Foundation and Empire - Isaac Asimov

   1951; 255 pages.  Book 2 (out of 7) in the “Foundation” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Classic Science Fiction; Colonization Sci-Fi.  Overall Rating: 7*/10.

 

    It’s all happening according to plan, just like Hari Seldon said it would.  The Galactic Empire is now a shadow of its universe-encompassing past, and the Foundation, originally a bunch of exiled thinkers, is on the upswing.

 

    General Bel Riose of the Galactic Empire and military governor of Siwenna faces an important decision: Fight or Flight.  If Seldon’s “psychohistory” calculations hold true—and so far they always have—to fight the Foundation will surely end in disaster for the Empire.

 

    By the same token, for Bayta and Toran, supporters of the Foundation, the chances of success are much greater.  True, as individuals, they could die in combat.  Seldon’s predictions apply to galactic powers, not to the individuals thereof.  Still, it’s nice to be confident you’d be on the winning side.

 

    But what if something new arises, something which the psychohistory calculations could not have factored in?  Something that could finally cause an error in Hari Seldon’s perfect predicting record?

 

    Oh, come on.  What are the odds of that happening?

 

What’s To Like...

    Foundation and Empire was published in 1952, but it’s actually a combination of two novellas which first appeared in a magazine called Astounding Science Fiction way back in 1945.  Most sci-fi authors had only one way of getting published back then: write episodic tales short enough to be sold to some sci-fi magazine publisher.  This needs to be kept in mind when reading any Science Fiction work from prior to the 1960s.

 

    The two parts of Foundation and Empire are set in the same areas of the Galaxy, but at different time periods, and with different sets of characters.  The first part, The General, focuses on the aforementioned Bel Riose and his Foundation opponents, and is roughly one-third of the book.  The second part is titled The Mule, and focuses on an upstart stranger who is does not ally himself with either The Galactic Empire or The Foundation, much to the annoyance of both.

 

    Isaac Asimov comes up with lots of fascinating places for our adventurers to visit.  Seven worlds are featured, the most interesting being “Trantor”, the former home planet of the Galactic Empire, now reduced to desolation and replaced by a nearby orb called “Neotrantor”.  Asimov invents some nifty gadgets as well, including a “Time Vault” which allows Hari Seldon to speak from beyond the grave, and a “Visi-Sonor”, which—well, to give details would be a spoiler.  Let’s just say I need to get me one of those.

 

    The main “mystery” in Foundation and Empire, for both the reader and most of the characters, is discovering the whereabouts and the identity of The Mule.  The book’s ending resolves this adequately via an exciting plot twist which I had considered previously, then discarded.  Things close at a logical point, but I wouldn’t consider this to be a standalone story.  The resolution of the conflict between The Foundation and The Empire is not resolved, nor is the role that The Mule will play in it.  I presume this is addressed in Book 3, Second Foundation, which fortunately sits on my TBR shelf.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 13,400 ratings and 493 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.22/5 based on 217,316 ratings and 5,846 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    Mayor Indbur—successively the third of that name—was the grandson of the first Indbur, who had been brutal and capable; and who had exhibited the first quality in spectacular fashion by his manner of seizing power, and the latter by the skill with which he put an end to the last farcical remnants of free election and the even greater skill with which he maintained a relatively peaceful rule.

    Mayor Indbur was also the son of the second Indbur, who was the first Mayor of the Foundation to succeed to his post by right of birth—and who was only half his father, for he was merely brutal.

    So Mayor Indbur was the third of the name and the second to succeed by right of birth, and he was the least of the three, for he was neither brutal nor capable—but merely an excellent bookkeeper born wrong.  (pg. 119)

 

    “We came right through the war-zone to get here—on purpose.  We traveled about a light-minute or so, in neutral, right past Horleggor—”

    “Horleggor?” broke in a long-legged native, who was playing host to that particular gathering.  “That’s where the Mule got the guts beat out of him last week, wasn’t it?”

    “Where’d you hear that the Mule got the guts beat out of him?” demanded the pilot, loftily.

    “Foundation radio.”

    “Yeah?  Well, the Mule’s got Horleggor.  We almost ran into a convoy of his ships, and that’s where they were coming from.  It isn’t a gut-beating when you stay where you fought, and the gut-beater leaves in a hurry.”  (pg. 162)

 

“So far there’s been more drinking than thinking, and more wooing than doing.”  (pg. 169)

    There is zero cussing in Foundation and Empire which was the norm for science fiction written in the 1940s.  When situations arise where profanity is called for, Asimov comes up with some innovative euphemisms, such as “unprintable” (as in “my unprintable eye”) and “Bescuppered” (as in “Bescuppered if I know”).

