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Fuzzy Sapiens #1-2
The Fuzzy Papers: Little Fuzzy & Fuzzy Sapiens
The chartered Zarathustra Company had it all their way. Their charter was for a Class III uninhabited planet, which Zarathustra was, and it meant they owned the planet lock stock and barrel. They exploited it, developed it and reaped the huge profits from it without interference from the Colonial Government. Then Jack Holloway, a sunstone prospector, appeared on the scene with his family of Fuzzies and the passionate conviction that they were not cute animals but little people. An 1 disc MP3-CD Edition.
406 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
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433 people want to read
About the author
H. Beam Piper
296 books242 followersHenry Beam Piper was an American science fiction author. He wrote many short stories and several novels. He is best known for his extensive Terro-Human Future History series of stories and a shorter series of "Paratime" alternate history tales.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
August 1, 2013
This is classic golden age feel-good sci-fi. The good guys win, the bad guys all get killed or put away, and nothing really bad happens to the cute little fuzzies. Yes, it's a little dated and it shows its age, but it's still good reading for those who like the old SF classics.
Fuzzy Papers combines the first two books in H. Beam Piper's classic "Fuzzy" series: Little Fuzzy and Fuzzy Sapiens. Reading them in a single volume is appropriate, since the second book picks up right where the first left off, with the same characters only a few weeks later.
The planet Zarathustra is pretty much a planet-wide company store leased by the Chartered Zarathustra Company. The CZC mostly trades in sunstones, hides, and meat, but the planet is growing and the initial colony is becoming a full-sized city. Out in the boonies, a sunstone prospector named Jack Holloway has an unexpected visitor in his camp: an adorable little two-foot humanoid who, it turns out, is not just a tool-user but a language-user as well. Holloway immediately takes on the role of guardian of these innocent creatures, who are ripe for exploitation by humans.
The plot of the first book mostly revolves around establishing the Fuzzies' sapience. The Zarathustra Company has a vested interest in the Fuzzies being legally declared to be no more than very bright animals, since if the planet turns out to have native sapients, the company will lose its charter and the Fuzzies will have full sapient rights. Of course it's obvious from the beginning that the Fuzzies are intelligent, so the conclusion is foregone, but the courtroom battle over the definition of "sapient" waged with use of infallible lie-detecting technology, is the kind of expositional debate-club sci-fi that's out of style nowadays.
The second book is a combination of sci-fi mystery and crime caper. It turns out that the Fuzzies suffer from such a high infant mortality rate that their race is dying out. The friends of the Fuzzies explore one solution after another in their quest to save the species. Meanwhile, Fuzzies are becoming enormously popular as "adoptees."
This second aspect is where The Fuzzy Papers shows its age, since there is never any discussion at all about whether it's appropriate for humans to treat Fuzzies as, essentially, pets. Fuzzies are adorable and playful and don't commit crimes of violence and, while declared sapient, are about as smart as ten-year-old children and act like it. So their human guardians are scrupulous about their well-being but think nothing of carrying them around like children, giving them food and tools and shelter (and thus pretty much destroying their native culture), or using baby-talk when speaking to them. There were several points where I thought Piper might actually examine some of the moral quandaries — yes, you're saving an aboriginal people from lives of struggle against nature red in tooth and claw, but you're also turning the entire species into wards of humankind, which doesn't have a great track record when it comes to taking care of "primitives."
Piper never does raise issues of paternalism or disruption of native cultures, though — the Fuzzies are just cute critters who talk and make charming house companions, even if they are sapient.
This was a fun read and recommended for any fans of classic sci-fi. And yes, I am going to read John Scalzi's rewrite next.
Fuzzy Papers combines the first two books in H. Beam Piper's classic "Fuzzy" series: Little Fuzzy and Fuzzy Sapiens. Reading them in a single volume is appropriate, since the second book picks up right where the first left off, with the same characters only a few weeks later.
The planet Zarathustra is pretty much a planet-wide company store leased by the Chartered Zarathustra Company. The CZC mostly trades in sunstones, hides, and meat, but the planet is growing and the initial colony is becoming a full-sized city. Out in the boonies, a sunstone prospector named Jack Holloway has an unexpected visitor in his camp: an adorable little two-foot humanoid who, it turns out, is not just a tool-user but a language-user as well. Holloway immediately takes on the role of guardian of these innocent creatures, who are ripe for exploitation by humans.
The plot of the first book mostly revolves around establishing the Fuzzies' sapience. The Zarathustra Company has a vested interest in the Fuzzies being legally declared to be no more than very bright animals, since if the planet turns out to have native sapients, the company will lose its charter and the Fuzzies will have full sapient rights. Of course it's obvious from the beginning that the Fuzzies are intelligent, so the conclusion is foregone, but the courtroom battle over the definition of "sapient" waged with use of infallible lie-detecting technology, is the kind of expositional debate-club sci-fi that's out of style nowadays.
