Piper (World 21)
H. Beam Piper
(1904 – 1964; first SF publication, 1947) writes stories with simpler, more straightforward motivations and characters than some of the other authors in this list. That doesn’t make them less interesting; his stories of Fuzzies (beginning with
Little Fuzzy
) are among the most entertaining I’ve read.
Other Piper stories include the Paratime series (including Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen , whose protagonist, Pennsylvania state trooper Calvin Morrison, is accidentally transported to another timestream and makes the absolute best of it) and the Federation series (including Omnilingual , a story close to my heart about the efforts of Martha Dane, linguistic archaeologist, to decipher the long-dead Martian language).
Sunstones
In Little Fuzzy , Victor Grego’s mining license to the uninhabited world Zarathustra will be lost if it turns out Zarathustra is actually inhabited. Independent prospector Jack Hollaway runs across a family of short, furry creatures who turn out to be toolmakers with a recognizable language. Even when we know the probably outcome, it’s fun to read the machinations between Grego’s minions and Hollaway’s allies as they work toward a resolution of whether the Fuzzies are sapient.
Meanwhile, one of the primary reasons Zarathustra is valuable to Grego’s corporation is its stock of sunstones, fossilized remains of something like a jellyfish, with a natural luminescence when warmed.