[1] The original version, published by Virgin Books in 1994, was based on the long-running British science fiction comic strip Judge Dredd.

A new edition was published in 2003 by BeWrite Books, in which all references to Judge Dredd had been removed, and the lead character was a police officer called Dave Knuckle.

A four-million-year-old Dyson sphere has been discovered surrounding a red dwarf star orbiting the Sun, populated by the descendants of the Neanderthals.

When a feud on the sphere threatens to destroy it, Judges Dredd and "heavy-weapons-toting xeno-anthropologist and scantily clad babe" Petula McTavish are sent to protect it.

However a malfunction in Dredd's teleportation to the sphere causes one hundred evil versions of him to be produced.