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A review by crowsandprose
Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi
1.0
I really wanted to like this book. H. Beam Piper's "Little Fuzzy" was near and dear to my heart as a teenager, and some of the first hard science fiction I started reading.
This isn't anywhere near that quality. This has hollow characters -- and every male character in the book with the single exception of Sullivan (who only has moments where he's not pretending to be a raging prick along withe Aubrey, Landon, DeLise and Holloway) is very busy throughout the entire book engaging in a planet-wide prick measuring contest which frankly makes for boring reading. If I wanted to see guys measure their pricks, I'm certain I can find it for free on the internet somewhere.
Beyond that, the plot is shallow, there's way too much time spent on the drama llamaing of the male characters over mining rights, and the fuzzies are a political back drop to a book that really should have been written as an original story, since it bears next to no resemblance to H. Beam Piper's works. It seems really like the borrowing of the Fuzzy set up is a marketing ploy, because I don't think this book would have flown on it's own right, if you'd presented it as anything other then a 'reboot' of a vastly superior series, and would have failed. Frankly, I hope we don't see another one of these from Scalzi.
In short: Homage became an insult. Take a pass on this and just go straight to the great: "Little Fuzzy" and other works by H. Beam Piper.
This isn't anywhere near that quality. This has hollow characters -- and every male character in the book with the single exception of Sullivan (who only has moments where he's not pretending to be a raging prick along withe Aubrey, Landon, DeLise and Holloway) is very busy throughout the entire book engaging in a planet-wide prick measuring contest which frankly makes for boring reading. If I wanted to see guys measure their pricks, I'm certain I can find it for free on the internet somewhere.
Beyond that, the plot is shallow, there's way too much time spent on the drama llamaing of the male characters over mining rights, and the fuzzies are a political back drop to a book that really should have been written as an original story, since it bears next to no resemblance to H. Beam Piper's works. It seems really like the borrowing of the Fuzzy set up is a marketing ploy, because I don't think this book would have flown on it's own right, if you'd presented it as anything other then a 'reboot' of a vastly superior series, and would have failed. Frankly, I hope we don't see another one of these from Scalzi.
In short: Homage became an insult. Take a pass on this and just go straight to the great: "Little Fuzzy" and other works by H. Beam Piper.