First appeared in Alice Laurance's Cassandra Rising. Reprinted by Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery.
Summary:
A reporter takes in the story of a "Dark Christ"--a person or people who are, in this world, not necessarily anti-Christ or maybe they are. They are described more in terms of Yin-Yang--the destructive version of Christ. The reporter is witness to a murder.
Discussion (with Spoilers):
The reporter does not report the crime. Drunk, he goes down to the docks and he himself is killed by the same group.
It has long been a debate whether journalists should be involved in news or just report on it. If the journalist had reported them, perhaps he might have still been alive.
This is philosophical fiction, yes, but is this SF? It speculates on this religion, but it could as well be of our world now or in the past.
Probably the most interesting thing about the story is where it appeared. The editor opens with a small window on women in SF and probably one of the more interesting looks women in SF, looking at the male writers, too, discussing what she considered worthwhile portrayals of female characters.
Moreover, some complained about the political nature of Le Guin's The Norton Book of Science Fiction. And we have a story that no one else noticed (which could be cool, rescuing a good story from obscurity), but it isn't really SF, which lends some credence to the complaint.
While written by a woman, however, the story is about a man. Given the above, is this meant to be a critique of men? Let's come back to this after parsing possibilities.
So we have a religion who feels free to take lives. There's no discussion of the beliefs, per se, so maybe it could be any affiliation--political, social--except they define themselves as like but opposite of Christ.
They kill a man who is interested in boys. Is this ethical? If it is, then a journalist who doesn't report this murder, shouldn't be held responsible, but yet he is killed as well. Why? Is it because he drank? Is that ethical? Are both murders justified or neither or only one? How do you as a reader feel about the murders?
Once we establish this, we might understand better how we might feel toward the murder of the journalist. Because we inhabit the journalist, my suspicion is that we are meant to find some empathy toward him. Not always, of course. And maybe not completely.
"[The journalist] imagined he saw young, sympathetic faces around him, sympathetic but mistaken. But it was took black, he could see nothing.
"Trying to speak, felt the caress of white silk around his neck."
The speaker gives positive attributes to the killers ("sympathetic" and caress") but also calls them "mistaken." In retrospect, he sees himself as blind (or "could see nothing.")
Back to the topic of men and women, then, what does this suggest about male and female traits? Is this meant to suggest that men are more likely to kill and turn a blind eye?
