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

Gerry Quinn · 01 May 2011, 14:03 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Sun, 1 May 2011 15:03:24 +0100
Subject: (urth) "Realistic fiction leaves out too much." - Gene Wolfe
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From: "Jeff Wilson" <jwilson at io.com>

> On 4/30/2011 9:29 PM, Matthew Knapton wrote:
>> 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.
>
> But is "there's something wrong about the purposeful mistreatment and
> deprivation of an innocent" a useful or meaningful moral statement? Is the 
> wrongness greater or lesser if the mistreatment is without purpose, or if 
> the purpose is unknown? Compare Jackson's "The Lottery," and the news 
> items about the third-world villages poisoned by 1st world computer waste.

I think the story vividly and memorably points up a rather difficult ethical 
issue, which most makers and/or purveyors of moral/ethical systems would 
like to be able to ignore, given that to some extent it is probably 
insoluble in a practical sense.

So for me that makes it a story worth writing/reading, even if the author 
herself cops out at the end (they seem to know where they are going, those 
who walk away from Omelas, but the reader is left pretty much in the dark).

Those other questions you ask may be interesting too, though they are 
different questions.  [Indeed, you could have found questions that are 
nearer the point - the computer waste thing in particular does not really 
fit into easy categories of 'mistreatment by the First World', given that we 
don't oblige anyone to import and process said waste; you would have to 
extend the argument to make it fit.]

- Gerry Quinn

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