The second book is a combination of sci-fi mystery and crime caper. It turns out that the Fuzzies suffer from such a high infant mortality rate that their race is dying out. The friends of the Fuzzies explore one solution after another in their quest to save the species. Meanwhile, Fuzzies are becoming enormously popular as "adoptees."
This second aspect is where The Fuzzy Papers shows its age, since there is never any discussion at all about whether it's appropriate for humans to treat Fuzzies as, essentially, pets. Fuzzies are adorable and playful and don't commit crimes of violence and, while declared sapient, are about as smart as ten-year-old children and act like it. So their human guardians are scrupulous about their well-being but think nothing of carrying them around like children, giving them food and tools and shelter (and thus pretty much destroying their native culture), or using baby-talk when speaking to them. There were several points where I thought Piper might actually examine some of the moral quandaries — yes, you're saving an aboriginal people from lives of struggle against nature red in tooth and claw, but you're also turning the entire species into wards of humankind, which doesn't have a great track record when it comes to taking care of "primitives."
Piper never does raise issues of paternalism or disruption of native cultures, though — the Fuzzies are just cute critters who talk and make charming house companions, even if they are sapient.
This was a fun read and recommended for any fans of classic sci-fi. And yes, I am going to read John Scalzi's rewrite next.
July 29, 2016
The main reason I picked up this book was because John Scalzi wrote a book set in this same universe, called Fuzzy Nation. I’ve only read one Scalzi book, Old Man’s War, but it was good enough that I wanted to read more of his stuff. So when I read that he was working on Fuzzy Nation, I thought it was a good idea to catch up on the original material. And here we are.
The book is a collection of two novels set in the Fuzzy universe — Little Fuzzy and Fuzzy Sapiens– and the books are very different from each other. The first covers the discovery of the creatures on planet Zarathustra, and the battle between Jack Holloway, who discovered them, and the Chartered Zarathustra Company, the über-corporation that owns most of the discovered planets in the universe, over whether ot not the Fuzzies are sapient beings. See, if Jack and his friends can prove that the Fuzzies are sapient, then the Company will lose all contract rights to Zarathustra, which means they’ll lose a lot of money. The creatures are viewed as pets by all parties, but only Jack and his friends are convinced that they have self-awareness and deserve to be treated as sapient beings. So the whole novel has a nice conflict that underlies the main theme: What is sapience?
It’s really fascinating to think about, and even more so to realize that the book was originally written in 1962. Piper makes very astute observations about intelligence and consciousness, and takes us along on the revelations that are made about sapience over the course of the trial. Fuzzy Sapiens takes that premise a little further along, looking at how one sapient race integrates itself with another one, and the difficulties that arise from such an experiment. Like the previous book, the conflict arises from those who view the Fuzzies as people, and those who view them as animals, and of course i’s very easy to root for the Fuzzies in that situation. I won’t go into much more detail, but I found the themes of the two novels to be well worth reading the series.
Story-wise, the novels felt a little dated, though there seemed to be some progressive thought wound through the characters. After all, it would be hard to have a novel about independence and equality if the women were just subservient to the men. There still seemed to be some stereotypes in the roles and mannerisms, but it was slight, and easily overlooked as products of their times. But there was something about the structure and flow of the narrative that made the story feel like it was from the 1960s. It took me a little longer to read the book because of it, but not because I wasn’t interested in what would happen.
I’m glad I read the book (at the very least, it prepares me for Fuzzy Nation), and I’d recommend it to anyone who finds the premise interesting, and is also interested in Golden Age-era science fiction. I think those folks would really enjoy it.
The book is a collection of two novels set in the Fuzzy universe — Little Fuzzy and Fuzzy Sapiens– and the books are very different from each other. The first covers the discovery of the creatures on planet Zarathustra, and the battle between Jack Holloway, who discovered them, and the Chartered Zarathustra Company, the über-corporation that owns most of the discovered planets in the universe, over whether ot not the Fuzzies are sapient beings. See, if Jack and his friends can prove that the Fuzzies are sapient, then the Company will lose all contract rights to Zarathustra, which means they’ll lose a lot of money. The creatures are viewed as pets by all parties, but only Jack and his friends are convinced that they have self-awareness and deserve to be treated as sapient beings. So the whole novel has a nice conflict that underlies the main theme: What is sapience?
It’s really fascinating to think about, and even more so to realize that the book was originally written in 1962. Piper makes very astute observations about intelligence and consciousness, and takes us along on the revelations that are made about sapience over the course of the trial. Fuzzy Sapiens takes that premise a little further along, looking at how one sapient race integrates itself with another one, and the difficulties that arise from such an experiment. Like the previous book, the conflict arises from those who view the Fuzzies as people, and those who view them as animals, and of course i’s very easy to root for the Fuzzies in that situation. I won’t go into much more detail, but I found the themes of the two novels to be well worth reading the series.
