Neil Gaiman on his selection: I chose this story because I cannot get it out of my head. Sometimes it feels like every argument we have, every discussion, every idea, is about balancing joy and misery. Omelas is a utopia for thousands built on the misery, and the knowledge of the misery, of one. It is an exercise in complicity: Le Guin makes us create her joyous city with her. We build it in our head. And then it destroys us, and she destroys us, and we are forced to think about what we made in our heads, and how it stacks up against the imperfect world we live in.  Let us all march to a place that may not be there at all. The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories at IndieBound Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0