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Your appraisal's right, his work is more philosophical/speculative than "hard" SF. But I don't see a problem with that. There's room for both in science fiction

Your appraisal's right, his work is more philosophical/speculative than "hard" SF. But I don't see a problem with that. There's room for both in science fiction. If you don't particularly prefer the spec-fic stuff, there's nothing wrong with that either. It depends on what you see the purpose of scifi as being: Is it to explore cool tech/science we can't explore in reality yet, or is it to use tech/science to ask questions we can't answer in reality yet?

elorant 10y ago
Sure it's both and a gazillion other things. But here's the thing, even as a philosophical theme I don't find it presented very well. Why for example can't you act on free will? Who's stopping you? The future? And who's enforcing it? He could for example go down the path of the simulation hypothesis which also renders free will irrelevant. But he didn't. I don't know, perhaps after a while it will hit but right now I can't really see the greatness in the scenario. I don't mean to dismiss it, just saying so to open a conversation.
- jblow 10y ago
  You are saying this free will stuff because you are conditioned to believe in free will. Someone who knew that there was only one future would find the idea of free will to be like some kind of fairy tale -- the lack of it doesn't require any more explanation than the lack of Santa Claus. In our current non-fictional universe, where we don't know if there is free will, then if you want to believe in it, maybe the burden of proof is on you to explain how it would even be possible given what we know of the universe. So I am not sure why you think a fiction author is failing at is job by not explaining the mechanism by which there is not free will.
- macintux 10y ago
  Astonishingly hard to imagine how any such exploration would not have diminished the story. This is a woman narrating an extraordinary experience and a relationship with her daughter, not a physicist giving a lecture on the structure of the universe.

elorant 10y ago

Sure it's both and a gazillion other things. But here's the thing, even as a philosophical theme I don't find it presented very well. Why for example can't you act on free will? Who's stopping you? The future? And who's enforcing it? He could for example go down the path of the simulation hypothesis which also renders free will irrelevant. But he didn't. I don't know, perhaps after a while it will hit but right now I can't really see the greatness in the scenario. I don't mean to dismiss it, just saying so to open a conversation.

jblow 10y ago
You are saying this free will stuff because you are conditioned to believe in free will. Someone who knew that there was only one future would find the idea of free will to be like some kind of fairy tale -- the lack of it doesn't require any more explanation than the lack of Santa Claus. In our current non-fictional universe, where we don't know if there is free will, then if you want to believe in it, maybe the burden of proof is on you to explain how it would even be possible given what we know of the universe. So I am not sure why you think a fiction author is failing at is job by not explaining the mechanism by which there is not free will.
macintux 10y ago
Astonishingly hard to imagine how any such exploration would not have diminished the story. This is a woman narrating an extraordinary experience and a relationship with her daughter, not a physicist giving a lecture on the structure of the universe.