Story-wise, the novels felt a little dated, though there seemed to be some progressive thought wound through the characters. After all, it would be hard to have a novel about independence and equality if the women were just subservient to the men. There still seemed to be some stereotypes in the roles and mannerisms, but it was slight, and easily overlooked as products of their times. But there was something about the structure and flow of the narrative that made the story feel like it was from the 1960s. It took me a little longer to read the book because of it, but not because I wasn’t interested in what would happen.
I’m glad I read the book (at the very least, it prepares me for Fuzzy Nation), and I’d recommend it to anyone who finds the premise interesting, and is also interested in Golden Age-era science fiction. I think those folks would really enjoy it.
Read
April 10, 2018This is the edition I have. It's hard to get a full set of the Fuzzy books. For one thing, there are at least five different titles for about four volumes (there were three Fuzzy books. but this is a duology--two books in one volume).
There doesn't seem to be an ISBN#. The titles of the two books in the hardback are given as Little Fuzzy (which apparently always had the same title) and The Other Human Race (which I first read as Fuzzy Sapiens). The third volume, Fuzzies And Other People, was published posthumously. Quite some time after Piper's suicide, people cleaning up his home found the manuscript for Fuzzies And Other People in the attic (or so I've heard--I'm having difficulty confirming this).
Even on first reading, I found the books unacceptably violent. They're also prone to encouraging other vices (the only reason the Fuzzies don't drink is that they have a bad reaction up front--but some of them do smoke, once they're taught how by humans).
Despite the chronic violence (one person is shot dead in a public building with a MACHINE GUN--in a stairwell, too, which carries all kinds of secondary risks), these books are worth reading. Re-reading the two novel-length books in this volume not only confirmed that analogies, etc which I had remembered were from these books--it also reminded me that things I had NOT remembered were from these books had in fact come from there.
Some of them are interesting insights (for example, the question of whether Helen Keller was sapient before she mastered language--a question she herself was somewhat dubious about). Others are, to say the least, debatable points. Some are downright ludicrous.
CONTENTS
I LITTLE FUZZY: Dedication: "To Kenneth S White, who helped Little Fuzzy find a home in print."
The essence of this book is an examination of the question "What constitutes sapience?" This is evidently a problem that's come up before, in the Federation that frames this story. Various people state case law from earlier cases. The reason it's critical in this case is that the planet Zarathustra is a Class III planet--habitable but with (supposedly) no native sapient species. This means, in practice, that the planet is considered the absolute property of the Chartered Zarathustra Corporation (usually abbreviated as CZC).
This is a dubious concept in itself. The evidence indicates that the reason the Fuzzies moved into domains held by humans (? only by humans? If members of other species in the Federation have moved off their home planets, it can't be in great numbers.) was that the CZC seriously damaged the environment on one of the continents (there seem to be about seven, named Alpha to Epsilon--and beyond?) by destroying a large wetland (in the Piedmont Area of Beta Continent), which resulted in drier weather downwind, and caused the zatku (to use the Fuzzy name--the colloquial Federation name is 'land-prawns'. NB--I don't agree with the stated argument that scientific names should not be from Latin or Greek, but should be from 'System English'. The reason Linnaeus and his followers used Latin & Greek names was to INCREASE understandability--since not everybody in Linnaeus' time spoke Swedish--but nearly all scholars of the time could read Latin--and a little Greek, usually. There seems to have been some sort of enforced imposition offstage in this series of System English on native speakers of other languages--or at least that's the implication) to migrate into more humid climes. The Fuzzies followed, because zatku was (until then) their favorite food.
Thus, it's more or less a matter of the Company being hoist by their own petard. In the beginning of the book, Grego (the CEO) worries more about the Company's public image than about what harm the 'development' is doing. There's already a sinister hint of suppressing uncomfortable research reports, even before the Fuzzies are introduced.
When the Fuzzies make their presence known, it's made clear that there IS no definition of sapience in the Federation. There's a 'rule of thumb' (Talk and build a fire). The Fuzzies have not mastered fire (neither did humans--they inherited hearths from their H erectus ancestors). It's not obvious that they can talk, either (the answer is obvious, but I won't spoil it).
Nevertheless, the fact that Fuzzies have a symbolic sign language (and a pretty clear artistic impulse) should lead in the right direction--if it weren't that many nonhuman Earth creatures have the same things--and if the Fuzzies are a little faster with the mirror test, they aren't THAT much faster. So, if elephants can pass the mirror test, and most apes (Snowflake, the white gorilla, could not--but the evidence is that he just couldn't see well enough), and whales (baleen and toothed), and octopi, and, and...can all pass the mirror test (which is to say, they can recognize themselves in mirrors) what does that say about the hubris of humans, who insist that only humans are 'truly' consciously aware?
The attempts at definition are not very convincing. Do dogs dream? If seeing one dreaming isn't convincing enough, what about the EEGs showing the same sort of brain waves as humans dreaming? It simply makes no sense to argue that nonhuman animals either regard all similar things as identical, or regard everything as unique, with no middle ground. As for consciousness...how can one measure such a nebulous thing?
