James H. Schmitz

James H. Schmitz (1911 - 1981) was an American science fiction writer, mostly in short stories. He is noted for many of his protagonists being (to reluctantly resort to a much-abused expression) strong female characters.

The majority of his stories are set in the Federation of the Hub. The most prominent recurring characters are Telzey Amberdon, an independent-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.

Another, smaller, group of stories features the Zone Agents of Vega, a group of idiosyncratic secret agents who guard the worlds of the Vegan Confederacy under a variety of guises. (One, for instance, appears to be travelling saleswoman, living out of a little caravan drawn by a funny-looking draught animal -- but the caravan is also a fully-functional spacecraft, and the "draught animal" is one of her fellow Agents.)

His one full length novel is The Witches of Karres, an adventure comedy involving a trio of psychic children.

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. The non-Hub stories are collected in Agent of Vega (containing all, but not only, the Zone Agents stories) and Eternal Frontier.


 * Federation of the Hub series
 * The Witches of Karres


 * Action Girl
 * Psychic Powers
 * The Fair Folk: In "Summer Guests"
 * The Federation: The Confederacy of Vega.
 * Space Police: The agents of Vega
 * The Spymaster: The Third Co-ordinator of the Vegan Confederacy