Why Don't We Just Kill The Kid in the Omelas Hole

by Isabel J. Kim

Published in Clarkesworld Magazine, Isabel J. Kim's short story is set after the events of Ursula K. Le Guin's 1973 short work of philosophical fiction "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." It discusses a third option besides staying in Omelas or walking away: killing the suffering child (described by one of the murderers as a form of accelerationism).

Genres: Short Stories, Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Philosophy, Dystopia, Speculative Fiction

10 pages, ebook

First published February 1, 2024

About the author

Isabel J. Kim lives near New York City in an apartment filled with books and swords. She is the author of numerous short stories and has won the Nebula, Locus, BSFA and the Shirley Jackson Awards. Her work has been translated into multiple languages and reprinted in multiple best of the year anthologies. When she’s not writing, she’s practicing law or podcasting. Find her at isabel.kim, @isabel.kim on Bluesky, or @isabeljkim on instagram.

Reviews

[Matthew]

This is the second short story I have read that purports to be a sequel/homage to Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (which I briefly review here), the first being N. K. Jemisin’s The Ones Who Stay and Fight. This is my first Isabel Kim work—it came up in a discussion featuring Omelas vis-à-vis current human rights atrocities in a certain occupied territory in the Middle East—so I can’t say whether it’s a literary high or low for her, but I personally find it better than Jemisin’s homage but not quite up to the greatness of Le Guin’s original, which my star ratings for the three short stories reflect.

Part of why I feel both successor stories fail to meet or surpass Le Guin’s original is that they use very modern-sounding language and references (technological, ideological, and historical) that take away from the timeless feeling of the original. But I think my bigger beef is that both Kim and Jemisin—Kim to a lesser extent—seem to miss the point of the titular Ones Who Walk Away in the original, both on the metaphorical and (as much as an allegorical short story can have one) literal level.

On the literal level, walking away from Omelas is not a selfish abdication of responsibility towards the foresaken child upon which the utopia depends; walking away from Omelas involves going to the “place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness” that may not even exist. To understand this, one must now look at Omelas beyond the surface-level critique of utilitarianism, and instead at its critique of “the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain” and its converse sin of eschewing happiness as tedious naïveté, an unwillingness to conceive of a true utopia. Both Jemisin and Kim do not thoroughly engage with this layer in my opinion.

But perhaps you may find yourself disagreeing; you can decide for yourself by reading Why Don't We Just Kill The Kid in the Omelas Hole for free and legally on the Clarkesworld magazine’s website as part of (with <20 minutes to spare) this month’s issue.

[Brooke]

4.0⭐️

Short story in an anthology The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2025

This short story references LeGuin's The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. The premise is that while society lives in Utopia, one child in the Omelas Hole will absorb all the suffering of humanity. Some people find this problematic. Shockingly though, most are okay with it. People are satisfied to remain in the status quo as long as they don't suffer more. It's like the citizens think they are immune to facism. Sound familiar?

The writing style is detached which I think is successful for this piece in making this topic accessible. The message is clear. High school curriculum material maybe?

[Hirondelle (not getting all notifications)]

Isabel J. Kim is actually a writer capable of a lot of subtlety in storytelling, with a really wide range of styles and themes (and hopefully story lengths). You would not know that necessarily for this, the most atypical work of hers (but she does have range), a kind of long rant, with many parenthesis, a reply to a classic sf philosophical short story. Full of insight but detached (, full of social commentary relevant to right now. The most atypical story of hers, the one showing less of her other skills (though the understanding of how humans tick is here front and center) and it's by far the most popular work of hers, and the one that is ending, finally, on award lists. Ironic that, but hey this is an ironic story.

I read it when it came out in Clarkesworld February 2024 but it is a Hugo finalist this year and I wanted to reread it to better judge it. This is probably my least favorite short story, the most limited, by she is an author I really really like and who is an auto-read for me, and it is still very worth it. Not sure if this was a week year for some categories (I mean, look at the novellas! Even the novels everybody wrote better things in better years, and I am ignoring the two newbies on purpose), but this story is the most interesting to me, the most powerful story on its category. But if you like sf/f short stories go look for everything else she has written and do not think her style is represented by this.

