[On May 10, 2021 Strange Horizons officially expressed its political support for Palestinian solidarity. The views of Tangent Online reviewers are not necessarily those of Strange Horizons. Fiction critiqued at Tangent Online is, as much as is humanly possible, without prejudice and based solely on artistic merit.]

Strange Horizons, July 17, 2023

“The Ones Who Came Back to Heal” by Cynthia Gómez

Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf

As its title hints, “The Ones Who Come Back to Heal” by Cynthia Gómez is a response to Ursula K. LeGuin’s famous story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” The narrator returns to the city where prosperity depended on the suffering of a single child, to find that a revolution has freed the victim. The narrator struggles to help the child learn how to exist outside the darkness and isolation that are the only things it has ever known.

The story is very well written, and the main plot, described above, is a powerful one. A secondary premise is the fact that the inhabitants of the city have no gender, and a visitor from another place has to be told how to properly address them. Even if this is a nod to LeGuin’s novel The Left Hand of Darkness, it seems out of place and tends to dilute the story’s main point.

Victoria Silverwolf has read at least two other stories that are responses to LeGuin’s classic fable.