Kate Nepveu: holy shit: "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole," by Isabel J. Kim. (the title is the content warning) clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_02_24/

holy shit: "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole," by Isabel J. Kim. (the title is the content warning) clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_02_24/

Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasyclarkesworldmagazine.com Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim

Have you read N. K. Jemisin's response story to Omelas, as well? www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-...

The Ones Who Stay and Fight - Lightspeed Magazinewww.lightspeedmagazine.com It’s the Day of Good Birds in the city of Um-Helat! The Day is a local custom, silly and random as so many local customs can be, and yet beautiful by the same token. It has little to do with birds--...

yes, but thanks for the link for others!

You're more than welcome -- and thank you for the link to Isabel Kim's story. It's a though provoking read!

The Jemisin story is one of my favorite stories of all time, because it challenges us not just on fighting back, but on what to do next. This is where I mention I also have a response story, about the last freed child and what healing might look like for them. strangehorizons.com/fiction/the-...

The Ones Who Come Back to Healstrangehorizons.com What I have spent my life atoning for aren’t those first years, those twelve years spun in glimmering threads of joy and belonging, before I knew that they had woven a cage around the child. It was�...

A wonderful story, with beautiful, evocative prose. Thank you for the link!

🥲🥲

Thank you both. Made my chilly Sunday morning.

And thank you - you brought tears (appreciative) to my eyes. I think it's a fair trade. :)

Brilliant

🥲

That was wonderful, thank you.❤️

🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲

The staying and fighting was always what was missing from the original story.

I agree. It's one of the reasons I love Jemisin's story so much.

Yeah, I thought of that, too! N. K. Jemisin is on here, wonder if she'll comment on it: [email protected] .

Hey, Ben, just a couple of notes here: 1] Please don't snitch tag. If I'd wanted Ms. Jemisin tagged in this thread, I would have done so myself. 2] I'm pretty sure that the ".@" lead-in to her handle is an old time Twitter thing which doesn't even work there, anymore, for BlueSky, just use an "@".

Duly noted.

yeah, that was kind of my reaction as well. It's brilliant and. horrible and oh so believable

did I get the link from you? it was just in my tabs and I have no recollection of where I got it from.

possibly! I reposted it from @snurri.bsky.social

Have you seen this one, from 2022? clarkesworldmagazine.com/willrich_06_...

no, thank you!

... i cannot contain that story in myself

So beautiful, thank you for linking it

Holy shit. Holy shit. In a thread of holy shit stories, this is the one that really took my breath.

There’s always a bigger fish.

I just, my permaculture environmentalist brain got to the ending juxtaposition of "you should turn alla yous into Bright Joyous Ones" and "Low-Technology Agricultural Sufficiency" + narrator's choice and then just dissolved into gibbering.

I was always mixed on the utilitarian approach to that story. I feel like if the only way you could have a functioning utopia was if “magic was real” we’d probably have a different discussion about it.

That's where @nkjemisin.bsky.social's "The Ones Who Stay and Fight" is so good. www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-...

The Ones Who Stay and Fight - Lightspeed Magazinewww.lightspeedmagazine.com It’s the Day of Good Birds in the city of Um-Helat! The Day is a local custom, silly and random as so many local customs can be, and yet beautiful by the same token. It has little to do with birds--...

thank you for linking to this, and yes, so good!

It's a metaphor for capitalism. The citizens callously justify their utopia built on the misery of another, and the ones who leave are seeking a place even harder to believe than Omelas. Yet that is the only optimistic part of the story for a reason.

Maybe the ending of this story (the one posted) touched on the issue I had with the first one. The citizens are made conscious of the suffering and must take accountability for it. The ones who leave may still play a role in another’s suffering, but don’t have to any accountability.

I've always thought the narrator of the story is one of those people who walked away. It's why they need people to understand what Omelas is and the cruel bargain they've struck. They can't force everyone to leave Omelas, but they can at least educate everyone else.

I was surprised how much i hated the original. But it did seem like hate was one of the reactions she was going for. I think it’s a story someone who is adjusted to 1970s society could write about choices such a person could make. some of us ARE the child

I think it is a metaphor for almost every kind of social governance, capitalism just happens to be the one in our face right now.

I see this is a modern continuation of a 1973 short story by Ursula K Le Guinn, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”

Yes, that's the premise.

Both of these stories are very good. The 1973 one haunted me for years.

Is the original available to read online anywhere do you think?

files.libcom.org/files/ursula...

Thank you!

PDF of the original this is riffing on, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" by Ursula K LeGuin is here, for those who've missed out on reading it files.libcom.org/files/ursula...

files.libcom.org

I remember after reading that the first time, after having had some time to process it, my first thought was "These people believe the kid is what mashed their lives possible? There's no way it's just one kid; what happens when the kid dies? There's multiple backup kids. Every neighborhood has one."

I knew it was a parable, but asking us to believe it's immune to human behavior is a bridge too far. If Omelas has 1 kid in a hole, it's going to have dozens. People would think: "What if someone rescued the kid? Or it succumbed to the suffering? WHAT IF THE KID'S BEEN MISSING & NO ONE TOLD US?!"

Omelas may be presented as a perfect city built around a single speck of rot, but rot never stays quiet. It spreads, and never stops.

That is an incredible bit of writing.

Holy fuck.

This story is the SF parable equivalent of the "I...worked on this story for a year...and...he just...he tweeted it out" meme (in a good way.)

I was just thinking about the Ursula K LeGuin story because of that recent Paramount+ ad ("Throw the child!"), what weird timing. Great story by Kim.

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