read: Fuzzy Nation (4 stars)

Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

John Scalzi hits another home run with this easy-reading novel about an exploited planet, a disbarred lawyer, and a race of sentient cats. If the author is to believed, he wrote this 300 page marvel just for fun. This shows through in the breezy tone and quick pace and the fact that this is a reboot of the classic science-fiction tale Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper, from which he borrows the premise and characters.

I recently read (or rather listed to) Little Fuzzy and enjoyed it. It is a sweet story that felt a pretty dated and clunky by modern standards. This book starts with the same premise, yet it is updated with a more modern view of technology, the future and corporate exploitation. It starts with the same characters, yet they are recast for current sensibilities and behave more realistically. The story starts and ends in basically the same place, yet bounces along in a quite different way. It's the same story, but it's not. Somehow it all works.

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