 

    There are no “adult situations” as well, but keep in mind, in the 1940s, there were no adult situations in books of any genre.

 

    My big problem with Foundation and Empire is the storytelling style.  There are almost zero firsthand thrills-&-spills to read about.  It’s not a matter of “telling vs. showing”, it’s a matter of “action versus talking about it”.  Even when epic space battles occur, the reader only finds out about it when somebody later relays the news to somebody else.

 

    Still, this is the way sci-fi was written eighty years ago.  I was aware of that when I started reading this series.  For me, Foundation and Empire was an entertaining read, but mostly as a benchmark for appreciating just how far the Science Fiction genre has evolved since then.

 

    7 Stars.  One last thing.  On page 68, the subject of "Transmutation of Elements" comes up.  Specifically, a process for turning Iridium into Iron is discussed.  It would be great if this were even theoretically feasible, but it isn’t.  Trust me, I'm a chemist.

Raft - Stephen Baxter

   1991; 303 pages.  New Author? : No.  Book 1 (out of 17) in the “Xeelee Sequence” series (so sez Goodreads).  Laurels: 1992 Arthur C. Clarke Award (nominated); 1992 Locus Award for Best First Novel (nominated).  Genres: Hard Science Fiction; Colonization Sci-Fi.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    Rees is a clever young lad.  No doubt he’ll go far in life somewhere out in the Nebula.

 

    But alas, not here on the Belt, where there’s only one job for all inhabitants: mining a burnt-out star kernel for ore.  It’s brutal toil and while Rees may be clever, he’s not physically built for hard labor.

 

    The ore is vital to survival on the Belt, since nothing grows naturally there.  Every so often, the privileged class who live high in the sky above in a place called the Raft, send down a transport device called the Tree.  It’s loaded with food, which they somehow have lots of, and are willing to trade for the Belt’s ore.

 

    Rees is determined to get off the Belt, even though that’s forbidden.  Raft people are Upper Class and mining people are Working Class.  The system only works when everyone knows, and conforms to, their social class.  However Rees is desperate, and has come up with an escape plan, albeit a risky one.

 

    Have I mentioned that Rees is a clever young lad?

 

What’s To Like...

    Raft is Stephen Baxter’s debut novel, and the first of 17 of his books set in the “Xeelee” universe, albeit many of which are novellas and short story collections.  In effect, this is a prequel, telling the backstory of how a ragged crew of humans arrived at, and subsisted in, a far-flung bit of the time-space multiverse where galactic physics has played out quite differently.

 

    There are actually two main storylines: the aforementioned class struggle with its inherent hostility; and a looming cosmic Armageddon that will wipe out the entire Raft and Belt colonies: the life-giving Nebula is dying.  Rees plays an integral part in both storylines.

 

     The world-building is unique and masterfully done.  There are no extraterrestrials (yet), and only a few strange space creatures, such as sky wolves, skitters, and flying whales.  The latter are sentient and reminded me of the dolphins in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

 

    I liked Stephen Baxter’s attention to detail in presenting this space world to the reader.  Time is now measured in “shifts” instead of hours or days; logarithms were found to be useful (which is something I’ve yet to discover here on Earth); and the classic situational-ethics dilemma of “too many passengers in the lifeboat” is still a vexing problem.

 

    The ending has a hopeful tone and sets the stage for the entrance into the far more expansive world of the Xeelees.  The primary plotline of what to do about the dying nebula is resolved.  Other plot threads remain up in the air, and will presumably be addressed in the next sixteen books.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.1*/5, based on 407 ratings and 40 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.69*/5, based on 4,055 ratings and 283 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “Men don’t belong in this universe.  We came here in a Ship.  We passed through something called Bolder’s Ring, which was a kind of gateway.  Somewhere in the cosmos on the other side of the Ring is the world we came from.  It’s a planet, incidentally; a sphere, not a Raft, almost eight thousand miles wide.  And its surface has a gravity of exactly one gee.”

    Rees frowned.  “Then it must be made of some gas.”

    Hollerbach took the orrery from the shelf and studied the tiny planets.  “It’s a ball of iron, actually.  It couldn’t exist . . . here.”  (pg. 83)

 

    “Sir, the lists of passengers have not yet been published; and until they are it is up to all of us—”

    “They don’t need to be published.  We all know who’ll be on that trip . . . and it won’t be the likes of me.  Rees, I should have sucked your brains out of your skull while I had the chance down in the kernel.”  Roch held up a rope-like finger.  “I’ll be back,” he growled.  “And when I find I’m not on that list I’m going to make damn sure you’re not either.”  He stabbed the finger at Grye.  “And the same goes for you.”
    Grye turned ash white and trembled convulsively.

