The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [191]
These questions are of course linked through the underlying notions of linearity and causality—naturally, if one declines to accept the hypothesis that time is linear, but one does accept causality (and it is, I think, impossible to write a story in which the notion of causality does not exist. “Experimental fiction,” yes—story, no), then paradox not only becomes possible, but must almost certainly become a major focus of the story.
If one accepts the hypothesis that history (that is, the events of the past) can be changed, then one allows the philosophy of free choice on the part of characters. If one rejects the hypothesis that history can be changed, then one is forced to accept the notion of predestination.
If the past can’t be changed by the actions of time-travelers, then this implies the necessity for predestination (or post-destination, as the case may be)—that is, the basic idea that events are “fated” to occur and thus are outside the abilities of an individual to affect.
Accepting this notion implies that there is some large order to the universe, much greater in scope than human action. As a philosophical or religious point of view, this is appealing to many people; we would like to think that somebody is in charge who knows what he’s doing.
On the other hand, the notion of predestination doesn’t do much for either our sense of self-esteem or our sense of possibility—and both are important to the notion of story (we identify with characters, and we keep asking, “And then what happens?”). It leads to a feeling of “Why bother?” that is counterproductive both to endeavor and to absorption in the story. I’ll tell you; predestination can work in fiction, but it’s much less attractive than the notion of free choice.
The acceptability of a story to a given reader depends primarily on the suspension of disbelief: the reader’s acceptance of the reality created by the author, even when this reality runs counter to the reader’s own experience. An author has a greater chance of achieving this suspension of disbelief if he or she can keep as much of the story as possible within the reader’s frame of reference, altering only those elements that must be changed to achieve the desired reality.
Consequently, it’s easier for a reader to accept a paradox-story—one involving circularity and predestination—if it is told only in personal terms, detached from any major historical events. Telling a time travel story in which major recognizable events are changed will disturb the reader’s suspension of disbelief by setting up cognitive dissonance between what the reader knows to have happened, and the created world he or she is trying to enter.
This is why the most successful stories of this type most often involve either a resolution or a process in which the main character ends up as his or her own ancestor and/or descendant. [The two best-known classics of this type are Robert Heinlein’s By His Bootstraps, and David Gerrold’s The Man Who Folded Himself.]
AN EXCEPTION HERE is a type of story that has recently become popular, called “alternative history.” In this sort of story, the reader is asked to accept as a beginning premise that some crucial event of history took place differently—the South won the American Civil War, Hitler won World War II, etc.—and the story proceeds on the basis of that assumption. This requires an upfront, conscious suspension of disbelief from the reader.
For me, stories that involve free choice on the part of the protagonists are more interesting to write, and, I think, much more likely to be attractive to readers. In this particular time and culture, the idea that we do have individual power over our own destinies is not only widely accepted, but highly desirable (the fiction of other times and cultures naturally may—and does—reflect different notions of individual power).
How to deal with these opposing choices, then? That’s a decision for an individual writer; for myself, I decided to have it both ways—to allow free choice, but not