#leguinposting

Ooh ok. Omelas is pretty good; I like it principally because it's just dripping with Le Guin's style. You get it in a lot of her essays and talks also; this frank conversational tone that also reads extremely thoughtful. And like that post said, there's the discussion on what makes a believable fantasy, how utopian can a utopia be and still feel plausible, as well as the ethics of what's the right thing to do in an Omelas situation, and what would you do, and all that - but honestly while I appreciate how short stories can be great examples of a true master flexing their muscles within tight constraints, the kind of thing I most enjoy in fiction needs a little more space to breathe.

As for my favourite, then - and honestly I haven't read as much Le Guin as I'd like - it's gotta be The Dispossessed. I find her exploration of anarchist politics really interesting (like Shevek, and I would say like Le Guin herself, I'm an anarchist, so there's personal stakes here!) in how tangible it makes their society. "How would anarchists solve such-and-such a problem" isn't that interesting a question after you've heard it a few dozen times, but she paints such a rich picture of how people might live their lives, how they'd learn, how they'd raise families, how they'd love, how they'd fight, and how free people might begin to think in ways that are different from the approaches we under capitalism take for granted - and crucially, she asks what the failure modes of a future free society might be, how it'd fail to live up to its promise, and what people could do to spot that and resolve it.

All the bits where Shevek's interacting with capitalism and state society, having only read about it in books, are just delightful, even when it's also horrifying. I'm a sucker for science fiction that takes the perspective of an outsider to criticise the societies of domination we live in; it allows you a kind of shameless fury that would undermine most "real" political critique. I get a similar thing from Iain M Banks' Culture series.

I think it's interesting to read Shevek as a meditation on what a scientist is (or even what science is) or should be, what ought to be its role in society, what are the strengths of the scientist's way of thinking, and what are its limitations. I'm a scientist by background (no longer) so I like that sort of investigation when it's done well. There are lots of scientists who take Shevek as a role model, and fewer who live up to that ideal.

I realise you asked about Omelas and I've mostly talked about The Dispossessed - sorry, it's been a while since I read Omelas and I can't recommend The Dispossessed without gushing! Honestly I feel comfortable saying anything Le Guin wrote is gonna be at least decent - Omelas is worth checking out both on its own merits and because it's seeped into culture at large (in general I'm a big proponent of going back and reading the original work in which influential ideas first appeared - I'm always saying this about the death of the author, and the trolley problem essay is interesting too even if I take a different position on abortion to Philippa Foot).