Fridays will generally be a day for discussing books, whether reviewing something I've read or talking about upcoming works. I'll be sticking quite closely to the science fiction genre, and occasionally adding in some fantasy and others. Today I have some quick notes about Fuzzy Nation(Amazon.com).
Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi is actually a "reboot" of H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy, available free in e-book format right now along with many other works by Piper. I just noticed this on Amazon and they're listed as public domain works so I'm assuming they will stay free. I'll let you read the description of Fuzzy Nation of your own and spare you the book report.
Scalzi is a clever writer. He's funny without being silly; his writing is compact and straightforward. I was expecting something on the goofy side after reading the description and was quite pleased to find that he approached the book in such a way that I didn't feel like I was reading a YA novel. The book delves into some deep thematic elements including what it means to be sapient, what the exploitation of extra-solar planets will look like and motivations for making moral decisions.
I doubt the book should be read as a treatise on those themes, however. When it's at it's best, science fiction uses characters to grapple with our issues in a setting different from ours to give us perspective on those issues. Fuzzy Nation does this by being serious in theme without being serious in tone.
While it may not be the most important science fiction book ever written, it is in the upper echelon of the genre. Scalzi deals with some important issues in a clever, compact and well written book that I'd highly recommend. 8/10
Andrew
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