SOURCE: Have Space Suit--Will Travel (1958) by Robert A. Heinlein

DESCRIPTION: "The Mother Thing blinked her eyes and looked srenely sad. She had great, soft, compassionate eyes--she looked more like a lemur than anything else but she was not a primate--she wasn't even in our sequence, unearthly. But she had these wonderful eyes and a soft, defenseless mouth out of which music poured. She wasn't as big as Peewee and her hands were tinier still--six fingers, any one of which could oppose the others the way our thumbs can. Her body--well, it never stayed the same shape so it's hard to describe, but it was right for her. She didn't wear clothes but she wasn't naked; she had soft, creamy fur, sleek and fine as chinchilla." (Have Space Suit--Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein)

NOTES: The Vegans are lemur-like creatures who communicate through song. Their furry bodies and large eyes make them attractive to humans.  Their powers of empathy also make us like and adore them. They have pouches like marsupials. The Vegans are part of an interstellar policing system called The Three Galaxies. As such they are partly responsible for the judging of the human race. Vegans possess superior science to humans with machines that can grow back destroyed flesh, faster-than-light travel that is virtually instantaneous, and space suits that are almost non-apparent but very specialized. The Vegan homeworld is close to Earth (relatively speaking), being a forest planet in which the Vegan cities are perfectly adapted and balanced with the environment. The intense sunlight of their Class A sun is painful to human senses. The Vegan system of government is complex and confusing to humans. They feel democracy is "a very good system, for beginners".

HISTORY: Heinlein's Vegans are important because they are one of the first aliens to be in judgment of humanity. BEMs in the 1930s and 40s were inferior enemies to defeat. Heinlein suggests that humans are not the masters of the universe and that as infant space dwellers we have much growing up to do. He also suggests we are up to the task.