[Abolfazl Nasri]

دهمین داستان از مجموعه داستان کوتاه بی‌کران:
بازنویسی ایزابل کیم از «املاس» تجربه متفاوتی بود. همون اول حس می‌کنی نویسنده با جسارت وارد دنیای لو گویین شده و همه‌چیز رو می‌بره وسط فضای امروز؛ از رسانه و شبکه‌های اجتماعی گرفته تا سیاست و شعارهای روز. این ایده که هر بار بچه‌ی توی دخمه کشته می‌شه و شهر دوباره باید با پیامدهاش دست و پنجه نرم کنه، به‌شدت به دنیای معاصر شبیهه؛ دنیایی که همه‌چیزش جلوی چشم مردمه، روی صفحه‌ها و در اخبار. همین باعث می‌شه روایتش یک‌جور ضرب‌آهنگ سریع و رسانه‌ای داشته باشه که گیرایی خاص خودش رو داره.
ولی راستش رو بخوای، برای من کمی زیادی مستقیم بود. جایی که لو گویین با ایهام، سکوت و تصویرسازی آدم رو تا مغز استخوان تکان می‌ده، اینجا کیم میاد و خیلی روشن و با صدای بلند حرفشو می‌زنه. انگار می‌خواد مطمئن بشه هیچ‌کس پیام رو از دست نمی‌ده. همین باعث می‌شه داستان گاهی شعارزده به نظر بیاد و از اون هاله‌ی رازآلود و عمق فلسفی کار اصلی فاصله بگیره. به‌خصوص وقتی پای مقایسه میاد وسط، حس می‌کنی اون ظرافت و تعلیق اخلاقی که توی متن لو گویین وجود داشت، اینجا با صراحت و شلوغی عوض شده.
با همه‌ی این‌ها، نمی‌شه انکار کرد که کار خلاق و به‌روزیه. جسارتش ستودنیه، مخصوصاً توی دنیایی که همه به‌نوعی دارن با همون «کودک توی دخمه» خودشون کنار میان. برای من ارزش خوندن داشت، ولی اگر بخوام مقایسه کنم، قطعاً به پای کار اصلی نمی‌رسه. برای همین چهار ستاره می‌دم: خوب، تأثیرگذار، اما نه در حد یک شاهکار جاودانه.

[Zana]

Mom can we have Omelas?

No we have Omelas at home.

Omelas at home: 🇮🇱

[Alex]

Kim's short story doesn't rival Le Guin's, nor does it surpass it, but (in my opinion) it isn't supposed to. To try to one-up The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas would be to miss the point - though one thing it does have over the original is its sense of humour ("load-bearing suffering child" is a phrase I will not soon forget).

What Why Don't We Just Kill The Kid in the Omelas Hole does do is continue the conversation, and I loved what it had to say. I loved the updated language, as firmly situated in the present as the original is timeless. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant all-round.

[Nea Poulain]

no es peor que the ones who stay and fight pero no es mejor.

nadie entiende que quiere decir ursula con irse. como sus textos se mueren de literalidad, creen que le guin también se moría de literalidad y la única manera en que se puede interpretar la idea de marcharse de omelas es quien se va fisicamente, no la transformación de la que está hablando le guin.

suelten omelas y escriban sus historias. les irá mejor. así no nos daremos cuenta de que no saben leer.

[skein]

So you know the story of Omelas -- it's a beautiful city where everything is great, except for one child who is locked in a hole it's entire life and just absorbing all the city's suffering. Everyone in Omelas is told this (at a certain age), and nearly all of them decide their own happiness is worth the cost of someone else's suffering.

LeGuin, being LeGuin, has a very clear and strong viewpoint on the moral thing to do here, and even if you haven't read the story, you can probably figure it out.

My issue (and it's a problem that a lot of people see) with LeGuin's story is that she ends it on the "walking away". Okay, so sure, one person felt badly about this suffering kid and they left, but the kid is still suffering and the city is still beautiful and happy, so the only thing that's been fixed is the titular characters' guilt. "At least I didn't participate in it!"
Bully for you.

Kim says: What have you done to stop it?
Why not just kill the kid?
And the answer is: because that doesn't help. Because Omelas is full of jerks, and they will just find another kid, and put THAT kid in the hole, and keep on being happy and un-suffering, and it doesn't matter how many children they sacrifice to the hole, they will keep doing it. As long as the child isn't their own child, they will continue to choose evil.

This is a very American story. The structure and response is American. And I would bet that a fair number of fingers pointing at the story are from people who firmly believe their country is better, and their people wouldn't choose to let one child suffer, etc etc etc, which is missing the point so hard they end up impaled on it.

Several people in the reviews here have complained that this isn't really as good as LeGuin's story because it doesn't respond to the premise, which is just fascinating to me, because nobody flinched from answering LeGuin's premise like LeGuin did.

