Little Fuzzy
1962
Jack Holloway is a sunstone prospector on the planet Zarathustra, a world the Zarathustra Company claims as their exclusive property under a charter that declares the planet uninhabited. Then he finds the Fuzzies: small, furry, enormous-eyed creatures that follow him home, learn to speak, and call him Papa. The company insists they're just animals, clever pets to be exploited like everything else on this "Class III uninhabited world." If Jack can prove the Fuzzies are sapient, the charter collapses and the company loses everything. If he fails, the Fuzzies lose everything. This is a story about who gets to count as a person, and what happens when利润 meets proof of consciousness. Piper writes with sharp, economical prose and a stubborn humanity that feels almost radical: a tale where being decent is the most radical act of all.
Editions
X-Ray
“Take a drink because you pity yourself, and then the drink pities you and has a drink, and then two good drinks get together and that calls for drinks all around.””
— H. Beam Piper
“It was a bland, tranquilized, life-adjusted, group-integrated sort of face -- the face turned out in thousands of copies every year by the educational production lines on Terra.””
— H. Beam Piper
“If you don't like the facts, you ignore them, and if you need facts, dream up some you do like””
— H. Beam Piper
