(urth) The Will Of God

[Craig Brewer]

The one thing that's bothered me about multiple timelines is that it only makes any difference if you can actually move between them. That's great for stories where that happens, but even if it is true, if "I" only exist and ever will exist in one timeline, then all the rest might as well not exist.

In other words, the idea of multiple timelines only really becomes speculatively interesting if time travel is a real possibility. Otherwise, the answer to "what if there are multiple timelines?" is, for all pratical purposes, "It doesn't matter."

Of course, within speculative fiction, all kinds of great stuff can come from the idea. But when it becomes an actual metaphysical speculation, I just don't really know what to do with it.



----- Original Message ----
From: "brunians at brunians.org" <brunians at brunians.org>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Sent: Sunday, December 7, 2008 5:11:37 PM
Subject: Re: (urth) The Will Of God


> And even within that category, can something occur and then become
> something that has not occurred? I'd say so. Maybe not in TBotNS, but
> certainly in Wolfe and any time you are dealing with alternative
> timelines. I mean something more than "I thought it occurred, but then I
> found out it didn't.")

I solve that problem by assuming that all possible timelines exist.


.


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