted the apparent lack of law in science fiction. There's technothrillers, and military sf, and even some medical sf (though not much these days? I'm only interested in the subgenre insofar as the Sector General stories fall in it, so I don't keep track), but there doesn't seem to an equivalent to the legal thriller, Grisham and Turow and such. The only books I'm aware of are John G. Hemry's lawyer-in-spaaaace books (A Just Determination, Burden of Proof, Rule of Evidence), and even those appear to be as much military sf as anything. (I haven't read them; I'm not much interested in military sf. A couple of people have said good things about them, though.)

I'm not really wanting to read legal thrillers in sf settings, mind, for much the same reason that I don't like watching Law and Order—too much like work. But their absence struck me as possibly interesting. Any thoughts on why the legal thriller isn't found in sf settings? (Or fantasy ones, for that matter.)

Minor disclaimer: If interesting things are said, I may suggest this as a panel topic for Boskone.