Fate and Free Will Theme Analysis

In “The Minority Report,” Dick considers the ancient ideas of fate and free will within a futuristic context, presenting three precogs who see into the future, an ability called precognition. On the basis of precognitive data, Precrime officers apprehend and detain would-be criminals before they commit any crimes. While the story initially appears to invalidate free will by establishing the validity of precognition, on closer inspection it actually affirms free will through the character of Anderton. Dick presents a world in which precognition and free will are mutually interactive and influential, in which both co-exist and converge upon the same events. The precogs record—but do not determine—what will happen. They report certain future possibilities and facts, while Anderton subjectively influences and experiences the events and thoughts corresponding to those predictions. Ultimately, the story argues that both fate (or precognition) and free will have a significant impact on human life.

The precogs accurately foresee the future, demonstrating the validity of precognition. They consistently provide accurate predictions, as evidenced by the virtual elimination of all major crimes. Their reports give the police an enormous advantage: knowledge of a crime approximately a week before it will be committed. Simply put, if precognition didn’t work, then Precrime wouldn’t be so effective at crime reduction. Even in Anderton’s case, the precognitive data is correct. Despite his initial refusal to believe the prediction, he ultimately murders Kaplan, “as the majority report had asserted.” While there has been but one deliberate murder in the last five years, a critic may nonetheless point to this instance as indicative of a deeper failure. However, this rare lapse was due to a failure of enforcement, not prediction. Precrime knew the victim’s name, the location, and “the exact moment” of the crime, but the criminal was still able to commit murder and evade them. This doesn’t invalidate the precognitive data, but begins to show that there is more at play than fate alone.

The story ultimately suggests that both fate and free will dictate the course of a human life. In the world of the novel, there are multiple time-paths—similar to alternate endings in a video game—that can have different outcomes due to either precognition or free will winning out over one another. Precrime would not work unless individuals were able to alter the future. Utilizing their free will, Precrime officers avert one time-path, in which a crime occurs, in favor of another, in which the crime never happens. This is possible because the future is not the manifestation of a singular, predetermined outcome; instead, it contains multiple time-paths. While hiding out in a hotel, Anderton listens to a radio broadcast, which explains the theory of multiple time-paths: “If only one time-path existed, precognitive information would be of no importance, since no possibility would exist, in possessing this information, of altering the future.” But Precrime officers are able to alter the future by acting upon precognitive reports.

The multiple time-paths correspond to different choices that individuals can make. Consequently, the precog's reports, which describe the various time-paths, are rarely unanimous. In Anderton’s case, the precogs generate three reports because he changes his mind twice about murdering Kaplan over the course of the story. The first report foresees his decision to murder Kaplan in a time-path that was discarded. The second report sees him changing his mind in response to reading the first report. The third report responds to Anderton’s final decision that he must, in fact, murder Kaplan in order to protect Precrime’s reputation and prove that the system works. The reports influence Anderton’s future by providing him with information about that future in the present. At the same time, the reports incorporate their own future influence upon Anderton. More specifically, the later reports show how Anderton changes his mind as he reads and interprets the precognitive data as a whole. The precogs' forecasts thus change the informational context within which Anderton exercises his free will, but they do not eliminate his freedom to choose. Anderton acts as the third report said he would, but his decision follows from his own reasoning. His case thus casts doubt upon Kaplan’s assertion that access to precognitive data cancels out the future act to which it corresponds. Anderton’s foreknowledge may have initially cancelled out the act of murder, but he ultimately chose that act. Therefore, whether the previewed event happens or not depends upon the decisions of the relevant actors.

The Precrime system cannot perfectly predict the future because free will at least partially escapes prediction. This suggest that free will is ultimately, if marginally, the more powerful force. While the precognitive reports do accurately report Anderton’s major decisions, they do not record every detail pertaining to his future. For example, they do not mention that Anderton and Lisa will leave the planet for an off-world colony, which they do at the end of the story. This suggests that at least some of the unrecorded details of the future are the product of unknown or unexpected decisions. In other words, precognition is not perfectly omniscient because the future is an evolving creation that is influenced by spontaneous decisions.