Fuzzy Sapiens - H. Beam Piper

1964; 235 pages.  Genre : Classic Science Fiction.  New Author? : No.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.
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Fuzzy Sapiens is the sequel to Little Fuzzy (which is reviewed here).  The Fuzzies have been declared sentient, which means you can't kill them, skin them, and/or eat them.  They now have certain rights to their planet, even if all they want to do is snuggle up to the humans and eat their Extee-3 rations.
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But a planetary governemnt has to be established, the Fuzzies need to be protected, and a stable economic system needs to be implemented.  Who knew that these mundane issues would turn out to be so complex?
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What's To Like...
This is "hard" science fiction (meaning 'realistic') from before there was such a sub-genre.  What little thrills-&-spills action there is comes late in the book, and half of it is off-stage.
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Instead you get to help solve a number of real-world issues.  The Fuzzies' Infant Mortality Rate is excessive to where they will be extinxt in a couple generations.  They only eat land prawns and Extee-3 and the planetary supplies of those is such that they'll starve to death before they become extinct.
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The Fuzzies are amenable to be "adopted" by humans, but the demand outstrips the supply.  Will a black market spring up?  Their homeland is ripe for mineral exploitation, and sentient or not, humans are coming by the thousands to colonize the planet.
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For a change, chemists - and even large corporations - are given a fair shake.  Some of the Bad Guys from Little Fuzzy become Good Guys,  and some of the Good Guys from Little Fuzzy develop character faults.
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Kewlest New Word(s)...
I'm tempted to go with Nifflheim, which Piper uses as a euphemism for 'Hell', except that towards the end he just up and uses the h-word anyway.  So instead, we'll go with : Mumchance (adj.) : mute, not speaking.
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Excerpts...
And this red upholstered swivel chair; he hated that worst of all.  Forty years ago, he'd left Terra to get the seat of his pants off the seat of a chair like that, and here he was in the evening of life - well, late afternoon, call it around second cocktail time - trapped in one.  (pg. 8)
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Titanium, he thought disgustedly.  It would be something like that.  What is it they called the stuff?  Oh, yes; the nymphomaniac metal; when it gets hot it combines with anything.  (pg. 153)
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    "Miss Tresca, can't you keep your bench in better order than this?" he scolded.  "Keep things in their places.  What are you working on?"
    "Oh, a hunch I had about this hokfusine."
    Hunch!  That was the trouble, all through Science Center; too many hunches and not enough sound theory.  (pg. 158)
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"Last war's enemies; next war's allies."  (pg. 127)
To a certain degree, H. Beam Piper ignores the greater issues of humans colonizing an already-inhabited planet.  The Fuzzies are migrating, and in droves, but nobody bothers to ask why.  The full impact of overwhelming hordes of humans descending on the Fuzzies habitat is not assessed.  Nobody asks what the Fuzzies ate before they got hooked on Terran Extee-3.
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But I think this misses the point of Fuzzy Sapiens.  There may be some significant issues to be faced, but the target audience is still Young Readers.  To fully address "the big picture" would mean perhaps a 1000-page opus.  Instead, Piper presents only a slice of it, and takes less than 250 pages to do so.  He thereby subtly entices Young Readers to consider becoming chemists, and to explore what we call the Scientific Method.  I think that's kinda kewl.  7 Stars.