Little Fuzzy

Piper committed suicide before he could know how successful his novels would be, which is a great pity because in Little Fuzzy he had created one of the most delightful of all sf novels. The planet Zarathustra is owned by a corporation that makes a very tidy living from the sunstones mined by people like Jack Holloway. But Jack comes upon a tiny, furry creature that he calls Little Fuzzy. Having struck up a friendship, Jack comes to believe that Little Fuzzy is intelligent, which is unfortunate because if there is intelligent life on the planet the Zarathustra Corporation will lose their right to exploit it. So the novel turns on a quest to prove that Fuzzy is intelligent, with an underlying message about the importance of independence and sincerity as opposed to corporate politics. Why it's on the list: Let's face it, cats are everyone's favourite aliens, and science fiction has any number of alien beings that are really just cats. But none are quite as engaging as H. Beam Piper's Fuzzies, which is why there have been loads of sequels by other hands since Piper shot himself, most recently the “authorised reboot”, Fuzzy Nation, by John Scalzi.