The question becomes critical when one of the Company researchers assigned to the question (Is this wise of the Federation? To have people whose employment depends on the Company investigate whether the Charter is valid? Is there no neutral arbiter?) having found that he can no longer deny their intelligence, murders one of the Fuzzies, and is charged with murder.
The rest of the first book is concerned mostly with the trial. There are other elements, though, which become more relevant in the next volume.
II THE OTHER HUMAN RACE: The question of sapience having been decided, the transition has to begin. The (now charterless) Company has to hand over all the mechanisms of social, governmental, and other civil services (none of which they seen to've been managing very well) over to an unprepared public sector. There are many issues to unravel, but the most important turns out to be why the Fuzzies have so few viable offspring. In attempting to solve this problem, an idiosyncrasy common to all Fuzzies formerly considered minor comes to the fore: why do Fuzzies crave 'esteefee' (their pronunciation for XT3, an emergency ration which most humans find barely edible), aka hokfusine, so much? And what has it to do with their taste for zatku, which Terrans also find unpalatable?
Other elements of the story take a back seat to this problem: but there are many. Peacemaking is essential. It might be preferable for all terrestrial humans to withdraw from an inhabited planet--except that the Fuzzies don't want this. They find life in human households much preferable to 'bush life'. So the only alternative is to restore peace between human colonists themselves and also to integrate Fuzzies--if on somewhat different terms than before.
Victor Grego was largely seen as a deep-dyed villain in the first novel. In this book he becomes more nuanced, especially after Victor accidentally finds himself foster-parent to a stray Fuzzy, which he's advised to name Diamond. Which is not to say he's any kind of humanitarian. But he does begin to meliorate.
In general, the attitude toward humans in these books is a pretty extreme type of self-loathing. Some people are recognized as more or less good people--most others are despised. It's not just that humans are consistently compared unfavorably with Fuzzies. It's also that they're generally considered thoughtless, cruel, and irredeemably stupid. It's not a very pretty picture of humanity. it's also almost certainly delusionally pessimistic.
Speaking of truth and delusion, I have to say that I absolutely do not believe in the veridicator. I find the thing even less plausible than Wonder Woman's magic lasso (invented by the same people who invented the notoriously flawed 'lie detectors' in current use). Even if it were possible to reliably distinguish truth from falsehood...well, there are thousands of intermediate shades. My favorite anecdote about this is that a cousin of mine failed a 'lie detector' test because he was told to answer 'yes' or 'no' to the question "Have you ever considered stealing from your employer?" His internal response was "Of course. If I hadn't considered it, how could I have decided not to do it?" But that construes both the answers 'yes' AND 'no' to be lies.
Aside from the main issues in the story, there are many details which I, at least, found interesting. There's a beginning of compilation of a Fuzzy dictionary and grammar. The Fuzzies begin to figure out how to communicate with humans without all of the elaborate mechanisms first used.
Still, there are other things that need to be followed up on. All Fuzzies like to draw--so why not teach them to read and write? It might be necessary to create a different alphabet/syllabary/ideograph system--but it would seem to be worth the effort.
There's also one other element that's not followed up on. Fuzzies seem to have a fondness for pets (one female adopts a kitten, and insists that the kitten go everywhere she does). So what's the policy on that?
I have read the third volume in this trilogy (Fuzzies And Other People), I THINK. But if so, I remember nowt about it. I'll have to keep an eye out for it. And also for Piper's other series, an alternate universe series. I'll keep looking. Although in the first volume, some Fuzzies are transported to a lunar space station, none of them were volunteers. But the question of whether, in the future, some Fuzzies might travel beyond Zarathustra was also left unresolved, at least so far as I can recall.
There doesn't seem to be an ISBN#. The titles of the two books in the hardback are given as Little Fuzzy (which apparently always had the same title) and The Other Human Race (which I first read as Fuzzy Sapiens). The third volume, Fuzzies And Other People, was published posthumously. Quite some time after Piper's suicide, people cleaning up his home found the manuscript for Fuzzies And Other People in the attic (or so I've heard--I'm having difficulty confirming this).
Even on first reading, I found the books unacceptably violent. They're also prone to encouraging other vices (the only reason the Fuzzies don't drink is that they have a bad reaction up front--but some of them do smoke, once they're taught how by humans).
Despite the chronic violence (one person is shot dead in a public building with a MACHINE GUN--in a stairwell, too, which carries all kinds of secondary risks), these books are worth reading. Re-reading the two novel-length books in this volume not only confirmed that analogies, etc which I had remembered were from these books--it also reminded me that things I had NOT remembered were from these books had in fact come from there.
Some of them are interesting insights (for example, the question of whether Helen Keller was sapient before she mastered language--a question she herself was somewhat dubious about). Others are, to say the least, debatable points. Some are downright ludicrous.
