And no, I haven't eaten any tomatoes.

I'm here at work, but may call the doctor and return home.

I finished Little Fuzzy last Friday. It only took me two days of train reading. I remember being a kid and reading a book a day. I've always thought "pity I don't get time to read so much anymore", but now I wonder how much of that was that books these days have gotten so long. Does anyone write 200 page novels anymore?

The review: it held up well. I was surprised at how much of an adult book it was, given the title and the last time I read it. It was dated in ways I found fascinating. Everyone drinking highballs and smoking like chimneys. You could write a dissertion on the way it shows how attitudes have changed. Some many of the attitudes of modern SF have become so ingrained that we take them for granted. Here we see a more rural, wild west attitude. Big companies: bad. (Ok, that's the same.) Military: good. Local cops: mostly good. Judges: good. Loners with guns: good. Yet the questions of ecology and corporate control are as modern as you can get and it gets megabonus points for being a 1962 novel featuring a female career woman who is not only competent and non-reliant on men.

The novel itself appeals despite its failings. The deck is a bit stacked against the villains of the piece, and what suspense there is is accomplished by hiding certain facts from the viewer. The novel is a question of what makes a creature sentient, but the Fuzzies are so completely and obviously sentient that the villains don't really have a chance. Of course, this is all dependent on the basic decency of most people, one of the themes of the book.

I'm surprised no one has tried to make a movie out of this.