I'm reading Exhalation. I initially, upon reading to The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate, thought it was a well-told story, but ultimately another case of a t

I'm reading Exhalation. I initially, upon reading to The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate, thought it was a well-told story, but ultimately another case of a time-travel mechanism that would not hold up through a pause of suspension-of-disbelief. A fantasy that required an uncritical reader: How could it be possible that the stories were so self-consistent, as if driven by prophecy and fate, with all their paradoxes? I had an insight that made the story click for me: Discard the concept of free-will, and view the entangled system as a whole. The story we see is one state that, out of infinitely many possibilities, is self-consistent. A solution where the characters take an action based on knowledge of the future (etc) that changes this future, or otherwise causes a paradox, is simply not admitted. This is analogous to a an invalid attempt at solving a differential equation. Out of all possible states, only a select few (or one, or 0) solve the bounds imposed by the system's rules and bounding conditions. This makes them self-consistent, in teh way someone's time-travelling adventure shaped their life recursively. With this perspective, the story is immensely enjoyable and deep. I read Ted's discussion after regarding the mechanism inspiration from a Kip Thorne concept. Ted also mentions choosing an Islamic society for the backdrop due to its beliefs regarding the will of Allah, and how the characters justified the fates depicted.