Sci-Fi Short Story Based on Bartleby the Scrivener?

May 17, 2021 10:44 AM

I once read a sci-fi short story that was pretty focused on passive resistance and people avoiding oppression by saying that they "would prefer not to" when ordered or being coerced into doing things. I think the context was that some imperialistic/colonial Earth humans showed up on an alien planet and the people who lived on that planet were resisting the Earth forces in this manner, or at least something along those lines. I don't remember the name of this story and haven't been able to find it again. Does this ring a bell to anyone?
posted by Juffo-Wup to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

My recollections of this story are really vague, and any of the following could be fairly wide off the mark:

* I have no idea whether the story was particularly "good"/well-written/etc. It might have been, or it might not.

* I think, but am not sure, that the moral of the story may have been along a libertarian/voluntaryist bent.

* If I remember correctly, one of the problems the invading/imperial human forces were having was that a lot of the low-level human soldiers/staffers/whatever found the alien society more appealing than their own, and would try to defect and live with / work for the aliens instead.

* At one point fairly early in the story, the humans were doing something like trying to forcibly relocate some aliens off some of their land. When told to board the busses, the aliens told the humans they would prefer not to, and just didn't. The humans then forcibly carried the aliens onto the bus and drove off. When the busses and humans came back, the aliens handcuffed themselves to some solid objects (or maybe to the busses themselves) to prevent themselves from being coerced into leaving.
posted by Juffo-Wup at 11:00 AM on May 17, 2021

If it's fairly old, I think it could be Eric Frank Russell, though the exact story escapes me at the moment. Might even be a novel (or was expanded to one).
posted by jclarkin at 11:25 AM on May 17, 2021

And Then There Were None is the short story I recalled which was perhaps expanded into the novel "The Great Explosion".
posted by jclarkin at 11:31 AM on May 17, 2021

I have definitely read this. The tag line wasn’t “I prefer not to,” it was “Freedom: ‘I won’t!’” Could have been Eric Frank Russell, but I don’t remember.
posted by LizardBreath at 11:39 AM on May 17, 2021

"And Then There Were None" was definitely the story I was thinking about. Thanks! Now to read it, and see which if any of my memories were even remotely accurate :).
posted by Juffo-Wup at 11:48 AM on May 17, 2021