Cuddaby's Planet is a science fiction story about two civilisations coming into contact for the first time. One of them - the human one - is technologically advanced; the other is primitive. The encounter begins when four human explorers, including the Cuddaby of the title, arrive on Rhenia, searching for rare minerals. It turns out Rhenia has a rare metal deposit of great value. Before they can lay claim to the planet, the four humans are overwhelmed by the native species, called hyars. Cuddaby alone survives and is kept in captivity as a weird kind of animal 'pet'. Eventually rescued, Cuddaby agrees to keep the hyars' existence secret so that mining can go ahead without incurring the huge expenses which would arise from taking into account the hyars' rights under international space law. Years pass. Cuddaby, now working on a supply ship, happens to revisit Rhenia while on a supply mission. He is slightly disturbed to see the environmental damage being done by the mining. Yielding to an impulse, he decides to visit the hyar city where he was held as a pet and meets again the hyar who 'owned' him. The suffering of the hyars arising from the mining activity is brought home to Cuddaby by this meeting with his hyar friend, and he decides to champion the hyars' cause. Raising the subject of the hyars' rights as an intelligent species with the miners, he meets with violent opposition. His struggles for justice, both on Rhenia and back on Earth, have terrible consequences, triggering attempts by each of the two rival species on Rhenia to exterminate the other. Overall, the novel tackles the issue of speciesism: if it's not like us, it's inferior. It also draws on the way human greed frequently overrides moral considerations of what is right and what is wrong. That said, Cuddaby's Planet is not a polemic. It's an adventure story suitable for anyone of any age from teenage upward. It contains no sex, no graphic violence, and no foul language. It is, by the end, a feel-good story in which Cuddaby triumphantly saves the day!
