Ursula Le Guin and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Arts & Ideas16 Nov 2023

Ursula Le Guin and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

A miserable child and a summer festival are at the heart of the short work of philosophical fiction first published by Ursula Le Guin in 1973. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas was sparked by "forgetting Dostoyevsky and reading road signs backwards" was the answer given by the author when asked where she got the idea from. Matthew Sweet is joined by guests including the authors Una McCormack, Naomi Alderman, Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson and Kevan Manwaring, and political philosopher Sophie Scott-Brown. They discuss Le Guin's thought experiments and writing career and also the short story called The Ones Who Stayed and Fought which NK Jemisin wrote in response to Le Guin's vision of Omelas.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Naomi Alderman's latest novel The Future is out now Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson publishes The Principle of Moments in January 2024 Dr Sophie Scott-Brown is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and is the author of The Histories of Raphael Samuel - A Portrait of A People’s Historian Dr Kevan Manwaring is Programme Leader for MA Creative Writing (online) and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Arts University Bournemouth Dr Una McCormack's books include Star Trek: Picard novel The Last Best Hope

You can find many other discussions about science fiction and imagining the future in collections on the Free Thinking programme website including episodes about Philip K Dick, John Rawls, Octavia Butler, Afro-futurism, AI and creativity

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(2000)

The Child's Eye View

The Child's Eye View

Shahidha Bari investigates the child’s-eye view of the world. From navigating AI, to living through war, to the joys of reading, what makes children’s perspectives so distinctive? With writer Katherin...

26 Juni 56min

Eccentrics & Outsiders

Eccentrics & Outsiders

How has the figure of the outsider or eccentric has been used to explore English culture, history, politics, and our relationship with nature and the countryside? Matthew Sweet discusses, including a ...

19 Juni 1h 54min

Satire and Gulliver's Travels

Satire and Gulliver's Travels

300 years after the publication of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Matthew Sweet looks at satire, past and present. How can satirists reflect critically and humorously on political events in an a...

12 Juni 56min

Wealth

Wealth

Anne McElvoy and guests discuss the concentration, distribution and morality of wealth now and look back at An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published by the Scottish ec...

5 Juni 56min

Free Thinking at the Hay Festival: Responsibility

Free Thinking at the Hay Festival: Responsibility

Freedom is one of the leading values of our society. But with freedom comes responsibility, which is a much more contested principle. Deciding where responsibility lies, and what it means to take it, ...

29 Maj 56min

Thinking with Food

Thinking with Food

The links between food and philosophy, ideas about experimentation, taste and how food and traditions become part of our identity are explored by Matthew Sweet in Radio 4's round-table discussion prog...

22 Maj 56min

Technologies of the Self

Technologies of the Self

‘Technologies of the self’ is a phrase from the French philosopher Michel Foucault to describe things people might do to shape the people they are, like dieting, exercise, journaling, or in an earlier...

15 Maj 57min

The Middle

The Middle

From taking the middle ground to the mid-life crisis, Middle England to middle managers, to being a middle child - is occupying a position in the middle out of fashion?Anne McElvoy hosts Radio 4's ide...

8 Maj 57min

Populärt inom Samhälle & Kultur

podme-dokumentar
en-mork-historia
svenska-fall
aftonbladet-krim
badfluence
p3-dokumentar
gynning-berg
tv4-nyheterna-story
skaringer-nessvold
de-fyras-gang
creepypodden-med-jack-werner
spar
rss-expressen-dok
mardromsgasten
hor-har
aftonbladet-daily
killradet
flashback-forever
p3-historia
rss-mer-an-bara-morsa