Brave New Worlds

don't question its results. " My transport pulled up to the curb and Mr. White helped me inside. "Central," he said, "take the lady home. She's had a hard night. "
    "Mr. White?" I asked. "One last thing?"
    He folded his hands in front of him. "Yes?"
    "My baby? Can you give me any hint about what makes him so important?"
    Mr. White glanced over his shoulder, then leaned into the car. "I can't be
    specific, you know that, right?" "Of course. " "Let's just say that I wouldn't be surprised to see him in Human Services. " that I hadn't expected. "Human Services?" "Well, look at it this way, dear. He's already uncovered one traitor to the State,
    and he hasn't even been born yet. " He then leaned back, with that tight, thin
    smile still stretched across his face, and slammed shut the door. The transport sped away, whisking me home. There was no driver. Central was in control.

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
    by Ursula K. Le Guin

    Ursula K. Le Guin is the author of innumerable SF and fantasy classics, including The Left Hand of Darkness , The Lathe of Heaven , The Dispossessed , and A Wizard of Earthsea (and the others in the Earthsea Cycle). She has been named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America, and is the winner of five Hugos, six Nebulas, two World Fantasy Awards, and twenty Locus Awards. She's also a winner of the Newbery Medal, the National Book Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, and was named a Living Legend by the Library of Congress.

    Our next piece first appeared in 1973 in New Dimensions 3 , an anthology edited by the legendary Robert Silverberg. Unusual for its story structure, which includes no protagonist, its exceptional narrative voice, and purposeful reader engagement have made it a landmark American short story. Reprinted many times, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" brilliantly captures life in a perfect society, a total utopia. . . until you do a little digging.

    Omelas—which, if you're curious, is derived from Salem spelled backwards (Le Guin is a longtime Oregonian and has a self-proclaimed quirk of reading road signs backward)—is a city of joy and beauty, and the tale is careful to unfold each of its splendors. There has never been such a resoundingly happy place to live. there is no crime, no war, and even the drugs are harmless.

    But how is it possible for any place to achieve this level of easy delight? And at what price does it come?
    Or more importantly: if you lived in Omelas, would you be willing to pay it?

    W ith a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. Children dodged in and out, their high calls rising like the swallows' crossing flights over the music and the singing. All the processions wound towards the north side of the city, where on the great water-meadow called the Green Fields boys and girls, naked in the bright air, with mud-stained feet and ankles and long, lithe arms, exercised their restive horses before the race. The horses wore no gear at all but a halter without bit. Their manes were braided with streamers of silver, gold, and green. They flared their nostrils and pranced and boasted to one another; they were vastly excited, the horse being the only animal who has adopted our ceremonies as his own. Far off to the north and west the mountains stood up half encircling Omelas on her bay. The air of morning was so clear that the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks burned with white-gold fire across the miles of sunlit air, under the dark blue of the sky. There was just enough wind to make the banners that marked the racecourse snap and flutter now and then. In the silence of the broad green meadows one could hear the music winding through the city streets, farther and nearer and ever approaching, a cheerful faint sweetness of the air that from time to time trembled and gathered together and broke out into the great joyous clanging of the