by John Scalzi
John Scalzi
John Scalzi has made a name for himself writing science fiction, so no one can claim that he’s mining H. Beam Piper’s work just to boost his own career. I just wanted to make that clear up front.
It’s a bit unusual to have a prose SF work “re-visioned,” especially by someone other than the original author. But it’s not unknown. Christopher Stasheff did it in King Kobold Revised, and George MacDonald Fraser did it with the character of Flashman from Tom Brown’s School Days. The book jacket makes it clearer that Scalzi has done this with the approval of the Piper estate.
Now, I happen to love H. Beam Piper’s “Little Fuzzy” books. They are warm tales with a touch of humor to them, with a wide range of characters. And I urge anyone who hasn’t read them to seek them out to enjoy them.
Now that that is out of the way, onward to Scalzi’s reintroduction of the Fuzzyverse.
I don’t want to get into too much of a point by point comparison between Piper and Scalzi, because that ins’t quite fair. Scalzi is not attempting to be Piper. But there are a couple of points worth addressing.
The first is the presentation of the sentience of the Fuzzies. In the original, Piper shows them to be intelligent and clever, but he also presents the Fuzzies as innocents. They have a child-like level of expectation of consistency in behavior, and importantly in Piper’s second book, they have not been exposed to the concepts of lies and deception. Concealment, yes, since they are prey of many of the predators of the planet Zarathustra. Scalzi’s Fuzzies, however, are more sophisticated: they have a concept of good versus bad; they practice deception (Papa Fuzzy actually can understand and communicate in human speech when he meets Jack Holloway). Scalzi’s choice makes his Fuzzies a bit more distant from the reader than Piper’s, and certainly less cutely precious. I feel ambivalent about this choice, because it makes some of the revelations at the sentience trial less dramatic, even making the question of sentience of less import. I think as a society we are cynical enough to find genuine innocence baffeling, and, actually, hard to credit as sentience. Our dogs are innocents, to a degree (though they know when they are making mischief). By removing the issue of innocence from the mix, Scalzi short-changes an intriguing issue in the evaluation of the Fuzzies.
The second change Scalzi makes deals with the nature of Fuzzy sexuality. The biology of Scalzi’s planet Zarathustra is described as being unisexual. Although most lifeforms are apparently reptilian, the Fuzzies are mammals. Just unisexual ones. Scalzi doesn’t hammer you over the head with the matter, but the parallel between his Fuzzies’ family units and the question about gay couples parenting children is easy to see under the surface. But what I felt missing in Scalzi’s presentation is that although he effectively conveys the terrible grief a parent feels at the loss of a child, Piper used the occasion of that death in his story to show that the Fuzzies actually had cultural death rites, another piece of evidence of their sentience. Scalzi misses that moment, and it was one of the things I felt made Scalzi’s version something of a lesser work than Piper’s.
Now, in spite of my taking note of these differences, I have to say that as a thing in itself, I enjoyed reading Scalzi’s Fuzzy Nation. He likens this rebooting to that done with Star Trek, and I think it a fair comparison. You can still enjoy the original — it is not unmade or wiped out and made unavailable (the way Nancy Drew mysteries get reworked). You can enjoy the original and the new side by side.
If this book by Scalzi means that we will get more adventures with the Fuzzies, then, Hurrah! I suggest you check it out if you haven’t done so yet.