CONTENTS
I LITTLE FUZZY: Dedication: "To Kenneth S White, who helped Little Fuzzy find a home in print."
The essence of this book is an examination of the question "What constitutes sapience?" This is evidently a problem that's come up before, in the Federation that frames this story. Various people state case law from earlier cases. The reason it's critical in this case is that the planet Zarathustra is a Class III planet--habitable but with (supposedly) no native sapient species. This means, in practice, that the planet is considered the absolute property of the Chartered Zarathustra Corporation (usually abbreviated as CZC).
This is a dubious concept in itself. The evidence indicates that the reason the Fuzzies moved into domains held by humans (? only by humans? If members of other species in the Federation have moved off their home planets, it can't be in great numbers.) was that the CZC seriously damaged the environment on one of the continents (there seem to be about seven, named Alpha to Epsilon--and beyond?) by destroying a large wetland (in the Piedmont Area of Beta Continent), which resulted in drier weather downwind, and caused the zatku (to use the Fuzzy name--the colloquial Federation name is 'land-prawns'. NB--I don't agree with the stated argument that scientific names should not be from Latin or Greek, but should be from 'System English'. The reason Linnaeus and his followers used Latin & Greek names was to INCREASE understandability--since not everybody in Linnaeus' time spoke Swedish--but nearly all scholars of the time could read Latin--and a little Greek, usually. There seems to have been some sort of enforced imposition offstage in this series of System English on native speakers of other languages--or at least that's the implication) to migrate into more humid climes. The Fuzzies followed, because zatku was (until then) their favorite food.
Thus, it's more or less a matter of the Company being hoist by their own petard. In the beginning of the book, Grego (the CEO) worries more about the Company's public image than about what harm the 'development' is doing. There's already a sinister hint of suppressing uncomfortable research reports, even before the Fuzzies are introduced.
When the Fuzzies make their presence known, it's made clear that there IS no definition of sapience in the Federation. There's a 'rule of thumb' (Talk and build a fire). The Fuzzies have not mastered fire (neither did humans--they inherited hearths from their H erectus ancestors). It's not obvious that they can talk, either (the answer is obvious, but I won't spoil it).
Nevertheless, the fact that Fuzzies have a symbolic sign language (and a pretty clear artistic impulse) should lead in the right direction--if it weren't that many nonhuman Earth creatures have the same things--and if the Fuzzies are a little faster with the mirror test, they aren't THAT much faster. So, if elephants can pass the mirror test, and most apes (Snowflake, the white gorilla, could not--but the evidence is that he just couldn't see well enough), and whales (baleen and toothed), and octopi, and, and...can all pass the mirror test (which is to say, they can recognize themselves in mirrors) what does that say about the hubris of humans, who insist that only humans are 'truly' consciously aware?
The attempts at definition are not very convincing. Do dogs dream? If seeing one dreaming isn't convincing enough, what about the EEGs showing the same sort of brain waves as humans dreaming? It simply makes no sense to argue that nonhuman animals either regard all similar things as identical, or regard everything as unique, with no middle ground. As for consciousness...how can one measure such a nebulous thing?
The question becomes critical when one of the Company researchers assigned to the question (Is this wise of the Federation? To have people whose employment depends on the Company investigate whether the Charter is valid? Is there no neutral arbiter?) having found that he can no longer deny their intelligence, murders one of the Fuzzies, and is charged with murder.
The rest of the first book is concerned mostly with the trial. There are other elements, though, which become more relevant in the next volume.
II THE OTHER HUMAN RACE: The question of sapience having been decided, the transition has to begin. The (now charterless) Company has to hand over all the mechanisms of social, governmental, and other civil services (none of which they seen to've been managing very well) over to an unprepared public sector. There are many issues to unravel, but the most important turns out to be why the Fuzzies have so few viable offspring. In attempting to solve this problem, an idiosyncrasy common to all Fuzzies formerly considered minor comes to the fore: why do Fuzzies crave 'esteefee' (their pronunciation for XT3, an emergency ration which most humans find barely edible), aka hokfusine, so much? And what has it to do with their taste for zatku, which Terrans also find unpalatable?
Other elements of the story take a back seat to this problem: but there are many. Peacemaking is essential. It might be preferable for all terrestrial humans to withdraw from an inhabited planet--except that the Fuzzies don't want this. They find life in human households much preferable to 'bush life'. So the only alternative is to restore peace between human colonists themselves and also to integrate Fuzzies--if on somewhat different terms than before.
Victor Grego was largely seen as a deep-dyed villain in the first novel. In this book he becomes more nuanced, especially after Victor accidentally finds himself foster-parent to a stray Fuzzy, which he's advised to name Diamond. Which is not to say he's any kind of humanitarian. But he does begin to meliorate.
