[Little Fuzzy]

#963
[Title: Little Fuzzy]
Author: H. Beam Piper
Publisher: Ace
Year: 1962/1976
174 pages

**SPOILERS**
  Re-read in order to compare with Scalzi's Fuzzy Nation. I read Little Fuzzy sometime in my adolescence, and it's funny to see my highlighted paragraphs (all of which concern language as evidence for sapience). I enjoyed re-reading it, though as an adult reader I am somewhat chilled by the happy colonialism of the ending, which is presented uncritically as a good thing and not presented ironically or as a cautionary parallel to slavery or colonial practices. Though the Fuzzies are declared to be sapient, the protagonist and others are "adopting" Fuzzies "of their own," moving them out of the forest and into their houses, and generally improving them (in the colonial sense). The Fuzzies are described as cognitively similar to a preadolescent, and as indigenous in the positive-sounding language often used in racist and colonial descriptions of primitive (sic) races (sic). And they're so happy! (Gosh, I've learned a lot from the noble savage!) For their part, the Fuzzies are glad to move into the wonderful big house and become domesticated, so that's okay, right? The flavor of the text hovers between Fuzzy-as-pet and Fuzzy-as-indigene who requires benevolent protection from the civilized overlords. Protected from what, since until the book's action they were a successful sapient, language-using, tool-creating species? Why, protected from the bad colonizers, as opposed to "Pappy Jack" and the good colonizers.