In 2012, Scalzi's novel received the Audie Award for Science Fiction and it was narrated by Wil Wheaton.

[1] On the human colony planet Zara XXIII, Jack Holloway is a rebellious former lawyer working as a contract surveyor for the firm Zaracorp.

If confirmed by a Colonial Authority judge, this would require Zaracorp to leave the planet and cede its natural resources.

Holloway eventually comes to agree that the fuzzys are sapient after realizing that they speak their own sophisticated language at a pitch too high for humans to hear, and argues strongly for the species in court.

The fuzzys then reveal to Holloway that they are able to speak audible English, which they learned from a literacy program on a tablet lost by a surveyor years earlier.