Henry Beam Piper

Little Fuzzy Henry Beam Piper

Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper

Science fiction is known for the extraordinary diversity of its alien beings. Some of them are scary, or cruel, or heartless ... not the kind of creatures you would like to encounter in a dark alley or forest. Those bad guys outnumber the cute and friendly aliens. But one alien race, the Fuzzies, stand out for their excessive sweetness, an element that could easily overwhelm any story, including them. Instead of basking in sweetness, however, H. Beam Piper's classic Little Fuzzy book turns out to be a pretty tough tale about corporate greed and the power of people brave enough to resist.

I have to admit right away that H. Beam Piper is one of my favorite authors of all time. It could be the result of meeting him in my early teens, that period when you tend to imprint on a good author the way a duckling imprints his mother. Or it could be the way his vision and his political views (which I don't always agree with) remind me of my father's. Or it could be the admirable competence and tenacity of its protagonists. Either way, Piper wrote compelling stories with lots of adventures in good clean prose that went down as easy as a Coke on a hot day. And in Little Fuzzy, he was at his best. At the heart of the story is a judicial drama that cleverly speculates on the impact that reliable lie detectors could have on jurisprudence. The characters are compelling and realistic, the depiction of the tiny aliens makes you wish you could meet them in real life, and the action is never flag.