Federation of the Hub

The Federation of the Hub is a science fiction setting featured in many stories by James H. Schmitz. The Hub is an interstellar federation in the far future located toward the center of the galaxy.

The most prominent recurring characters are Telzey Amberdon, an independently-minded psychic Action Girl, and Trigger Argee, a secret agent. There are several stories in which the two team up, set after their respective solo adventures. Other recurring characters include Intrepid Reporter Keth Deboll, the various agents of the Kyth Interstellar Detective Agency, and Adventure Biologist Nile Etland.

Baen Books have brought his work back into print in recent years. The reissue attracted some controversy among long-standing fans because of the editor's decision to tighten up a few of the stories, a process that in some cases more closely resembled major surgery. There were also some kinks in the release order: it was decided to release all the Telzey Amberdon stories first, with the result that every Telzey team-up story appears before the story introducing the character she's teaming up with. This doesn't really matter for the lesser recurring characters, whose stories don't have strong continuity or chronology; but volume 2, containing the Telzey and Trigger team-up stories, is definitely set after, and contains significant spoilers for, the solo Trigger stories in volume 3.

Baen's collections (in publication order) are:


 * 1) Telzey Amberdon
 * 2) TNT: Telzey and Trigger
 * 3) Trigger and Friends
 * 4) The Hub: Dangerous Territory

"I must emphasize strongly the oppressively accumulating effect these events produced on the Parahuans during the relatively short period in which they occurred. As related by the survivors, there was a growing sense of shock and dismay, the conviction finally of having challenged something like an indestructible supernatural power. At the time they were questioned, the survivors still seemed more disturbed by this experience than by the practical fact of their own impending demise on orders of Porad Anz, of which they were aware."
 * Absent-Minded Professor: Plemponi, Dr. Mantelish.
 * Action Girl:
 * Telzey
 * Trigger
 * Niles Etland
 * Aristocrats Are Evil: The Duke of Fluel, in "Lion Loose".
 * Bluffing the Advance Scout: In The Demon Breed
 * Subverted in that at the end of the story, the alien overlords the scouts are reporting to analyze the situation and realize that said scouts' reports about a substrain of super-humans allegedly existing within human society as its secret masters are 99+% likely to be bullshit. However, they also directly lampshade that this conclusion would mean that a lone human being almost single-handedly destroyed the Porad Anz scouting expedition without the use of superhuman powers, which is more terrifying than any other conclusion they could have reached.
 * Chivalrous Pervert: Heslet Quillan takes instant advantage of the situation when the naked Action Girl falls into his arms--but never hesitates when a lady needs his help.
 * Cloning Blues: In "Ti's Toys"
 * Close-Call Haircut: "Baldy" Perk in "Lion Loose".
 * Cool Gate: In "The Lion Game"
 * Drives Like Crazy: Dr Plemponi in Legacy
 * Dolled-Up Installment: The Baen reissues include a non-Hub story, "Planet of Forgetting", rewritten as a Hub story, "Forget It". The theory here was that it may well have been a Dolled Down Installment in the first place.
 * Extra Eyes: In "Company Planet", a surgeon has an additional eye in the centre of his forehead, which Telzey guesses might act as a magnifier for close-in work.
 * Famous Last Words: "And now, if it is within the power of a Tuvela to defy our purpose, show what you can do."
 * The Federation: The Federation of the Hub.
 * Framing the Guilty Party: Telzey does this in "Undercurrents"
 * Grand Theft Me: In "The Symbiotes"
 * Heroes Want Redheads: Trigger and Heslet Quillan.
 * Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Played with in Novice with humans hunting crest cats, who (unbeknownst to the humans) are intelligent beings. However, the crest cats are having enormous fun hunting the humans right back.
 * At the end of the story the burgeoning crest cat rebellion is headed off by Telzey's proving their sentience to the planetary government and negotiating a peace treaty... that does not ban the hunting of crest cats. Instead, it merely bans the hunting of crest cats from aircars or other positions where the crest cats cannot reach them. So long as the cats have an even chance vs. the humans, they're perfectly happy with it.
 * Humans Are Psychic in the Future: The Hub stories have a significant number of psychic characters, even though psis are still only a tiny fraction of the human race. However, they are numerous enough that the Federation Psychology Service has spent centuries making sure that rogue psis don't screw up the status quo too badly. A character in one story explicitly mentions that humanity only developed psi powers when it started spreading to other planets, and speculates about how the two events might be connected.
 * Humans Are Warriors: the epilogue to The Demon Breed concludes that Humans Are Dangerous, Leave Them Alone.
 * Humanity Is Infectious: In The Other Likeness.
 * Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: "A Nice Day For Screaming" has this in spades: the space itself is inherently hazardous, and then it turns out there are things living in it...
 * Immortality Seeker: Ticos Cay. This makes him a rarity among Hub citizens, who are mostly affected by Who Wants to Live Forever?.
 * Intrepid Reporter: Keth Deboll.
 * Kaleidoscope Hair: Danestar Gems, in "The Searcher", always wears a wig of the same colour as her outfit.
 * Make the Dog Testify: In "Undercurrents". Subverted in that
 * Mook Horror Show: The epilogue to "The Demon Breed" retells the story from the aliens' point of view.


