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absolut_todd's review against another edition
4.0
Digging into the old school SF for a bit of a brain bleach. Basically a 'first contact' story with a sapient species on a different planet. The plot generally resolves around the idea of how do you measure sapience when on one side you have a creature that seems to be sapient, vs a corporation who will lose all their power if they are determined to be sapient. I think that part of the book, the debate about sapience still holds up and is interesting these days, but man, the anachronisms in the book are just crazy, i.e. they have mastered faster than light space travel, but still need to develop film of the Fuzzies. It holds up reasonably well for a 50 year old book.
matthewssmith's review against another edition
2.0
An okay book, but I thought I'd be getting forest adventure. Instead I got an episode of Law and Order.
ronpayne's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
bpadinha's review against another edition
4.0
Tackles the problem of how to define sapience in the context of multiple intelligent races, in a nice, short, story.
ditarlatoni's review against another edition
4.0
A sweet and thought provoking book. So refreshing to read some golden age science fiction that comes from a leftist viewpoint considering that so many of those fifties writers were basically nazis in all but application.
lordofthemoon's review against another edition
3.0
This book takes up pretty much immediately after its predecessor, [b:Little Fuzzy|1440148|Little Fuzzy|H. Beam Piper|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51icDXbqCiL._SL75_.jpg|1876891], finishes and continues the story of the (now legally protected as) sapient species Fuzzy Fuzzy Holloway on the colony world Zarathustra. The jacket blurb on my edition was actually misleading, hinting at an existential threat to the species that didn't turn up until pretty late in the book, and was then resolved pretty quickly and without much drama.
I was somewhat bemused throughout the book by the treatment of the Fuzzies by the Humans. Despite repeatedly stating that they were sentient, they were often treated like pets, although I'm not sure if this is was deliberately done by the author to show confusion in the colonists' minds or was an issue that Piper had.
One thing that I found quite quaint was the very mid-twentieth century attitudes on display, partially in the treatment of courting and women (not as bad as some, since it actually allowed women to work in serious jobs) and very much in the fact that everyone seemed to stop in the early evening for a cocktail hour. It somehow felt quite colonial, in the British Empire sense, and not really like a frontier colony world at all, but it was charming, in its own way.
Charming is a good word to describe the book as a whole, really. There's little sense of threat and the whole thing just feels like an extended footnote to the previous volume. I still found it enjoyable though and one thing that I did like was how it rehabilitated the villains from the previous book. In that, the Company that ran the planet had a vested interest in proving the Fuzzies non-sapient, since otherwise they would lose their claim to the planet, but now that that has happened, the company brass shrug and just get on with dealing with the aftermath, and are portrayed much more sympathetically than before.
In summary, the book was enjoyable and fun, but by no means essential reading for fans of Little Fuzzy.
I was somewhat bemused throughout the book by the treatment of the Fuzzies by the Humans. Despite repeatedly stating that they were sentient, they were often treated like pets, although I'm not sure if this is was deliberately done by the author to show confusion in the colonists' minds or was an issue that Piper had.
One thing that I found quite quaint was the very mid-twentieth century attitudes on display, partially in the treatment of courting and women (not as bad as some, since it actually allowed women to work in serious jobs) and very much in the fact that everyone seemed to stop in the early evening for a cocktail hour. It somehow felt quite colonial, in the British Empire sense, and not really like a frontier colony world at all, but it was charming, in its own way.
Charming is a good word to describe the book as a whole, really. There's little sense of threat and the whole thing just feels like an extended footnote to the previous volume. I still found it enjoyable though and one thing that I did like was how it rehabilitated the villains from the previous book. In that, the Company that ran the planet had a vested interest in proving the Fuzzies non-sapient, since otherwise they would lose their claim to the planet, but now that that has happened, the company brass shrug and just get on with dealing with the aftermath, and are portrayed much more sympathetically than before.
In summary, the book was enjoyable and fun, but by no means essential reading for fans of Little Fuzzy.
katrinamiddelburg's review against another edition
4.0
A sci-fi classic from the 60's, with interesting discussions about sapience still relevant today. You do have to grimace at the sexism of the era the book reflects, though. Still, very worth a read and I hope to follow up with John Scalzi's Fuzzy Nation soon!
bzedan's review against another edition
4.0
Now, the Terro-Humans colonise like nothing else. And, being human, they also love the commerce and capitalism. So, when possibly, this uninhabited planet the Company has essentially just started running in the black and self-sufficiently, isn't like—really uninhabited? Yeah, we learn about humanity, and how imaginatively cruel, grasping and utterly selfless it can be. At least when things are fuzzy. The ending would have been totally different if they were dealing with a "Little Scaly". There's two (still copywrit) books involving the Fuzzies after this, I may need to check them out (actually, just they and one other are the only Terro-Human books still in copyright). For all I know, Piper deals with that not-big-problem in them.
hammard's review against another edition
4.0
A very deft short novel looking at a range of very important issues in a clever manner. Very interest work.
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