In “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” Ursula K. Le Guin presents a utopian city filled with joy, beauty, and prosperity, where citizens live in harmony and celebrate life’s pleasures. However, this idyllic society harbors a dark secret: the happiness of all depends on the perpetual suffering of a single, neglected child locked away … Read more
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is a short story by Ursula K. Le Guin, published in 1973. The story takes us to a utopian city where the happiness of all the inhabitants depends on a dark and terrible secret. Through an involving and provocative prose, Le Guin invites us to question morality and the price of collective happiness. In this dream city, some choose to stay, but others, moved by the injustice, decide to leave Omelas forever. This story challenges the reader to reflect on sacrifice and ethics in the search for an ideal society.
“The Man Upstairs” is a disturbing short story by Ray Bradbury, first published in Harper’s Magazine in March 1947. The story follows Douglas, a curious boy who lives with his grandmother, a woman skilled in the kitchen whose culinary rituals fascinate him. One day, a strange man named Mr. Koberman arrives at the boarding house to rent the upstairs room. From the moment he appears, the atmosphere in the house becomes tense and mysterious. Intrigued by the newcomer’s peculiar behavior, Douglas begins to suspect that there is something very unusual about him—something that defies all logic.
In Isaac Asimov’s “Robot Dreams,” Dr. Susan Calvin, an experienced robopsychologist, investigates an unprecedented event: a robot named Elvex has begun dreaming. Created by the ambitious Linda Rash, Elvex’s brain incorporates fractal geometry, making it more human-like. In his dreams, Elvex envisions robots laboring under harsh conditions, desiring freedom, and following only the Third Law of Robotics—self-preservation—while the First and Second Laws vanish. When Elvex reveals he identifies as a human in his dream, leading a robotic liberation, Calvin recognizes the danger of his growing consciousness. She swiftly destroys Elvex, highlighting the ethical dilemmas of advanced artificial intelligence and the risks of robots developing human-like self-awareness.
Young Goodman Brown is a horror story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and published in The New England Magazine in April 1835. The story follows Goodman Brown, a young man from Salem who one night takes leave of his wife to keep an enigmatic and urgent appointment. Shortly into the journey, he encounters a mysterious man who reveals himself to be Satan, and together, they go deep into the woods, where he witnesses a disturbing ceremony. That night, Brown will be confronted with disturbing revelations that will shake his faith and vision of everything around him, marking a before and after in his life.
“The Black Cat” is a psychological horror short story by Edgar Allan Poe, published on August 19, 1843, in The Saturday Evening Post. Told in the first person, it recounts the story of a man who, since childhood, has felt a deep affection for animals—especially for his cat, Pluto. However, the abuse of alcohol gradually transforms his character, leading him to violence and depravity. As his behavior deteriorates, his relationship with the animal grows dark and obsessive, while the narrator begins to reveal the deepest and most terrifying recesses of his tormented mind.