Free Will v Predetermination
In the realm of fiction, especially in Science Fiction, an author of a piece has a medium to take on any of the seemingly endless number of questions that humanity as a whole faces. As such, a great deal of Science Fiction is focused on answering, or at least toying with possible answers to, life’s greatest questions. In the short stories Arena by Fredric Brown, Wang’s Carpets by Greg Egan, and Vaster Than Empires and More Slow by Ursula K. Le Guin, the question of Free Will as opposed to Predetermination is either directly or indirectly approached.
In Arena, the question of free will is approached directly, in that a seemingly-benevolent, incredibly powerful force intervenes directly with the protagonist’s fate, along with the fate of all of humanity. This force describes itself as “mental, and not physical,” (57). This could easily lead the reader to believe that said entity is transcendent of reality in most ways, given that it has the power to completely annihilate an entire species with what appears to be an effortless ease. It too, must be brought to light, that this entity has the power to determine that one of the races in the war, Humans and the red-skinned, “Roller” alien species, would someday be as transcendent as the seemingly omnipotent entity itself.
The unnamed, omnipotent entity demonstrates a vast amount of power in its free will. The entity decides, seemingly of its own volition, that one of the warring races needed to be saved, and that letting both die out was an unacceptable outcome, eventually deciding that a complete genocide is the correct answer for the universe. It decides that a one-on-one battle is sufficient to determine the outcome of the war. It determines which fighters are to be chosen, the incredibly inhospitable arena conditions to be fought in, and that one warrior must kill the other. It is curious that a being of such overwhelming supremacy did not even apparently attempt to oversee a diplomacy between the two races, or simply move them apart, utilizing the seemingly infinite vastness of space, until each of the warring races were closer to the apparent transcendent enlightenment that the entity’s own race had obtained.
It is an important distinction to make that not every character has the free will that the entity has. The entity forces each of the individual warriors into a one-on-one, winner take all, life and death melee with no chance to escape. The combatants would face predetermination in that they would fight, or they would die. Furthermore, the omnipotent entity did not offer a single chance for redemption to the losing race, it simply annihilated them all in one fell stroke. It also did not allow our protagonist, Carson, a chance at deserved glory. “Common sense, more than modesty, told him he’d be branded forever as the worst liar in space if he ever said any more than that,” (73). Perhaps the entity teaches us the lesson that power, and the ability to impact our surroundings and the interactions within our grasp are the only true measures of free will.
Contrary to Arena’s approach, Wang’s Carpets takes on the question with a significantly different set of parameters, and a significantly greater degree of subtlety. The titular Carpets, on initial examination, are little more than self-replicating kelp. However, upon deeper inspection and with a different manner of examination, they have a nigh-incomprehensibly complex system of intelligent communication. The Carpets, in a “sixteen dimensional” view become imaged as squids, and a simulation maps out their communicative ability by using visual structures as a representation. “…he pointed out another set of links, leading to another, less crude, miniature squid mind – ‘it thinks about its own thoughts as well. I’d call that consciousness, wouldn’t you?’” (159). Oddly, the Carpets themselves seemed to have no contact with the outside world at large. “If they’re unified organisms, they don’t appear to react to anything in their environment – they have no predators, the don’t pursue food, they just drift with the currents…” (139-140). At any rate, they are hermetic in their communications, dealing only with each other on a level far beyond mere human processing ability.
An easily overlooked variant of the question is whether or not the citizens of the Carter-Zimmerman polis have free will themselves. It is easy to self-identify with the citizens at times, given their supposed physical manifestations, but general weirdness dictates that said physicality is probably an illusion. It seems that the Carter-Zimmerman polis, if it is a physical place at all, is inhabited more by beings of software than actual bodies. “Ancestral social hierarchies might have had their faults – and it was absurd to try to make a virtue of the limitations imposed by minds confined to wetware…” (149) Since the citizens of Carter-Zimmerman are seemingly bound only by the limits of the virtual world that they inhabit, summoning furniture and changing forms on a whim, it is feasibly possible for their thought processes to be predetermined, as bound by the rules of code. Any program, no matter how complex, grandiose, or powerful, is merely a set of rules, and if something within that set of rules is not defined, then it does not exist. It is possible that Carter-Zimmerman needs to be only a space-borne virtual environment, little more than a processor, power source, and hard drive, which means that the characters in Wang’s Carpets may not be as different from said Carpets as they imagine.
In Vaster Than Empires and More Slow, the characters are decidedly biological, much to the detriment of the local empath, Osden. Sensor Osden “had been sent only on account of his singular gift, the power of empathy: properly speaking, of wide-range bioempathic receptivity,” (100). Someone like Sensor Osden would probably argue that we have no free will, being slaves to the chemical makeup of our bodies and the raw, unmitigated emotions that they create. While the existence of neurological disorders and various chemical imbalances causing strange and unpredictable behavior in some people would back up his hypothetical claim, most people probably prefer to believe that they have control of their bodies, instead of the converse. Supporting the claim that we are dominated by our biochemistry is the behavior of the crew when Osden is present among them, their distaste and fear of him leads them into bizarre behavior patterns. Upon his leaving into the forest, their behavior regulates into much more normal models. “Osden went, and nothing was heard from him for five days but laconic all-well signals twice daily. The mood at base camp changed like a stage-set,” (105).
Furthermore, Sensor Osden finds that even a creature with seemingly no will at all can still share emotion and intent: the flora of the planet itself. “‘Sentience without sense. Blind, deaf, nerveless, moveless. Some irritability, response to touch. Response to sun, to light, to water, and chemicals in the earth around the roots. Nothing comprehensible to an animal mind. Presence without mind. Awareness of being, without object or subject. Nirvana,” (113). The flora of the planet seemingly has no will, no motive, and no ability beyond a vague empathy, but is afraid of the crew, causing hallucinations and uneasiness among them. When Osden is attacked, the fear amps up in power, and spreads to various other locales on the planet that they visit until it is overwhelming. Eventually, Osden sacrifices himself for the planet and his crew’s good, letting them finish their mission and leave in peace, knowing that he would be forever alone, save the alien world’s vague feelings and nebulous responses.
Ultimately, the reader is left to their own devices to decide if free will or predetermination are true, or even mutually exclusive. Certainly, Arena, Wang’s Carpets, and Vaster Than Empires and More Slow seem to have varying ways of looking at the subject, and a slew of possible interpretations thereof. The fact of the matter is that fiction, especially Science Fiction, will always be a vessel into the great unknown of the human condition, and all the things that we, humanity, may encounter on our journey into the great unknown of time and space.
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