sophia_sol | Little Fuzzy, by H Beam Piper

This is a charming little book that is deeply, clearly, obviously of its time. I found it on Librivox, remembering I'd heard good things about the book, and assumed that therefore since it was in the public domain it must be pre-1923. I started listening to it and within a few minutes was convinced it must be from the 60's, as little sense as that made.

Turns out it is indeed from the 60's and yet still is in the public domain. Let me categorically state that I DON'T UNDERSTAND USA COPYRIGHT AND BOOKS. (wiki is very little help, alas, only serving to make me more confused.)

The book in general continued to feel very much of its era as I continued listening. Not in a bad way (...mostly)! Just in a way where all sorts of authorial choices constantly reaffirmed that it originated in a specific cultural context. Which - well, all books do. Some are more obvious than others, but in general books can't easily escape their cultural context. It's an interesting experiment to compare Little Fuzzy with John Scalzi's recent reboot of it, Fuzzy Nation. Fuzzy Nation has the same approximate plot and characters as Little Fuzzy, and yet it is obviously from a different context, reflecting the culture it came from just as much as Little Fuzzy does.

There are some things I like about Fuzzy Nation better (the Fuzzies having an agenda of their own!) and there are some things I like about Little Fuzzy better (Jack Holloway not being a giant obnoxious dick!). But unfortunately it's been several years since I've read Fuzzy Nation so I don't currently feel qualified to properly compare the two books.

In general I really liked Little Fuzzy. But also the whole thing is also just like.... colonialists behaving paternalistically (or violently) towards native people who they see as just barely counting as people, less intelligent, very innocent, childlike, animal-like, etc. GEE WHERE HAVE I SEEN THIS DYNAMIC BEFORE. Pretty sure the connections I'm making here weren't intended by the author but I'm still a little uncomfortable.

Also I am endlessly disappointed that Ruth the scientist spy (!!!) happily retires to the role of sunstone miner's wife. (okay yes, and fuzzyologist, but she only agrees that's the case after prompting from her fiance.)

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Ha, yeah, I am with you on both of these. There are things I really appreciate about Fuzzy Nation, particularly the way that it critiques the BLATANT colonialism of the original (which gets even uglier and worse as the books go on), but I also kind of hated that everyone in Fuzzy Nation were basically huge dicks, from the fuzzies to the humans, whereas the original Piper book has a much warmer and more optimistic view of human nature. Even the billionaire industrialist guy actually turns out to be pretty decent once the whole situation is explained to him .... though you get more of that in the sequel, I think, where he was one of the main characters. And yet, it is SO WEIRD to read a book in 2015, allegedly set in the future, in which everyone acts like they're in the 1950s.

I wrote this fandom for Yuletide a few years back, and despite my misgivings about the books overall, I think the fic is a sort of argument in fic form for why I like the originals better than the reboot, despite liking the reboot's politics better -- because the characters in the original are such decent people, and make me want to write fic about them, whereas the reboot is kinda just about awful people being awful.

WELL, good to know I don't need to read the rest of the series, if it only gets more colonialist from here. Sigh.

I kind of found most of the characters from Little Fuzzy interchangeable, but you're right that on the whole they are actually decent people. I don't remember any of the characters from Fuzzy Nation but I am perfectly prepared to take your word that they were all dicks! It really is too bad when people feel the need to characterize the entirety of humanity (or the entirety of sentient beings!) as dickish.

Thanks for linking me to your fic! I am excited about reading it now.

I do remember liking the second one, so I don't want to turn you off it completely - especially since I'm pretty sure the second one has a lot of stuff about how things are developing in a post-Fuzzy-contact world (which the fic draws from), and I found that interesting. The third, I think, is where they just COMPLETELY went off the rails with the "Fuzzies are mentally children and cannot be responsible for themselves" thing. But it's been long enough since I read them that I don't remember for sure.

Which third one do you mean, "Fuzzy Bones" or "Fuzzies and Other People"? There were two third ones (and I haven't managed to read either of them because they were both pretty hard to find.) Fuzzy Bones was the one written by a different author and from what I recall was supposed to be terrible; "Fuzzies and Other People" was based on an unpublished manuscript by the author and is a v. different story.

