Phil writes...

Continuing the recent discussion on the immutability of time and Mighty Thor's question about fate/predestination vs free will.

As an amateur writer I can relate to being the creator of a universe. When your characters are well developed, they do seem to have minds of their own. There are things they'll do and things they won't do. As "god," you can force them to do what you want, but then they're not the same person. You have to manipulate events so that choices they make are logical and in-character.

As I'm sure you've said, Greg, time is only immutable if you know about it. You can't change things that have happened, you can only work around them. And you can only fulfill things you didn't know about before.

The way I see it, our challenge as writers/creators is to arrange time/fate so that "independent" characters are "free" to make the choices we want them to make. It's often very difficult, but the result is so fulfilling when everything seems to work out naturally.

Thanks for reading my ramble, Greg. This is just my point of view. I'm interested to learn if and how yours differs.