[Brok3n]

Too much like reading the news

Omelas is a very famous short story by the very famous science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin. For the record, I think that both Le Guin and Omelas deserve their fame. Omelas is the name of a Utopian city. The first half of the text describes Omelas in all its glory. We then learn that there is a cost to this Utopian happiness. In Omelas there is a child who lives in constant unremitting suffering.

The kicker is in the final two paragraphs

At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or a woman much older falls silent for a day or two, then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman.

Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

It is heavy-handed, but Le Guin often was like that.

The rebellion of the Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is limited to that, to walking away.

Of course, it is not meant to be plausible in any literal sense. We are, however, invited to understand that each of us lives and is happy (if we are) at the expense of the suffering of other people, and that we look away. And that even the quietest form of rebellion is yet rebellion.

Isabel J. Kim's Why Don't We Just Kill The Kid in the Omelas Hole is a finalist for the 2025 Best Short Story Hugo. It imagines an Omelas in which rebellion takes more active form. It is far more plausible than Le Guin's original story, in the sense that you can imagine, if Omelas were somehow real, that people would fight in these ways. In fact, it is too plausible. To me, reading Why Don't We Just Kill The Kid in the Omelas Hole felt like reading the news as I do every day.

It felt like a version of "Omelas" written by someone who had missed the point of the original story. I don't believe that's what it is. I am sure that Kim fully understands Le Guin, and chooses for her own reasons to deliberately place a bomb under it and blow it to the skies. Her purpose in doing this, alas, escaped me.

Blog review.

[wasteland baby]

for my fellow omelas-heads - available to read here: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_...

[terka]

this was too stupid to put into words. the author is just kinda flailing around, shouting "look! look! this is what the metaphor of Omelas is for! load-bearing child!! hahaha I am so hilarious, do you get it? LOAD-BEARING CHILD!" while trying to not get cut on their own edge. Just embarassing, really. The kind of stuff an edgy teen would write to spite their English teacher.

[Isabel Kim]

do you ever write something and then things get wildly out of hand? anyway.

[emily]

This one is for the "fascism can't happen here" crowd. For those who don't want to talk about land-back or reparations. This is like the little sister story to Blood Over Bright Haven and I really liked it. You can read it here: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_...

"What the Omelans didn’t say was that their second grievance was due to the fact that the kid killers had broken the unspoken code: if you had a problem with the load-bearing suffering child, you were supposed to get the hell out of Omelas and keep it to yourself."

[Lannie]

I like this story for many reasons, one of which is that it flirts with cynicism but never actually gets there.

As a response to Ursula K. Leguin's original story, it makes a lot of sense, a sort of "opposite side of the same coin" approach. Where Leguin is poetic and languid, Kim is hyper-modern and blunt. Where Leguin asserts that Omelas is not possible to actualize, Kim plants Omelas firmly in reality. Where Leguin leisurely approaches her message over half way through, Kim gets to the point immediately. Where Leguin wants to engage purely in the metaphorical, Kim draws your attention to the literal—and says so to your face!

And of course, it was true that the whole city literally ran on the load-bearing suffering child in a very real physical way that was not a metaphor.

If Leguin's story is Omelas: The Thinker, then Kim's is Omelas: The Doer.

It's possible to read Kim's activist angle as a reproach to Leguin's implication that, when faced with an unfixable systemic problem, all you can do is walk away into the unknown. But it could also be that, metaphorically, killing the kid in the hole, burning down the system, and fighting in whatever way you can, no matter how hopeless, no matter how unresponsive, is how you walk away.

What Kim does here is use postmodern sharpness to say something new and engaging about not Leguin's work, or even her story, so much as society's complicity in addressing the kid in the hole only as a metaphor, as an English assignment. She is reminding us that we don't have to sit around musing about the trolley problem, we can go to the lever ourselves and yank it out of the ground.

Its modern lens, with clear implications of Western/North American politics and social media, rubs your nose in the fact that the hypothetical of the original Omelas was never hypothetical at all, and that every place is a sort of compromised Omelas. But it still implies some sort of rebellion, some sort of action, is worth it. Even if there is no clear solution. Even if we can't see the positive effects.

Leguin's original options were to a) go on living as usual with a pit in your stomach, b) help the kid and thus definitely destroy millions of others, or c) walk away in some capacity, whatever that fate may be, horrible or otherwise. Kim says there is a fourth option, one not immediately obvious. Kill the kid. Show everyone the horror of the system so that Option A becomes impossible, or at least extremely difficult. Make the issue real, no longer avoidable, and the whole system will convulse.