(There's also "Golden Dream: A Fuzzy Odyssey" by Ardath Mayhar which retells the original story and, iirc, into the beginning of "Fuzzy Sapiens" entirely from the fuzzies' POV. Have either of you read that? It's a stylistically kind of strange book because it really does try to keep the POV very nonhuman, but an interesting retake on the story that definitely accepts the Fuzzies as fully responsible actors. And is very 80s the same way the others show their ages. TBH, the way the original press for "Fuzzy Nation" completely ignored the existence of Mayhar's retelling (which was, after all, written by a woman, so not important, right) is a large part of why I've had trouble inspiring myself to read Scalzi's.)

No, I haven't read Golden Dream and hadn't even ever heard of it, but now I want to read it!

(and I can't help but wonder whether you mightn't want to read Fuzzy Nation just so you can be annoyed at it more effectively :P)

I don't know that I'd rec Golden Dream on its own but it's really interesting in the context of the Little Fuzzy phenomenon / fanficness and it's not bad!

(I have a copy of Fuzzy Nation! I will read it someday. It's just that normally new Little Fuzzy "canon" would have gotten me reading it immediately - I liked the original a lot and I am so fascinated by the fact that this book that even a lot of SF fans have never heard of somehow still has published tie-ins by four other authors and a picture-book adaptation and probably some other stuff.)

(I mean I shouldn't be surprised it's got a persistent underground fandom because it's basically about soulbonding with furries that srs sf fans of srs hard sf for srs mens can pretend is totally classic hard SF totally. BUT STILL.)

(And that's kind of why I don't, hmm, I don't think too hard about the questions of the Fuzzies' being patronized? Because they serve EXACTLY the same story role as Pernese dragons or Manticoran treecats or Valdemaran Companions or Iskryne trellwolves, of alien species that inexpicably want nothing more in life except to keep humans from ever being lonely. That appears to be something humans want in their stories. I think more interesting to me is why none of the other "companion animal" universes have even explicitly posed the questions of legality and equality like Piper does.)

(Except Temeraire of course.)

(The picture book is pretty good by the way.)

You know, I never really thought about it in the same sense as Temeraire, Valdemar, etc, but you have a point!

And I wonder if that's a big part of why I disliked Fuzzy Nation so thoroughly on an emotional level, because it'd be sort of like someone writing a take on Valdemar in which the horse-analogs loathe being Companions and are only putting up with it for self-serving reasons while plotting against the Heralds. It torpedoes the fantasy right in the aspect of it that makes it emotionally appealing ... which I guess works fine if you aren't into the fantasy, but if that's actually what drew you to the thing in the first place ...! (See also: me and Lev Grossman's books.)

...huh, you're totally right, that IS the role the Fuzzies are playing. Interesting to think about.

Errrrr .... it's been long enough now that I have no idea! I think it might have been "Fuzzy Bones" because the different author thing rings a bell? I'm also pretty sure I noped out of it, so that might be the one. (I originally read "Little Fuzzy" and "Fuzzy Sapiens" as a kid - they were collected in one book, which was part of my parents' extensive library of paperback sci-fi - and didn't discover the existence of other Fuzzy books 'til I was an adult; then I found out what they were actually LIKE, noped out and went back to the original two.)

And no, I haven't read that one and had no idea it existed! Um, wow. Yes. That is really fascinating, especially the fact that I've never even heard of it and, yeah, no one mentioned it at all when Fuzzy Nation came out.

Checking out the goodreads reviews of Fuzzy Sapiens, quite a number mention a condescending attitude towards the Fuzzies, so even if the book does contain some interesting stuff I think I'm not feeling motivated to read it. Sigh, ah well.

I haven't read the reboot, but I did very much enjoy Little Fuzzy. It's definitely not comfortable reading at times, but I liked that I didn't feel that it was supposed to be. There're bad things (and people), but I always felt like Piper might as well have been there going "LOOK HOW THEY ARE BEHAVING, DO NOT DO THIS! BE NICE TO EACH OTHER!" and I liked that.

I also love that the peak of the action is a courtroom scene about definitions of sentience! That just pleases me on every level. :D

Yes, I loved the book's goodheartedness, and I was delighted to realize what the climax was going to be!

Little Fuzzy, by H Beam Piper

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