Fiction?

Although I am trying to read more non-fiction, my second most favorite thing to do, behind talking to folks, is to read fiction.  I've helped to track down the worst of the serial killers.  I've saved the world from total destruction by catching the bad guys and stopping their evil plans in their tracks.  I've helped to build a great cathedral in Europe.  I've helped Hunter Quatermain find King Solomon's mine.  I've rafted down the Mississippi.  I've helped Ayn Rand to answer the question, "Who is John Galt?".  I've broken wild horses and wooed the fair maidens of the Old West.  This doesn't sound like much good would come from it except to rest and kill time.  However... I am going to quote a couple of things I've read just lately that seem to say, at least to me, that a lot of what I think is fact and not fiction.  Even fiction authors seem to want their protaganists to be real and, once in a while, I like what those characters are and what they have to say.  That said, here we go.

From "Unspeakable" by Sandra Brown:

     His travels had exposed him to different relegions.  He had sampled peyote with a shaman from one of the tribes in Arizona who believed the gods spoke through drug-induced visions.  He had caddied one summer for a golfing rabbi who had talked to him about God's covenents and the promised Messiah.  He had discussed the gospel with a group of Christian seminary students at an outdoor rock concert.
     All believed wholeheartedly that something greater than themselves was directing their destiny.  Something greater than themselves was at least helping them choose the right path.
     Jack didn't know which relegion was valid, or if any of them were.  He couldn't imagine a God who was omniscient enough to create the cosmos only to direct the lives of men with such petulance and caprice.  The reason for natural disasters escaped him.  He didn't comprehend why bad things happened to good folk, or why mankind was forced to suffer pestilence and famine and war.  He wasn't so sure about the whole concept of redemption, either.

From "Booked to Die" by John Dunning:

     Today I'm a mess of contradictory political views.  I believe in human rights.  I believe in due process, but enough is enough.  I'm a fan of a just and swift execution where vicious killers are concerned.  It's just ridiculous to keep a guy like Ted Bundy on death row for ten years.  I hate abortion, but I'd never pass a law telling a woman she couldn't have one.  I believe in the ERA, find it hard to understand why two hunderd years after the Bill of Rights we're still arguing about rights for half our people.  I like black people, some of them a lot.  I supported busing when it was necessary and would again, but there's something about affirmative action that leaves me cold.  You can't take away one man's rights and give them to another, even in a good cause.

Understand, I don't believe or endorse all of this, but the fact that you are reading fiction doesn't mean that you aren't thinking.