[Anisha Inkspill]

It was interesting to read this after the story it is responding to, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin. This is more emotive, and the rhythm and the sardonic tone doesn’t take away the horror of what it’s saying. Reading this made me appreciate the subtlety expressed in Ursula K Le Guin’s story. The most disturbing thing about this is the throwaway lines of killing children, I’m not sure how this makes up for how they are appallingly used in the name of happiness; they are still innocent, they are the victims.

Every beat here judges leaving no room for Omelans to speak, they’re on trial but they get no defence.

The story also mentions the children in Omela horrified by the content that is shown of their town, but then makes no mention of how the world’s outrage at Omela would impact them, these Omlan children who are also innocent.

I would have liked this better if it didn’t respond to The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas and stood on its own ground. Despite this, an interesting read as a contrast to the original.

[Lallo]

This is another story about a “Load-bearing suffering child”

Obviously connected to “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Whereas Ursula’s story was more about ethics and personal choice. This one is more about our current society, and lets you draw your own metaphors to reality. Good story for sure, both of them.

[Robiok]

Holy shit.
The full circle tragedy is rendered so fantastically.

I also would highlight the way the author uses the concept of ‘They’.

This is currently nominated for the Locus Mag award and i think the Hugo? Or Nebula? Regadless it deserves the recognition

[Andrew Somers]

Enjoyed this, even though I feel like Kim is in part disagreeing with something Leguin wasn't saying!

[Ethan]

Another riff on Le Guin's classic story (joining one a few years back by N. K. Jemisin, and I'm sure many others). This one is simultaneously more "meta" and more literal than Le Guin's more poetic and evocative thought experiment. It's hard not to compare Kim's story with Le Guin's, but that seems unfair. Nonetheless, an interesting continuation of and response to the thought experiment. I will probably return to this again, perhaps if/when I discuss the Le Guin story with students.

[Will Cohen]

I understand the direction the author took in adapting the original story but there were too many references to modern times in my opinion. It broke the immersion for me.

[Priyanka Dutt]

What if utilitarianism were accepted and used as a governing principle?

[Mangrii]

La mejor (e inesperada) respuesta que he visto al cuento original (de mis favoritos de la vida) de Le Guin y que nunca hubiera esperado leer.

[AoC]

Pretty much what is says on the tin, really. I did appreciate the cheeky tone Why Don't We Just Kill The Kid in the Omelas Hole goes for with its short story about something admittedly horrible. By its very nature the story raises questions, parallels and metaphors.

Omelas is a perfect shining city on a hill where people have come to terms there must always be a load-bearing suffering child stuffed into a sound-proofed hole enduring pain for everyone's sake. That's how it has always been, after all. City needs more in more than philosophical sense as things very much go awry when the child isn't suffering. Freak disasters, power outages, inconveniences for everyone living in their Nice Houses. That is to say, all of Omelas. And then something odd happens - load-bearing suffering child is killed. So they put a new one in. Only for it to happen again, and again. Who is doing this and why?

Yes, this concept has been done before and I'd argue events taking place in modern day, with social media Omeleans have absolutely healthy relationship with unlike everyone else they tend to look down upon, is the real game changer. Everyone else catches up to what's going on and start disowning the city. Which doesn't stop tourists from visiting Omelas' beautiful beaches, though. This back-and-forth between city fathers and nation at large is used to convey mental gymnastics justifying things. After all, these are all ETHICALLY SOURCED children. Short story even lampoons mainstream speculations by presenting multiple possible theories. Then there's also the matter of handling the murderers who acknowledge what they're doing it while seeing it as preferable than to have a child suffer even if it is for city's very tangible benefit.

Would I recommend Why Don't We Just Kill The Kid in the Omelas Hole? That would depend heavily on what you get out of it. Surface-level story itself? Eh. Almost self-aware commentary and letting the reader interpret the scenario he will is where the real draw lies.

[Jan Nieszporski]

I feel like the primary issue that I have with this work is that unlike the story it is building upon, this does not invite the reader to make their own conclusions, but rather spoon-feeds the audience its intended message. The metaphor and philosophical conundrum of the initial piece feel quite watered down by just how in your face it all is. It's a piece that is certainly angry for good reason, and the fact that the story is explicit in its feelings helps the sheer (understandable) frustration of the author come across well, but there's a fine line between that and subtlety -- and "I'm an accelerationist." crosses well beyond it to an almost eye-rolling degree.