In general, the attitude toward humans in these books is a pretty extreme type of self-loathing. Some people are recognized as more or less good people--most others are despised. It's not just that humans are consistently compared unfavorably with Fuzzies. It's also that they're generally considered thoughtless, cruel, and irredeemably stupid. It's not a very pretty picture of humanity. it's also almost certainly delusionally pessimistic.
Speaking of truth and delusion, I have to say that I absolutely do not believe in the veridicator. I find the thing even less plausible than Wonder Woman's magic lasso (invented by the same people who invented the notoriously flawed 'lie detectors' in current use). Even if it were possible to reliably distinguish truth from falsehood...well, there are thousands of intermediate shades. My favorite anecdote about this is that a cousin of mine failed a 'lie detector' test because he was told to answer 'yes' or 'no' to the question "Have you ever considered stealing from your employer?" His internal response was "Of course. If I hadn't considered it, how could I have decided not to do it?" But that construes both the answers 'yes' AND 'no' to be lies.
Aside from the main issues in the story, there are many details which I, at least, found interesting. There's a beginning of compilation of a Fuzzy dictionary and grammar. The Fuzzies begin to figure out how to communicate with humans without all of the elaborate mechanisms first used.
Still, there are other things that need to be followed up on. All Fuzzies like to draw--so why not teach them to read and write? It might be necessary to create a different alphabet/syllabary/ideograph system--but it would seem to be worth the effort.
There's also one other element that's not followed up on. Fuzzies seem to have a fondness for pets (one female adopts a kitten, and insists that the kitten go everywhere she does). So what's the policy on that?
I have read the third volume in this trilogy (Fuzzies And Other People), I THINK. But if so, I remember nowt about it. I'll have to keep an eye out for it. And also for Piper's other series, an alternate universe series. I'll keep looking. Although in the first volume, some Fuzzies are transported to a lunar space station, none of them were volunteers. But the question of whether, in the future, some Fuzzies might travel beyond Zarathustra was also left unresolved, at least so far as I can recall.
September 21, 2008
I have the hardback book club edition of this. It contains "Little Fuzzy," and "The Other Human Race." I didn't think it was quite as good as many others had told me it was. It was cutesy in places, perhaps, but it really is a pretty interesting story and I definitely didn't find it hard reading.
May 22, 2012
3.5. One of the first books I read when I was being introduced to SF beyond Star Trek. Very evocative of the time it was written, but interesting. Even though it is a little old fashioned there are at least two female scientists that I can think of, and possibly more.
June 30, 2013
My father read me this book when I was probably 6 and it has always stayed with me. In the past 20 years I have probably read it and the sequels a dozen times. It is one of my all time favorite books and I encourage anyone and everyone to read it.
August 25, 2017
The Fuzzy Papers was a gem of a read as a cultural anthropologist. I didn't know what the books were about when I got them and had one of those "Oh-my-god" experiences while reading. I didn't know if Piper had experience in ethnography or anthropology (especially cultural, perhaps folklore studies) and was impressed at how the relationship between humans and the Fuzzies came about. I don't see lots of science-fiction books that get their intercultural/first-contact stories correct, this one does. Good reading, these.
September 4, 2017
Two of my all time favorite stories.
November 1, 2019
This was an enjoyable book to read.
February 14, 2021
I loved these two stories. Thoroughly enjoyed this book!
March 12, 2023
A fairly solid knock off of Ewoks, Piper attempts to create an emotionally connecting ambiance between earthlings and an alien race; a very ambitious goal he did not succeed.
May 28, 2023
1962 - 1964 - Science Fiction - HB - Have It - Read It - Little Fuzzy - Fuzzy Sapiens
December 9, 2011
Cuteness overload!
Little Fuzzy
As soon as he put on the light, something inside the shower stall said, "Yeeeek!" in a startled voice.
He turned quickly to see two wide eyes staring up at him out of a ball of golden fur. Whatever it was, it had a round head and big ears and a vaguely humanoid face with a little snub nose. It was sitting on its haunches, and in that position it was about a foot high.
The planet Zarathustra is classified as having no native sentient inhabitants, and the the company that runs the planet will lose its charter if native sentient beings are discovered there. So when climate change brings the Fuzzies out of their secluded forests and into the lands settled by man, the Zarathustra Company will do anything in its power (no matter how illegal) to prevent the Fuzzies from being classified as sapient.
Fuzzy Sapiens
Little Fuzzy got out his pipe, the new one Pappy Jack had brought out from the BIg House Place, and stuffed it with tobacco, and got out the little fire-maker. Some of the Fuzzies around him, who had just come in from the woods, were frightened. they were not used to fire; when fire happened in the woods, it was bad. That was wild fire, though. The Big Ones had tamed fire, and if a person was careful not to touch it or let it get loose, fire was nothing to be afraid of.
Although the Fuzzies' sapience has been legally established and the Charterless Zarathustra Company no longer runs the planet, there is danger that the planetary government may fall into unsympathetic hands once martial law is replaced by a civilian government. And there is another equally important problem that the Fuzzies' supporters must face. Why is the birth rate so low and so many Fuzzy babies stillborn?
