Title: Pursuing Fedhisss
Author: William A. Glasser
Date: 2020
Publisher: Open Books
ISBN: 978-1948598347
Quote: "HAVING LOOKED MORE CLOSELY now at two particular representatives, Larry and Les, I have confirmed that human beings, in their waking moments, consider themselves to be existing as completely separate individuals."
In this philosophical teaching story Earth is visited by two aliens. Both land in a small isolated college town somewhere in North America and draw molecules out of the woods dirt to rearrange into the forms of North American gentlemen. They're able to tap into the thoughts of the humans they meet efficiently enough to speak flawless English, no doubt with the appropriate accent for the part of the continent they're on, but they still seem alien. For one thing they look like identical twins. They are philosophical opponents pursuing each other through space. Urr, who is neutral about humans but inclined (at first) to vote against letting us survive, is pursuing Fedhisss, whose anti-human attitude seems insane when it's being verbalized by what looks like a man.
They interact with a few humans. Urr spends enough time with the man identified as Les and his girlfriend, Anne, that they start to bond with him, despite warning that this may not be a good idea. Their objective is to decide whether or not to destroy all life on Earth.
Glasser comes perilously close to a mistake too many amateurs (writers and others) make these days: relying on a non-shooter's shooting to save anything. This is the proper place for that reaction I sometimes get when I mention that gun bans kill people: "EDUCATION, EDUCATION, EDUCATION," one old and dear e-friend retorted, making a valid point that missed the one I consider important. Many firearms-related injuries (some fatal) are caused by ignorance or carelessness: people either don't know how, or don't bother, to handle dangerous weapons safely. Mass homicide-suicides are caused by a type of mental illness that follows a rather precise pattern and is almost always associated with certain drugs, some of which happen to be popular prescription medications. But when Glasser tells us that Les doesn't own or use firearms, has to borrow a revolver when Urr asks him to bring one and only just remembers how to hold it without shooting himself in the foot, I braced for another idiotic whopper of an ending in which Les saves the world by shooting Fedhiss right through the heart, first shot he's ever fired, beginner's luck.
That's not what happens. Glasser's save has a little credibility, given the terms of his story, and does at least acknowledge that, if a character in fiction or in real life wants to accomplish anything, even winning a ten-dollar prize, by shooting anything, then that character needs to spend some time shooting targets, learning how to handle whatever the character is going to shoot. I don't know that state-run firearms courses do more good than state-run driving courses, but even in a Sunday School story for three-year-olds in which little Timmy "just plays with" a garden hose and "shoots" himself in the face, fictional characters need, as a service to humankind, to obey the law of nature that uninstructed shooting has unintended results.
As a Christian I'm not particularly thrilled by Glasser's non-theistic worldview, but Pursuing Fedhisss fulfills its apparent purpose of stating the author's beliefs in the form of an extended teaching story. It's clean, readable philosophy, good for train rides, bed or bathroom reading, and perhaps starting discussions.
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