Fuzzy Nation - John Scalzi

   2011; 301 pages.  New Author? : No.  Science Fiction - Colonization; Hard Science Fiction.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    This just might be the most lucrative day in Jack Holloway’s life.  And that’s saying something since he used to be a lawyer, and even now he’s a licensed contractor for ZaraCorp, hired to do prospecting and surveying on Zara XXIII, a remote and undeveloped planet some 178 light-years from Earth.

    Jack’s about to set off four high-explosive charges in a nearby cliff that might, per his surveying experience, contain a vein of highly-prized sunstones.  If this proves out, Jack’s entitled to 0.25% of the profits garnered from ZaraCorp mining them, which may sound miniscule, but it’s not.

    Alas, Jack does not always play by the rules.  He’s about to let his dog, Carl, do the actual detonating, and ZaraCorp, always sensitive to its safety record, has rules against that.  ZaraCorp is also extremely sensitive to any actions undertaken on its behalf that might be construed as deliberately damaging of the native ecology on these far-flung planets.  Jack can be summarily fired for any violations of these policies.

    But hey, Jack and Carl know what they’re doing (well, Jack does anyway.  Carl just does it for the doggy treat reward), and if everything goes right, four small rips will appear in the wall of the cliff, just large enough for Jack to see if any sunstones are buried within.

    What’s the worst that could possibly happen?

What’s To Like...

    Fuzzy Nation is a “reimagining” (so sez John Scalzi) or a “reboot” (so sez Wikipedia) of H. Beam Piper’s 1962 classic Little Fuzzy, which I read way back in 2011 and is reviewed here.  So it’s a retelling, and not a sequel, of the original tale.  The protagonist, Jack Holloway, is the same, as are a couple of the Fuzzys, but all the other characters are new.  Similarly, the general storyline is also retained, but all the details thereof are new and technologically up-to-date.  The Fuzzys now like to watch Ewoks drop rocks on Stormtrooper heads in old Star Wars episodes, and Holloway likes to listen to audiobooks when he’s traveling.

    The central theme is: what qualities must a species have to be labeled sentient?  To put it a bit more crudely, when we land on a new planet and encounter living creatures, how do we determine whether to communicate with them or eat them?  There are lots of possible factors, but the one that everyone agrees on is: the species must be capable of speech.

    As usual, the dialogue has lots of John Scalzi wit in it, the pacing is brisk, and the characters are all "gray", which I always like.  Our protagonist, Jack Holloway, is a bit of a butthead, and both the good guys and bad ones are interesting to tag along with.  The settings are limited: a couple places on Zara XXIII, and that’s it.  Ditto for the critters: the only ones we meet are humans, Fuzzys, zararaptors, and nimbus floaters.   

    The main storyline revolves around trying to determine if the Fuzzys are sentient, but there are several secondary plot threads, such as whether Jack and his ex-girlfriend Isabel will get back together, whether Jack and ZaraCorp will get rich, and what will happen to the Fuzzys afterward, no matter how their sentience hearing turns out.

    The ending is adequate – you sorta know what the trial decision will be, but the fun is figuring out what kind of evidence will be presented.  The judge who presides over the hearing is one of my favorite characters, she's always in control of things but sometimes just barely.  There are a couple of neat plot twists, but they occur mostly in the secondary plot threads, and in the epilogue.

Excerpts...

    When one lands on the jungle floor with a skimmer, via crash or otherwise, it makes a terrific racket.  Most of the nearby creatures, evolutionarily designed to equate loud noise with predatory action and other dangers, will bolt to get out of the way.  But eventually they come back.  The ones that are actual predators come back sooner, intuiting in their predatory way that a big loud noise might, when finished, result in some small helpless creature being wounded or slowed down enough for it to be picked off without too much struggle.

    What this meant for Holloway was that he likely had two minutes, give or take ninety seconds, to set up the emergency perimeter fence.  After that, something large and hungry would definitely be on its way to see what might be for lunch.  (pg. 112)

    “What’s your general opinion of Mr. Holloway?” Meyer asked.

    “Am I allowed to use profanity?” Bourne asked.

    “No,” Soltan said.

    “Then it’s best to say that our relationship has been a tense one,” Bourne said.

    “Any particular reason?” Meyer asked.

    “How much time do you have?” Bourne said.

    “Just hit the highlights,” Meyer said.

    “He’s lax with CEPA and ZaraCorp regulations, he’s argumentative, he tries to lawyer everything, he ignores me when I tell him he can’t do things, and he’s just all-around a jerk,” Bourne said, looking at Holloway.

    “Any positive qualities?” Meyer asked, slightly bemused.

    “I like his dog.”  (pg. 244)

“Squids don’t make sandwiches.”  (pg. 104 )

    I had a couple of quibbles, most of them minor.  There’s a bunch of cussing in the book (I counted 13 instances in the first 50 pages), but it needs to be said that the target audience here are adult readers, not the YA audience H. Beam Piper wrote for. 

    The storyline mentions two other sentient races that we Earthlings had already encountered in our stellar travels: the Urai and the Negad, and what the factors were that made us conclude they were sentient.  It would’ve been neat to work them into the storyline somehow, but alas, that doesn't happen.  I think this is Piper’s fault more than Scalzi’s though.

    Finally, because this is a reimagining/reboot, if you’ve read Little Fuzzy, you kinda know how the storyline is going to unfold.  In the Author’s Note, at the book’s beginning, John Scalzi gives H. Beam Piper’s version due praise (Fuzzy Nation was authorized by the H. Beam Piper estate), but this is one of those rare situations where it’s probably best to either one, but not both.

    Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading Scalzi's reboot, although that was perhaps helped by the fact that it’s been nine years since I read H. Beam Piper's version.  One tends to forget a lot of the details in any book after that amount of time.

    8 Stars.  Fuzzy Nation might be a bit redundant, but it’s still an entertaining read due to John Scalzi’s writing skills.  Add 1 Star if you’ve never read Little Fuzzy, you're going to really enjoy this book.