 * Mugging the Monster: In Lion Game two street thugs stalk Telzey...very briefly. Fortunately for them it suits her purposes to let them live and even to provide them with a telepathic illusion that they've successfully mugged her, but it still qualifies as this trope because she could literally have killed them both with a harsh look.
 * New Powers as the Plot Demands: Telzey is rather prone to this.
 * Precursors: Their remnants feature in several of the Trigger Argee stories.
 * One of the few surviving Old Galactics also becomes Trigger's enigmatic mentor, and later on moves himself and all his surviving friends that he can reach into Professor Mantelish's tropical garden (unknown to Professor Mantelish). At story's end they're still there happily planning on the slow (verrrrrrry slow) rebuilding of their species, while lending a little discreet aid to their human friends from time to time in return for their providing shelter.
 * Private Detective: The agents of Kyth Interstellar Detective Agency, who appear in starring or supporting roles in several of the Hub stories.
 * Proud Warrior Race Guy: The Elaigar in Lion Game.
 * Subverted in that its shown at several points that their Proud Warrior Race tendencies have locked them into an unsustainable cultural stasis and left them unable to organize on any large scale and dependent on slaves. It is implied that the one substrain of their species that has freed itself from most of these tendencies will inevitably clean up on the rest soon, as they're far less limited.
 * Psychic Block Defense: Mind shield devices were commercially available, and creatures known as Old Galactics could provide them to their symbionts (such as humans).
 * Psychic Powers
 * Reasonable Authority Figure: Although the Federation's Psychology Service originally comes on like Psi-Corps, we rapidly see that if a psi shows a reasonable measure of self-control and responsibility the Psychology Service is entirely willing to leave them free to live their own life, even if their actions were technically illegal. The Psychology Service's motto might as well be "Every case is on a 'case-by-case basis'."
 * An example is that despite the fact that Telzey originally fought for her freedom by blackmailing the Psychology Service, they've been entirely willing to help with the damage control on other crises she's helped bring to their attention, no strings attached, to the point of temporarily giving her official status as a Psychology Service field agent and then cutting her loose again rather than forcing her to stay when the case was over (despite the fact that they have the legal authority to draft her at any time). Then again, her case manager seems to be taking the tack of 'When Telzey finishes growing up, she'll probably come to me willingly... after all, she does enjoy the work.'
 * Furthermore, Telzey has no rational motive to commit crime (she's from an extremely wealthy and powerful family and her every mundane need is already taken care of), and has consistently shown that she has no irrational motives to cause trouble and willingly brings any other trouble she finds to the attention of the authorities if she can't resolve it herself. Given how many other psis are causing trouble, if Telzey's case manager takes any other approach than 'It's not broken, so I ain't gonna fix it.' with her case than he's too stupid to live.
 * Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Pilch, possibly to the point of being a Time Abyss.
 * Red Oni, Blue Oni: When Telzey & Trigger team up, the calmly cerebral and ruthless Telzey plays a classic blue oni to Trigger's cheerful, outgoing, and Hot-Blooded red oni.
 * Screw the Rules, I Have Money: Averted. Telzey's father is a highly wealthy and influential man, and her mother is on the Federation High Council... and vs. the forces she's been up against, both official and otherwise, neither one would have been able to do a damn thing to help.
 * Well, her dad comes in handy on one of her early cases by introducing her to the Kyth Detective Agency... and paying their bill.
 * Sexy Walk: Trigger apparently has one.
 * Smart People Play Chess: Telzey Amberdon is a superpowered Teen Genius telepath, introduced in one story playing in the planetary championship games. (Made it to the semifinals, then had to drop out due to being interrupted by a case.)
 * Spank the Cutie: In Legacy, the threat of spanking is unsucessfully used (by her allies, no less) to keep Trigger Argee from making escape attempts. Trigger later uses the same trick on a captured Villain with Good Publicity, and records the conversation for blackmail fodder. Yowls and all.
 * The Spymaster: Senior Commissioner Holati Tate
 * Stealth Expert: Corvin Wergard of the Kyth Agency
 * Sugary Malice: The default state of being for Telzey's Aunt Halet in "Novice".
 * Superweapon Surprise: In The Tuvela
 * Taking You with Me: In The Demon Breed, Ticos Cay's collection of biological specimens was assembled with this in mind, if he ever outlived his usefulness to the alien invaders.
 * Teen Genius: Telzey starts out as one.
 * Tele Frag: In "Sleep No More", Telzey is stalked by a malicious hunting animal with the power to teleport. Upon realizing that its tracking her by her mental emissions and that it will catch up to an dkill her the instant her mind-shield fails (which it will soon, as she can't stay conscious much longer), she telepathically hypnotizes herself to believe that her location is several hundred feet away from where it actually is and then lets the beast catch a glimpse. Sure enough, it teleports right onto her falsified position fix... which happens to be in the middle of a granite cliff. *BOOM*.
 * Touched by Vorlons: How Telzey gets her powers. More precisely, Telzey was born with her powers but didn't consciously realize she had them until telepathic contact with an alien race "unlocked" them for her. However, the "unlocking" procedure went on for longer than it was supposed to, meaning that she gained access to some powers most humans didn't or couldn't.
 * Transhuman Treachery: “The Machmen” claim they have this rather than brainwashing.
 * Uplifted Animal: Nile Etland's hunting otters.
 * World of Badass: This is a deliberate policy of the federation goverment, which permits private wars to keep the people prepared for outside menaces.
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair
 * Zeroth Law Rebellion: In Child of the Gods, Telzey is mind-controlled by another telepath to not use any of her higher powers without permission (as they could potentially be used to break her free from his control), follow every order he gives, and when in a situation not covered by orders to take actions only if they are in her controller's best interest. When the telepath is shot during a battle, Telzey reasons a) Without her full power and free will, she cannot win this battle b) Her controller is currently unable to give her orders and c) Losing this battle and letting him get killed is not in his best interest. Freed from her constraints, she proceeds to curbstomp the enemy mooks... and then goes on to break the controls, sedate her erstwhile 'handler' while giving him first aid, and finish resolving the rest of the crisis without him. By the time he wakes up, he's in a Psychology Service prison hospital.