"Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe

Matthew Knapton · 01 May 2011, 02:29 · from 2011-April.txt.gz

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From: eruantien at gmail.com (Matthew Knapton)
Date: Sun, 1 May 2011 03:29:07 +0100
Subject: (urth) "Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe
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Well, it's a comment that even when the 'gain' is as huge as it is in
Omelas, there's something wrong about the purposeful mistreatment and
deprivation of an innocent. Whether you like the story or not, that's
undeniably a moral statement, yes.

On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 10:08 PM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:

> On 4/30/2011 2:30 PM, Gwern Branwen wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 12:56 PM, Jeff Wilson<jwilson at io.com>  wrote:
>>
>>> I've seen this part of the interview before, somehow...
>>>
>>
>> It's been quoted at least once before:
>> http://www.urth.net/whorl/archives/v0012/0558.shtml
>>
>> It's a great quip and sums up a lot of people's impression of _The
>> Dispossessed_ (at least, it did mine), so I suspect it's been alluded
>> to or quoted before in other places.
>>
>
> 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."
>
> --
> Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
> Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
> < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >
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