The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: A Story
4.5/5
()
About this ebook
“Ursula Le Guin is more than just a writer of adult fantasy and science fiction . . . she is a philosopher; an explorer in the landscapes of the mind.” – Cincinnati Enquirer
The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, and the Pushcart Prize, Ursula K. Le Guin is renowned for her spare, elegant prose, rich characterization, and diverse worlds. "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is a short story originally published in the collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) was the celebrated author of twenty-three novels, twelve volumes of short stories, eleven volumes of poetry, thirteen children’s books, five essay collections, and four works of translation. Her acclaimed books received the Hugo, Nebula, Endeavor, Locus, Otherwise, Theodore Sturgeon, PEN/Malamud, and National Book Awards; a Newbery Honor; and the Pushcart and Janet Heidinger Kafka Prizes, among others. In 2014, she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2016 joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetimes by the Library of America. Le Guin was also the recipient of the Association for Library Service to Children’s May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award and the Margaret A. Edwards Award. She received lifetime achievement awards from the World Fantasy Convention, Los Angeles Times, Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, and Willamette Writers, as well as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master Award and the Library of Congress Living Legend Award. Her website is UrsulaKLeGuin.com.
Read more from Ursula K. Le Guin
Changing Planes: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dispossessed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lathe Of Heaven Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Time To Spare: Thinking About What Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Steering The Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Telling Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Words Are My Matter: Writings on Life and Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lavinia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding My Elegy: New and Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Very Far Away from Anywhere Else Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Catwings Return Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Catwings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Related ebooks
The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wind's Twelve Quarters: Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hidden Girl and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Very Far Away from Anywhere Else Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Wizard of Earthsea Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Tombs of Atuan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Convenience Store Woman: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blindness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Farthest Shore Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Other Wind Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDemian Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Housekeeper and the Professor: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Telling Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell Jar: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blindsight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Way to the End Times: Classic Tales of the Apocalypse Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The End of Mr. Y: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Metamorphosis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is How You Lose the Time War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Death of Ivan Ilych Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5City Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ubik Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Vagabonds Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Space Opera Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Futurological Congress Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Annihilation: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Literary Fiction For You
Demon Copperhead: A Pulitzer Prize Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Handmaid's Tale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Tattooist of Auschwitz: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Ugly and Wonderful Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East of Eden Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Who Have Never Known Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Queen's Gambit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Annihilation: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Piranesi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tender Is the Flesh Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pride and Prejudice: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Salvage the Bones: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lady Tan's Circle of Women: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm Thinking of Ending Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Farewell to Arms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Woman in the Room: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
187 ratings11 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Short but Impactful. I recommend to read the introduction later if you don’t want the story to be spoiled but it’s more about the questions that reading it makes you think of rather than what happens.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sort of a mirror to what's happening in society now.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One of the best short stories I have ever read. Ursula at her best.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5We all know this reality, but fail to accept. The author's way of showing us the reality yet again is intriguing & hard-hitting.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This (very) short tale introduces a eye opening question. You just have to read it!
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beautiful short story by one of the best sci-fi writers.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My heart. Wow. This is incredible. I totally recommend it. It is beautiful and quite moving.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Someone wrote in a review on here that this isn’t the entire short story but this is. Don’t let that person fool you. It’s a short read but definitely worth it.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Super short and interesting. Will make you think about what beings are suffering on our planet now for our pleasure.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It is such a beautiful novel. I loved it to pieces and wish everyone would read it just once in their lives. Also, there is a competition right now until the end of May with a theme Werewolf on the NovelStar app, I hope you can consider joining. If you have more stories like this, you can also publish them there just email the editors hardy@novelstar.top, joye@novelstar.top lena@novelstar.top.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5This is not the full book. It is an excerpt linking to another online book service. It is deceptive marketing on Scribd’s behalf to allow these kinds of tactics.
2 people found this helpful
Book preview
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - Ursula K. Le Guin
CONTENTS
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Afterword
About the Author
Praise
Also by Ursula K. Le Guin
Back Ads
Copyright
About the Publisher
THE ONES WHO WALK AWAY FROM OMELAS
(Variations on a theme by William James)
The central idea of this psychomyth, the scapegoat, turns up in Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, and several people have asked me, rather suspiciously, why I gave the credit to William James. The fact is, I haven’t been able to re-read Dostoyevsky, much as I loved him, since I was twenty-five, and I’d simply forgotten he used the idea. But when I met it in James’s The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,
it was with a shock of recognition. Here is how James puts it:
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 torment, 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?
The dilemma of the American conscience can hardly be better stated. Dostoyevsky was a great artist, and