The Ones Who Walk Away...

Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is another one of those stories that are science fiction only in the loosest sense of the word. If I had to place it, I’d probably call it religious fiction (though that isn’t exactly right, either, since there is no explicit reference to God or any organized religious doctrine.)

A fable, maybe? Or a thought experiment? Or just call it fantasy and be done with it.

At any rate, it’s very well-done; you feel the pull of those who walk away, while the analogy to life-as-we-live-it is close enough that it’s hard to be comfortable with that decision. Could we have a society in which there are no victims, at all, in any sense? If not, can-or-should we just walk out?

You can’t make Omelas without breaking a few eggs, after all.

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Postscript: Wikipedia helpfully clarifies some things. The full title, not included in this anthology, was "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (Variations on a Theme by William James)."

James' theme was as follows:

Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?

With all respect to William James: Le Guin's story tells it a lot better. But it does come to the same point.