    Roch stalked off.  Gord hefted his jet and said wryly, “Good to know that in this time of upheaval some things have stayed exactly the same.”  (pg. 255)

 

“You’re a Boney now, lad!  Welcome to the arsehole of the Nebula.”  (pg. 163)

    There cussing is relatively sparse in Raft.  I counted just 20 instances in the first 20% of the book.  Most of those were damns, and I don’t recall any f-bombs in the entire book.  Often, the occasions for profanity were covered by made-up phrases, such as “bonesucker”, “by the bones”, and the oft-used social pejorative “mine rat”.  I love it when an author does this.

 

    The book is written in English, not American; so words are spelt, the mood can be sombre, and you can munch of airborne titbits.  If you’re perplexed by any strange spelling, you can look it up in an Encyclopaedia.

 

    The main issue I had with Raft, as did lots of other reviewers, was the way the science-y parts were presented.  The laws of physics in Raft are radically different from those governing our universe.  But instead of laying this all out at the start of the story, those differences are revealed piecemeal along the way.  This made for a difficult read.

 

    But enough quibbling.  I enjoyed Raft because it was an equal-parts blend of a “lost-in-space” scenario with some hard-hitting social commentary.  And it did this in a very “hard science fiction” manner.  The storytelling may be a bit rough around the edges, but it still got the job done and promises an exciting series to follow.

 

    7 Stars.  Book 4, Ring, has sat on my TBR shelf for quite a while.  Now that I've read Raft, I just have to decide whether to jump directly into its Xeelee-inhabited world, or first go looking for Books 2 and 3.  This is a pleasant problem to have.

Foundation - Isaac Asimov

   1951; 255 pages.  Book 1 (out of 7) in the “Foundation” series.  New Author? : Yes, surprisingly.  Genres: Classic Science Fiction; Colonization Sci-Fi.  Overall Rating: 7*/10.

 

    All hail the Galactic Empire!  It’s the dominant power in the Milky Way, and it’s been around for 12,000 years.  Yeah, it may be a bit past its prime, but who’s big enough to try to knock them off?

 

    Enter Hari Seldon.  He’s a Psychohistorian (a what?!) and he’s been doing some calculating, and has come to a startling conclusion: the Galactic Empire will collapse within 300 years.  And that will lead to a “Dark Ages” period on a galactic scale, which will last for 30,000 years.  Ain’t mathematics amazing!?

 

    Needless to say, the present rulers of the Galactic Empire are not amused, but Hari’s calculations also show a way out of the disaster.  Sorta.  The Empire needs to commit to writing the sum total of all the knowledge in the galaxy.  Hari says it won’t prevent the collapse of the Galactic Empire, but it will shorten the duration of the Dark Ages to maybe as little as 1,000 years.

 

    The path forward is clear.  The Empire will exile Hari Seldon to the far-flung fringes of the galaxy and tell him to get busy writing down all that knowledge.  It’s not that they believe his predictions.  But it’s imperative that this rabble-rouser gets put somewhere so out-of-the-way that his message never gets heard by the rabble.

 

What’s To Like...

    Foundation is composed of five novelettes, four of which had been published previously in a sci-fi magazine called Astounding Stories in the 1940s.  A fifth novelette was written and the combined result was published as a full-sized novel in 1951.  Its five sections are:

    Part 1. The Psychohistorians  (3% Kindle)

    Part 2. The Encyclopedists  (17% Kindle)

    Part 3. The Mayors  (34% Kindle)

    Part 4. The Traders  (59% Kindle)

    Part 5. The Merchant Princes (68% Kindle)

 

    Foundation is the first book in what would eventually be a 7-book series by Isaac Asimov.  This tale focuses on the onset of the disintegration of the Galactic Empire, which I’m assuming will be the main storyline throughout the series.  It covers a time-span of about 155 years and, for now, has only human characters, which means that those alive in Part 1 will not still be alive by the end of the book, although the aforementioned Hari Seldon still occasionally pops up as a hologram.

 

    The title refers to the group of psychohistorians who have traveled with Hari to the aptly-named planet Terminus, located on the edge of the galaxy.  They are officially known as “The Encyclopedia Foundation”, and ostensibly tasked with chronicling the sum total of human knowledge.  But they have a hidden agenda as well.

