Classic SF FTW

I have to give a big thank you to John Scalzi.

He's apparently written a new book that's a reworking of an old SF novel, Little Fuzzy, written by H. Beam Piper. Piper is not one of the writers I'm rally familiar with, but when I saw Scalzi' post, and found out that Piper's work is in the Public Domain, I whipped out the old iPhone and downloaded the original . I LOVED it.

It's a fun story, not particularly deep, about a man finding cute, fuzzy, intelligent aliens and doing his best to protect them from the nasty company men out to exploit their planet...think Avatar meets the Ewoks. Though it was written in 1962, it's aged fairly well, though some of the passing "girl" comments touched off a wince or two. What I found most enjoyable, though, was how smoothly everything flowed--how naturally the characters acted and how much I CARED about them. I was enthralled by the fuzzies, and I found myself teary eyed more than once.

I went on to read more of Piper's stories this weekend. They ahve been without exception excellently written, engaging and enjoyable. Some of the stories do run up against the social changes we've encountered in the last 40 years or so (Uller Uprising, especially, stuck me as borderline tolerable in it's politics, but was so exciting in execution I still finished it).

So I unreservedly recommend you read some of Piper's work, especially Little Fuzzy, and hey--you can't beat the price.