(urth) "Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe

Gwern Branwen gwern0 at gmail.com
Sat Apr 30 14:35:01 PDT 2011


On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 5:08 PM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:
> Yeah, I know that feeling. I read, "Those Walk Away From Omelas," and
> thought, "This is supposed to be some kind of utopian/dystopian comment?
> Thhese people have this tremendously prosperous, liberal, industrialized
> society with the only externality being train smoke and the lower classes
> shrunk to a single person! Boy, are those people walking away in for a
> surprise."

It's funny you bring up that particular LeGuin story - I once wrote a
sort of reply to it:
http://www.gwern.net/fiction/The%20Ones%20Who%20Walk%20Towards%20Acre

(Well, it's funny to me because it so rarely comes up, but with this,
today I have twice had occasion to link someone to the story; the
other link was in the context of a Bitcoin and assassination markets
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market) discussion.)

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net



More information about the Urth mailing list