That being said: the story's certainly an interesting elaboration upon the original material. I do not think that it is an elaboration that fully approaches Le Guin's story as an honest attempt to completely build off of the original -- especially with how elements such as mentions that Omelas has a stock market despite the original explicitly stating that it does not, but that's a nitpick -- but it does, admittedly, present the reader with appropriately relevant philosophical parallels to the real world to be very interesting. I'm not sure if de-mystifying the world of Omelas fully is the correct way to go about it -- especially because I think Le Guin's piece thrives on how vague it is and how much it leaves to the audience to wonder -- but it definitely drives the point that it has home, which is a point that is important to make and that is very, very relevant in the modern day.

I guess all of this is to say that I don't think this tries to actually build upon the original story, but rather build on it -- in the process losing a lot of what made Le Guin's work so interesting -- which frustrates me as a big fan of the original.

[Zzzzx]

And that's just the rub with baked goods, and desserts, isn't it? They're a slow poison. Really nobody should eat baked goods or desserts but the ice cream man gets in his little truck and plays his little song to see kids smile. And make money I guess. But then those kids get fat and get acne and become very sad and how much of their immediate happiness is worth that? How much of the ice cream man's happiness? On a gradient I assume his happiness is worth less than theirs because he's older but I don't think that's the way the world works and that makes me sad. So probably the sum total of sadness here is more than the happiness actually.
When people get older they get addicted to eating sweets and candy and baked goods and ice cream and that makes their bodies ache and then they die. This too causes sadness for those around them. That's why I've resolved to never die. When the Grim Reaper knocks on my door I'll open the mail slot and shout through a respectful "no thank you" and then go about my life forever. I think the Grim Reaper is a lot like vampires in that he has to be invited in. He gets a lot of small invites in pieces of candy and ice cream cones and baked goods. And some big invites when people get really sad. However I have proven here today that sweets make sadness so if you eschew the former, well Mr Reaper stands on your lawn and shrugs and moves on to Mr Jorgenson across the street who is very sad indeed.

[Nadine in California]

The title says it all, in theme and style - bringing Omelos' secret horror out into the open with a deadpan, satiric directness that pulls no punches. In Kim's contemporary Omelos, media (social and commercial) means the child isn't out of sight or mind. The complexities just get more complex:

Many non-Omelan people said a lot of very mean things (no one outside Omelas had a good and normal relationship with social media), like that the Omelans were monsters for letting the load-bearing suffering child exist and therefore everything about Omelas was fucked beyond belief.....This sentiment made the Omelans kind of upset. They pointed out that Omelas was a better place to live than most other places because at least you knew the load-bearing suffering child suffered for a reason, as opposed to all the other kids who were suffering for no reason. Out there, kids had their arms ripped off while they were working in chicken processing plants, kids were left in baby boxes, and kids lived in perfect quiet misery with one parent who was an alcoholic and another parent who beat them. In Omelas, there were only good parents and no child suffered except the single one who did. How dare you say shit about our fair city and our single child, when you won't even help your own.

[Erika Ensign]

Interesting thought experiment following on from a genius thought experiment, but without the same pathos or sense of poetry.

[Dalia]

I liked this a lot. Everytime I think on the ones who walk away, i never questioned the false dichotomy that LeGuin has created.

You stay and take part in the evil, or you leave. But in this case, we have people who choose to kill the child (a very drastic and unique choice, mind you) and we see that despite the minor initial fallout, that Omelas still refuses to change. And then we realize that Omelas, is not that different from ourselves.

Lastly I liked the addition at the end. Kin differentiates between three different They’s: the ‘they’ that kills the kid, they ‘they’ that lives and partakes in the everyday upkeep of Omelas, and the ‘they’ that run Omelas from the fancy houses. Kim takes us on this journey following these three different groups just to merge the latter two at the very end, a very jarring and valid choose.

I am going to enjoy thinking on this some more but I highly enjoyed.

[Chiththarthan Nagarajan]

There should be a warning before reading this book, but then again, where's the warning before watching TV news or reading a newspaper? This story is closer to reality than news can ever be. It was a hard read, and the writer's use of utmost harshness to lighten the reality was notable.


"As a teenager, you were supposed to learn the blunt truth that your society was built on a single ongoing act of senseless, meaningless cruelty, and then you were supposed to cry about it or rage about it, but either way you were supposed to get over it and grow up and get on with your fully-paid-for-by-the-state education system and your festivals and your legal weed and your drooz."

"Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole" by Isabel J. Kim.

[Ashleah]

I really enjoyed this author's prose and will absolutely be reading more from her.

This appears to be somewhat of a response to a classic Ursula K Le Guin short story, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. It has been quite some time since I've read that one, and I wish I'd reread it before starting this one.

There's a lot of social commentary here which hits pretty hard in our current climate, which is a hallmark of good philosophical sci-fi for me.