 

    The first territorial losses suffered by the Galactic Empire will occur out here.  Five rebellious planets, including Terminus, break away, and frankly they're just too far out in the galactic sticks to be worth the expense and trouble of the Empire sending a force out to quash the uprising.  Besides, the inhabitants of these planets spend much of their time squabbling among themselves, so maybe they'll do each other in.  It is more of an economic style of warfare anyway, and the titles of the five sections give the reader a hint as to what faction in society is top dog at any given time. 

 

    Asimov gives the development of nuclear power as an energy source a lot of ink, which impressed me, given that Foundation was published in 1951.  I chuckled at the choicest smoking material being called “Vegan Tobacco” until I realized it referred to the star named Vega, and not a meatless designation.

 

    Each chapter starts off with an excerpt from the “Encyclopedia Galactica”, which is the massive tome the Foundation is busy writing.  They give some background to the world-building, but aren’t crucial to the understanding the storyline.  There are 48 chapters in all, which averages out to about 5 pages/chapter, so you’ll always have a convenient place to stop reading for the night.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.4/5 based on 16,346 ratings and 1,893 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.17/5 based on 486,117 ratings and 13,717 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “I’ve been sent here for no other purpose than to assure you that you need not fear.  It will end well; almost certainly so for the project and with reasonable probability for you.

    “What are the figures?” demanded Gaal.

    “For the project, 99.9%.”

    “And for myself?”

    “I am instructed that this probability is 77.2%”

    “Then I’ve got a better than one chance in five of being sentenced to prison or to death.”

    “The last is under one percent.”  (loc. 368)

 

    “I’m here in the capacity of your spiritual advisor.  There’s something about a pious man such as he.  He will cheerfully cut your throat if it suits him, but he will hesitate to endanger the welfare of your immaterial and problematical soul.  It’s just a piece of empirical psychology.”  (loc. 2070)

 

Kindle Details…

    Foundation presently costs $7.99 at Amazon.  The other six books in the series are all priced either $7.99 or $8.99.  There are dozens more Isaac Asimov e-books available, most of them in the $6.99-$12.99 range.  Asimov's books are occasionally discounted, but not very often, and I've never seen Books 2-7 in this series in those discounts.

 

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!”  (loc. 1974)

    The thing to keep in mind when reading Foundation is that it is science fiction written in the 1940s and 50s.  The genre was in its infancy back then, the stories were usually short so that they could be submitted to monthly magazines.  Epic Star Wars-type battles were rare, and character development was a low priority.

 

    All of that is true here, at least in this first book in the series.  Asimov wrote the first three Foundation books in the 50’s, so I expect this will hold true of Books 2 and 3 as well.  The last four books were published in the years 1982-1993, so they may have a more “modern” style.

 

    It should also be noted that 1950s sci-fi had very little cussing and adult situations, and that also holds true here.  I counted only four cusswords in the first 50% of the book, and no R-rated situations.  When the plotline called for swearing, Asimov usually opted for “made-up” phrases, including “Space knows”, “by the Galaxy”, “I don’t care an electron”, “by Seldon”, and my favorite: “Son-of-a-Spacer”.

 

    Last of all, keep in mind this was intended to be a series from the very start.  The ending is thankfully not a cliffhanger, but certainly a “to be continued” sort of thing, and just about all of the plot threads remain unresolved.

 

    7 Stars.  Science-fiction writing has come a long way in the last 70 years.  I wasn’t expecting Ewoks, phasers, or blue-skinned aliens, so wasn’t disappointed when none of those showed up.  This book was groundbreaking in its time – a doomsday scenario for mankind, and a target audience of both adults and YA readers, instead of just the latter.  Unfortunately, since Asimov’s Foundation books are rarely discounted in e-book format, I'll need to hit the used-book stores if I want to delve deeper into this series.

Proxima - Stephen Baxter

   2013; 489 pages.  Book 1 (out of 2) in the Proxima series.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Hard Science Fiction; Colonization.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    It is an unprecedented opportunity.  One of the planets that orbits Proxima, the nearest star to us (not counting of our own sun), a mere four light-years away, appears to be able to sustain human life.

 

    Of course, four light-years is still a tremendous distance to travel, but this is 2155 AD, and there must be lots of intrepid people out there who’d love to be included on the first spaceship to another star system.  It would be just like being one of the Pilgrims on the Mayflower when it first set sail to the New World a half a millennium ago.

 

    Hmm. Come to think of it, life was pretty brutal for those settlers back in the 1600s.  Disease, hostile natives, and starvation all took their toll, and when things got tough, the nearest help was on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.  It’ll be even worse here: just sending an SOS message from Proxima back home to Earth takes four years.  So maybe we won’t get many volunteers for the mission.  Maybe we won’t get any at all.

