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