We talked a little today about Chiang's use of time travel and how everything is fated to happen and cannot be changed. It seems in all the works we read that involved a form of time travel or future sight (for example, "Story of Your Life" and "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate") were founded on the basis of predeterminism and fatalism. Predeterminism, by definition, is a belief that every event is caused by a prior set of events that could be extended to the origins of the universe, and no one is capable of changing that set of events. Fatalism, being very similar to predeterminism, entails that all events are fated to happen and nothing can be done to undermine those events.
Chiang writes with the notion that time is like a straight line with fixed points in the past, present, and future that cannot be changed. However, I wonder why he does not approach the possibility of malleable timelines and realities where changes are possible. Is it simply for ease of writing on a complex matter without adding further complications? Or perhaps to avoid paradoxical realities where you have killed your grandfather? It would lead to the possibility for more plot holes, but I think it would also add a new, interesting dimension.
When I read "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", I actually assumed that the rope-maker from the first tale did alter the future. Bear with me- when he stepped through the gate and saw his very wealthy future self, his future self told him about the chest. Through a fatalist interpretation, the wealth was there because it was always meant to be there- it would have happened with or without time travel. But the man only finds the chest and becomes wealthy because of the advice given to him by his future self. Suppose that the man had never stepped through the gate: the chest would have probably been recovered by someone else, and the rope maker might have heard about it. By relaying the location of the chest to his younger self, he altered the past and his wealth appeared. Each time he gave his younger self new advice, he was changing the past.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's just me, but I have trouble with stories that include events that only could have happened with time travel- the man knew what to tell his younger self because he remembered being given that advice when he was younger. It seems to me that he's clearly altering a timeline- he's just altering it from the present and from the future simultaneously.
That's a good point, and I too have trouble with plots involving time travel because I always try to dissect them and figure out how things would work in those instances. However, according to the shopkeeper/alchemist, the past and future are concrete and could not be changed. The rope-maker's future self told the present self where to find the gold, and that always had to happen. He was always going to find the gold because his future self was rich as a result. Just like with the example of knowing that you'd be alive in the future meant that you could do anything and not die, everything is set and cannot change.
ReplyDeleteTo say that he "only finds the chest and becomes wealthy because of the advice given to him by his future self" is somewhat true. He did find the chest because he was told by his future self where to go. But that is only looking at a part of the picture. Yes, his life changed in the sense that the present rope maker now had riches that he didn't before. However, that was always going to happen. It happened with the future rope-maker, the one before him, and so on.
I guess it all depends on the perception of time. If all of time is happening simultaneously due to "Allah's will" (quite possible in the universe) than the idea of fatalism wouldn't be a problem. The question of "well, what happened first?" doesn't apply because it has ALWAYS played out the way we see in the story.
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