 

    We better think of alternative ways to “recruit” settlers for the Proxima mission.  I seem to remember one method found to be effective was called “shanghaiing”.

 

What’s To Like...

    Proxima is a “hard science-fiction” novel, wherein Stephen Baxter presents a plausible scenario for traveling for the first time outside our own Solar System.  The two main protagonists are Yuri Eden, who discovers he’s been drafted to be one of the first colonists, and Stephanie “Stef” Kalinski, a leading authority on “kernels”, a high-energy/high-density ore-like material discovered on the planet Mercury.  Kernels can be used to build propulsion systems capable of unheard-of power, although Einstein’s principle remains sacrosanct: you still can’t go faster than the speed of light.

 

    Yuri arrives on Proxima around page 50.  Stephanie remains in our Solar System, although she planet-hops a bit.  Each gets his/her own storyline, and although you know they’ll eventually meet up with each other, trying to guess just how that's going to happen is one of the delights of the story.

 

    The first half of the book deals mostly with the challenges that the exoplanetary settlers face on Proxima-c, or, as they rechristen it, “Per Ardua”.  Stephen Baxter has a lot of fun speculating about what divergent paths evolution might take on a different world.  He also mixes in a dash of quantum mechanics, but to say more about that would entail spoilers.

 

    Critter-creating on Per Ardua is done sparingly.  It’s mostly confined to “kites” and “builders”, although evolution allows for lots of variety within both of those species.  I enjoyed flying through the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud on the way to Proxima, as well as the concept of “programmable matter”.  The use of a “silo” habitation system in harsh environments reminded me of Hugh Howey’s Wool trilogy.

 

    The history of Earth from the present to the start of Proxima was both detailed and thought-provoking.  Some reviewers didn’t like the way China was portrayed in this, but I thought it was eminently plausible and liked that the Chinese characters in the book were developed as 3-D entities.

 

    The ending is mainly just a stopping-point along the way.  It’s not a cliffhanger, but there’s a major and weird twist at the very end that changes the complexion of the tale thanks to one of the fascinating facets of quantum mechanics.  None of the plot threads are tied up.  It is important to realize that Proxima is Book One in a duology, with Book Two, Ultima, presumably assigned the job of bringing everything to a satisfactory conclusion.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.1/5 based on 32 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.81/5 based on 5,960 ratings and 552 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

    Conurbation (n.) : an extended urban area, typically consisting of several towns merging with the suburbs of one or more cities.

 

Excerpts...

    “I am Angelia,” said the woman.

    That puzzled Stef.  “That’s the name of the starship.  The Angelia."

    “I know.  I am Angelia.  I know what you’re thinking.  That I am a PR stunt.  A model, hired by your father to personify—”

    “I don’t actually care,” Stef said abruptly.

    That surprised Lex.  “You’ve got an impatient streak, haven’t you, Kalinski?”

    “If somebody’s being deliberately obscure, yes.”  (pg. 31)

 

    “So you may as well keep going, right?”

    “Through another door, yeah.  And another.  What else is there?”

    “I’ll tell them what became of you.”

    Yuri grinned.  “Well, maybe we’ll be back to tell it all ourselves.”

    “You really think so?”

    “No.”  (pg. 449)

 

“I still say you’ve got big dreams for a bit of farm machinery.”  (pg. 146 )

    There are some things to quibble about.

 

    The book’s timeline is both extensive (2155 AD to 2217 AD; for a total 62 years) and non-linear.  There are valid reasons for that, which we won’t disclose, but it does mean trying to figure out where and when both Yuri and Stef are at any given moment is a bit of a challenge.

 

    As for R-rated stuff, the book is relatively clean.  There is some violence, mostly offstage, and a small amount of cussing (9 instances in the first 10% of the book), but nothing really lurid or graphic.

 

    Perhaps the biggest gripe is the pacing.  The first half of the book dragged at spots as the colonists try to avoid starving to death on Per Ardua.  But I imagine the Pilgrims had lots of tedious stuck-in-a-rut days too.  Things move along faster in the second half, but the bottom line is: this is a Hard Science-Fiction story, not a Space-Opera Star Wars type of tale.  Tediousness is a part of being a settler, and it beats being sick, starving, or having an arrow in your throat.

 

    Lastly, it bears repeating that this is not a standalone novel.  When you decide to read Proxima (at 500 pages), you’re really signing on to read Ultima (another 500 pages) as well.

 

    7 Stars.  It’s hard to give a proper rating to Proxima since I haven’t read the sequel yet.  Ultima is on my TBR shelf, awaiting my attention, and it will be interesting to see whether the weird tone-shifting plot twist plays out for better or for worse.

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.