Little Fuzzy
As soon as he put on the light, something inside the shower stall said, "Yeeeek!" in a startled voice.
He turned quickly to see two wide eyes staring up at him out of a ball of golden fur. Whatever it was, it had a round head and big ears and a vaguely humanoid face with a little snub nose. It was sitting on its haunches, and in that position it was about a foot high.
The planet Zarathustra is classified as having no native sentient inhabitants, and the the company that runs the planet will lose its charter if native sentient beings are discovered there. So when climate change brings the Fuzzies out of their secluded forests and into the lands settled by man, the Zarathustra Company will do anything in its power (no matter how illegal) to prevent the Fuzzies from being classified as sapient.
Fuzzy Sapiens
Little Fuzzy got out his pipe, the new one Pappy Jack had brought out from the BIg House Place, and stuffed it with tobacco, and got out the little fire-maker. Some of the Fuzzies around him, who had just come in from the woods, were frightened. they were not used to fire; when fire happened in the woods, it was bad. That was wild fire, though. The Big Ones had tamed fire, and if a person was careful not to touch it or let it get loose, fire was nothing to be afraid of.
Although the Fuzzies' sapience has been legally established and the Charterless Zarathustra Company no longer runs the planet, there is danger that the planetary government may fall into unsympathetic hands once martial law is replaced by a civilian government. And there is another equally important problem that the Fuzzies' supporters must face. Why is the birth rate so low and so many Fuzzy babies stillborn?
December 12, 2009
This is a dual book combining Little Fuzzy and Fuzzy Sapiens, and though I have read it several times, my memory, specifically is a little fuzzy. Charming, heart-warming are keywords that I can attribute to these tales. It deals with our human expansion to the stars and our encountering those little green martians we have always expected. Accept they are not what we have thought.
That have not always been there in their UFO's spying on us, or are part of a xenocidal race that wants our extinction. If anything man wants to see the end of the alien. Perhaps bleeding heart liberals would be the thought of the defender of the Fuzzy, but Piper writes of Fuzzy in such a way as to make then an endearing race. Part little child, part puppy dog, if my memory is correct.
The conflict is that if there are alien intelligences out there, who owns that world. We have see Cherryh look at this from a distance in Downbelow Station, and the same with Weber in On Basilisk Station, but those books were not focused on the thought of someone speaking up for that Alien's rights and ensuring that they are protected. That is the plot line here. We have a company world that wants to exploit the world, we have a native intelligence that needs to be defended working within the system, but unable to articulate for themselves their defense. Hence a really great set of books that led to two additional authors writing books about them, and then years after Piper's death, a third tome being unearthed and published.
That have not always been there in their UFO's spying on us, or are part of a xenocidal race that wants our extinction. If anything man wants to see the end of the alien. Perhaps bleeding heart liberals would be the thought of the defender of the Fuzzy, but Piper writes of Fuzzy in such a way as to make then an endearing race. Part little child, part puppy dog, if my memory is correct.
The conflict is that if there are alien intelligences out there, who owns that world. We have see Cherryh look at this from a distance in Downbelow Station, and the same with Weber in On Basilisk Station, but those books were not focused on the thought of someone speaking up for that Alien's rights and ensuring that they are protected. That is the plot line here. We have a company world that wants to exploit the world, we have a native intelligence that needs to be defended working within the system, but unable to articulate for themselves their defense. Hence a really great set of books that led to two additional authors writing books about them, and then years after Piper's death, a third tome being unearthed and published.
April 21, 2010
This is an omnibus edition of the first two Fuzzy books that feature among the most memorable aliens in science fiction. Mind you, they're so cute as to induce sugar shock. Creatures "two feet tall, with wide-eyed... face... covered with soft golden fur," playful, sane, sweet and emotionally and intellectually about ten years old. The first book dealt with some sophisticated concepts. The "Fuzzies" are on a planet colonized by humans and largely owned and ruled by a corporation under a charter only valid if there are no sapient indigenous life forms. So when the Fuzzies first show up, it soon becomes a very serious matter indeed whether they're just cute animals--or people. The second novel develops some issues not resolved in the first one, and is still entertaining, although perhaps not as fresh in conception. I did like how in the second novel things were less black and white. Piper's not an elegant prose stylist. There are point-of-view jumps, and flaky section breaks (might be more an issue of bad editing than writing) and at times clumsy phrasing. But Piper's a good storyteller nevertheless and presents appealing characters--human and non-human alike. It's an good read.
