John Scalzi writes fun and engaging sci-fi. Fuzzy Nation fits that bill with a story that has the fun of a Saturday matinee with some thoughtful speculative elements that keep you thinking. Fuzzy Nation is inspired by H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy books (Little Fuzzy, Fuzzy Sapiens, and Fuzzies and Other People). I'm only vaguely aware of Piper, who died in the 1960s, but I should become more familar; he wrote lots of novels and stories and appears to have been rather trend-setting.
In Fuzzy Nation, Jack Holloway is a mining contractor working on a planet called Zarathustra. He discovers a vein of a sought-after stone that promises to make him a billionaire. However, when he encounters intelligent, cat-like bipeds near his home, that future of wealth is threatened. If a sapient species is discovered on a planet, all mining operations must cease. Thus, ZaraCorp, the massive mining conglomerate that controls mining on the planet, has a vested interest in proving the Fuzzies are not sentient, or, if they are sentient, exterminating them.
As Jack defends his new friends, he becomes a target as well. He's a lovable rogue, a selfish loner who becomes a hero with heart. Fuzzy Nation may be a bit more pulp-fictiony (presumably drawing on Piper's tradition) than some of the harder sci-fi Scalzi has written, but it's great fun to read, and if a book doesn't at least have that going for it, it's got nothing.
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