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gryphonseggSo, about Fuzzy Nation, Scalzi's completely unnecessary reboot of one of my most beloved books, H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy . . .
Thumbs up to the adorable cover art; thumbs down to the addition of a love triangle (grrrrr); more thumbs down to the decision to change the viewpoint character from a gruff-but-grandfatherly old prospector to a much younger man with more formal education and middle class markers who is a fully qualified lawyer (WTF?) but decided to give up law because of manpain (yawn); EVERY THUMB AND WING-TIP AND TENTACLE IN THE GALAXY DOWN to the decision to increase the body count and kill off Baby Fuzzy to show how Rilly, Rilly, Grimdarkly Eeeeeevil the bad guys are (updating a work whose tech and cultural references seem old-fashioned apparently requires the addition of gratuitous on-page child murder because, um, I got nothing).
In short, I'll stick with the original Little Fuzzy and the Piper-penned sequel Fuzzy Sapiens. Yeah, it's dated, but it's still entertaining. The fuzzies and the questions about the nature of sentience remain compelling, and very mid-twentieth century assumptions about future technological and cultural change are kind of interesting in their own right as examples of how the context of the present can limit the ability of even exceptionally thoughtful people to predict the future. I understand the desire to make the cast more racially diverse and gender-balanced, but I don't find the original's failures in those areas severe enough or the reboot's fix-it attempts far-reaching enough to make up for everything else. The two best things about the Scalzi version are the cover painting and the hope that the new book buzz will lead more people to read the original.
Thumbs up to the adorable cover art; thumbs down to the addition of a love triangle (grrrrr); more thumbs down to the decision to change the viewpoint character from a gruff-but-grandfatherly old prospector to a much younger man with more formal education and middle class markers who is a fully qualified lawyer (WTF?) but decided to give up law because of manpain (yawn); EVERY THUMB AND WING-TIP AND TENTACLE IN THE GALAXY DOWN to the decision to increase the body count and kill off Baby Fuzzy to show how Rilly, Rilly, Grimdarkly Eeeeeevil the bad guys are (updating a work whose tech and cultural references seem old-fashioned apparently requires the addition of gratuitous on-page child murder because, um, I got nothing).
In short, I'll stick with the original Little Fuzzy and the Piper-penned sequel Fuzzy Sapiens. Yeah, it's dated, but it's still entertaining. The fuzzies and the questions about the nature of sentience remain compelling, and very mid-twentieth century assumptions about future technological and cultural change are kind of interesting in their own right as examples of how the context of the present can limit the ability of even exceptionally thoughtful people to predict the future. I understand the desire to make the cast more racially diverse and gender-balanced, but I don't find the original's failures in those areas severe enough or the reboot's fix-it attempts far-reaching enough to make up for everything else. The two best things about the Scalzi version are the cover painting and the hope that the new book buzz will lead more people to read the original.