To a certain extent, yes, fate and Kamma are similar. But it really depends on the usage of the words. However, as taught, there are some kammic things in the past that don't fruit, depending on what we can do with them and I think it ties into the second question so I'll go ahead and talk about that before I say more about the first.
I'm going to talk about some water. Imagine you have a glass of water and you take a big spoonful of salt and you put it into a glass and you stir it up. Do you want to drink it? Physically it is possible, but a lot of people will throw up and most people just don't want to drink it at all, it tastes terrible, right? Imagine you have a bathtub full of water and you take that same size heaped spoonful of salt, put it in a bathtub, stir it up, can you drink the water? Yes, and most people will never taste the salt.
As I use this example, the salt is like our bad Kamma fruiting, the results of our bad Kamma. Water is like our good Kamma. So if you have only done a little bit of goodness, and your past Kamma fruits, "Ow" it hurts, it hurts a lot! But if you have done a lot of goodness and your past Kamma fruits, it doesn't hurt so much.
That's pretty obvious if some of you have been sick and used good methods, good techniques and been able to stay peaceful during your sickness. Now if you have done this or even seen someone else who has been peaceful during their sickness, and then compare those reactions with someone who doesn't do any kind of mental practice, when they get sick, they get upset, they get angry, they want this, they want that. You can see in just an example like that, that if you have developed more goodness in certain areas, then even if a kammic result comes to you in an unpleasant way, you may not suffer as much as someone else.
The picture we put on the board the other day of Christopher Reeves, in case you did not know, he is totally paralyzed from the neck down. That's a very bad result, which Buddhism would say is because of some past bad kammic deed. However, he has got a lot of good Kamma in there too, that he has a lot of money to support himself, he has got a lot of friends to support him, his brain is still functioning, and he's doing a lot of charity work even though he really only functions normally from the neck up. So he's got a mixture there, and because he's got a lot of good Kamma to support him it's not as bad as others. Someone else, who hasn't got that good Kamma and becomes paralyzed from the neck down, would just become so withdrawn, want to commit suicide or whatever else, have no hope at all. This is just another example.
So regarding Kamma and fate, according to Buddhism there are certain things which will definitely come as a result, unless we get enlightened first. To a certain extent that is similar to fate. Fate does sometimes border on the fact that there is nothing at all we can do about it. But Buddhism says, "No, no, we can get ready for it, we've got to put more water in the bathtub!" There is more as to whether we can improve it with our mental development, Right Understanding, Right Intention, Right Actions, and, of course, the answer is yes.