The novel “Fuzzy Nation” by John Scalzi was published for the first time in 2011.

Jack Holloway is a sunstone prospector on the planet Zaratustra XXIII, Zara XXIII for simplicity, on behalf of the Zaratustra Corporation, ZaraCorp for simplicity. During his work, he discovers a trove of sunstone of really great value that could even give him more than he thought because of a legal loophole deriving from his complex relationships with ZaraCorp.

Shortly after, Jack Holloway stumbles into small creatures he decides to call Fuzzies and shows them to his ex-girlfriend Isabel, a biologist who works for ZaraCorp. The two of them start suspecting that the Fuzzies are intelligent creatures, an event that can dramatically change the status of the planet. ZaraCorp has a charter based on the fact that it’s not inhabited by sentient creatures, if the Fuzzies’ level of intelligence was established, the company would lose part of the control of the planet’s resources.