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August 6, 2016H. Beam Piper is one of my favourites and this and Fuzzy Sapiens (usually in omnibus now) are a fantastic read. Now we are confronted with the problem of what to do when our technology becomes sentient but when Piper was writing that was a distant dream. He still had the luxury of a fiction universe where humanity would arrive on a planet and discover/uplift and learn from an aboriginal species. In this way he was both ahead of his time and rather old fashioned. I like the Mad-Men idea that everyone should break for cocktails at 5pm to discuss the important business of the day and that characters take ultimate responsibility for their actions, whether that means sacrificing their professional careers or even their lives for an ideal. I fear we shall not see his like again and I recommend his out of print works such in the Paratime series...you can find these on Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/autho...
August 15, 2011
My mother read this book when I was five. I would carry the book around and touch all the pages in the book looking for the "fuzzy papers." And I often wondered what would happen to these little furry people on the cover. As my mother read each of the books and I would see the "Fuzzies" in cover art and in a couple of magazines I made up my own story about them.
As an Army family we moved a lot, but I made sure to put my copy of this book in my carry on bag. I was afraid to read the book after I had learned to read, because I didn't know if it would live up to what I had made up. After reading the book at 30 I have read everything I can about the series. I love Little Fuzzy and all of his family!! A wonderful book!
As an Army family we moved a lot, but I made sure to put my copy of this book in my carry on bag. I was afraid to read the book after I had learned to read, because I didn't know if it would live up to what I had made up. After reading the book at 30 I have read everything I can about the series. I love Little Fuzzy and all of his family!! A wonderful book!
October 2, 2012
Finally got around to reading this (of course I was influenced by finally picking up Scalzi's Fuzzy Nation). Been meaning to read it (or at least Little Fuzzy) as part of my effort to read more Hugo-nominated sci fi.
I was very impressed with these books. I am surprised Piper is not more well known as an author. The characters were adequate, if you can get over the constant need to go to cocktail hour. But Piper really shines on the plot, especially in the first book. Science fiction first-contact legal-drama, what's not to love? The first book is very close to a 5 star read for me, and the second isn't too far behind.
I was very impressed with these books. I am surprised Piper is not more well known as an author. The characters were adequate, if you can get over the constant need to go to cocktail hour. But Piper really shines on the plot, especially in the first book. Science fiction first-contact legal-drama, what's not to love? The first book is very close to a 5 star read for me, and the second isn't too far behind.
October 18, 2015
Good understanding of ecology and sentience for a book written in 1964. Not quite as funny and insightful as 'Fuzzy Nation', the John Scalzi knock off of the story. First 'book' tells of these creature's discovery and the second 'book' deals with political consequences of identifying them as sentient. Side story of Fuzzy population decline and search for the cause of low birthrate is an excellent dive into chemistry and ecosystem studies. I'm not sure why this book isn't categorized as young adult - it would fit perfectly.
January 11, 2016
Two individual four-star books (actually a 3.5 and a 4.5) that follow so closely chronologically that the compilation deserves five stars because of flow.
Written in the early Sixties, the books hold up well as the focus is on the story not hard SciFi. As such, the Humanities themes are common for the Atom Bomb and Communist Witch-hunt era; although, not nearly as ham-fisted as most.
Anyway … a quick and easy read despite the deep social and philosophical undertones. Very enjoyable without a sense of righteousness.
Written in the early Sixties, the books hold up well as the focus is on the story not hard SciFi. As such, the Humanities themes are common for the Atom Bomb and Communist Witch-hunt era; although, not nearly as ham-fisted as most.
Anyway … a quick and easy read despite the deep social and philosophical undertones. Very enjoyable without a sense of righteousness.
September 5, 2011
I admit I was reluctant to pick this one up for a long time -- really, a book about tiny furry aliens? Decided to read it after John Scalzi's Fuzzy Nation came out. Surprisingly enjoyable. I liked Little Fuzzy more than I liked Fuzzy Sapiens, so I would say 4 stars for the former, 3 stars for the latter.
May 4, 2013
For some reason, long ago, I had this double book, plus individual copies of the two novels it contains. To explain this apparent duplication, all I can think of is that I bought this double, because, at the time, the second novel in the series was unavailable as a single book.
Anyway, the "Fuzzies", were great characters, told well by Piper.
Anyway, the "Fuzzies", were great characters, told well by Piper.
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November 25, 2012some idiot let some other idiot rewrite this. Avoid the rewrite. Repeat- AVOID THE REWRITE! Also, the original cannot be derivitive. Piper did amazing work, and much modern Sci-fi reflects this.
hurray for grumpy original thinkers!
hurray for grumpy original thinkers!
December 5, 2008
I might have rated this 5 stars when I read it, but I'm not positive. I know that I really liked it.
June 29, 2009
A favorite of mine. Easy to read and just a good tale all the way around. A most enjoyable read I would recommend to anyone who likes science fiction and fantasy.
October 11, 2010
Enjoyable book. I am looking forward to John Scalzi's retelling of this story.
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July 10, 2011Fun, fun, fun!
August 14, 2011
a story of a alien race meeting a human man, how he finds their intellegence and acceptance appealing and how he protects them from other men
August 18, 2013
Yes, I really do love those Fuzzies!
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