Telzey Amberdon

As a female who has appreciated SF/F since the age of twelve, I have been in a very small minority for most of my life. Along came validation in the form of Telzey Amberdon, the Nancy Drew of Science Fiction for her day, and suddenly I felt that I had a place in our speculative future. Telzey is cool. Telzey is brilliant, beautiful, and a very independent-minded fifteen-year-old; and apparently, also a powerful latent psi (psychic). She's the genius daughter of some powerful politicians several hundred years into the future when humanity had expanded into the stars and founded homes on countless planets in a system called the Hub. Somehow our intrepid heroine ends up getting pulled into several mysteries and thrillers during the course of this book, and of course she handles herself with wit and self-confidence against the universe's fiends, human and non-. But the worst threat to this budding psi is the ever-watchful Psychology Service, which has its own agenda for her powerful talents even as it purports to protect and serve all the citizens of the Hub. Telzey has to learn a lot of psychic self-defense on the fly against her own in addition to everything else on her plate. This is a collection of the short novellas that Schmidt wrote at various points in his career for magazines, and as such they had to be combined to make a novel hefty enough for publishing by today's standards. I rather enjoyed this format, as Telzey's character can be explored in chunks of chronological development rather than skimmed as one would through the plot of a larger novel. It works well on the level of light entertainment and gave me more natural reading breaks than the standard Chapter format. I was also appreciative of the slightly retro flavor of stories that were written mostly during the `60s and `70s. Now and then an anachronism caught me off guard, such as a reference to a rotary dial-up communication system. But in many ways Schmidt was so ahead of his time, with the subtly feminist flavor of his themes and main characters, that I can gloss over those tiny lapses without skipping a beat. Mostly, I just have fun exploring this speculative future through Telzey. Gosh I enjoyed getting back into the Hub universe; now I want more. Happily there are more Telzey stories out there, and soon I will be reacquainting myself with all of them and some others I had never met. It's good to live in the age of Internet bookstores! -Andrea, aka Merribelle

James Schmitz is perhaps the classic SF author who is simultaneously most important and least remembered by the average modern fan. Schmitz began his writing in 1943, when many of the other greats were just starting out. Clearly influenced by Doc Smith in some areas (his "Agent of Vega" series even has some definitely Smithian prose), Schmitz was best known for the fact that he wrote stories featuring strong, believeable, effective female lead characters, in an era when many SF stories -- even those by the greats such as Heinlein and Asimov -- rarely even acknowledged the existence of women except by an occasional reference to a character's mother or a token girlfriend. Schmitz' characters, by contrast, lived in a world populated equally by men and women, and had no trouble interacting with either sex (any more than they do in the real world, at any rate). In the Telzey Amberdon stories, we get to see all three of the things Schmitz became known for: strong female characters, an interesting and consistent use of psionic powers, and solid universe design. Telzey's adventures take place in the Hub, perhaps Schmitz' best known setting and certainly his most detailed. Often the Telzey stories are criticized for making her a superwoman, but I think this is often a reaction without consideration. She is no more superior to her opposition than many a male hero, and as a general rule is much more in need of subtlety and caution than male heroes common in the SF of the time. Not to say you couldn't call her a superwoman -- she's certainly got enough talent, power, and so on to qualify -- but her opposition is always formidable enough to REQUIRE a superwoman to defeat. These stories have been somewhat edited from their original form; for the most part the editing involved minor terms, removal of redundant punctuation (which Schmitz himself tended to do upon re-issues), and so on. A few have had noticeable changes. Personally I do not agree with a few of them, but the resulting stories are still clearly Schmitz' work, and the overall volume is more than merely worth the money; this is an excellent collection, and all the ones in the Schmitz re-issue series are must-haves for any SF fan.

James Schmitz has been my favorite science fiction writer since I picked up a white paperback at a drugstore back in 1962 called "Agent of Vega". From that day I searched for everything he wrote. I didn't know of the pulps, though, and was only able to read those stories which appeared in collections, such as The Universe Against Her; The Telzey Toy; and the Lion Game. In the past year I've been collecting the old pulps featuring his work, and so I had read all of these stories prior to purchasing this volume. It was however very enjoyable to read the stories in chronological sequence; something which I had never done. I enjoyed them so much that although I had read these within the past year, I read them again and enjoyed them as much. Some are not Telzey fans. My brother doesn't care for her, though he loves Agent of Vega; and "Agent" is my favorite Schmitz, with "Witches" in a near tie. All of his stories are good, however, and Telzey is an extremely engaging girl. It was remarkable that 14-15 year old boys such as me enjoyed a 15-16 year old girl as a heroine back in those sexist days. It is equally remarkable that the 52-53 year old man I've become enjoys them just as much. Although she was probably not my favorite Schmitz character, she was the one who we watched "grow up", psi-wise; and as when I finished the pulp version of "Child of the Gods" a few weeks ago, as a first read, I was saddened, as if by the passing of a very good friend. These are timeless stories, and his casting of females as his primary characters was unusual and very refreshing, though he was sometimes criticized for it. Every memorable writer should have a character who personifies him. Edgar Rice Burroughs had Tarzan. R.E. Howard had Conan. Fleming had Bond; and John D. McDonald had Travis McGee. For James H. Schmitz, Telzey is his star, and she shines brightly for all of us, though her star winked out far too soon.

James H. Schmitz was a well-known science fiction author of the 1950s-1970s who remains popular with older fans and many authors. His style is quietly liberal (in the old sense) while avoiding the strong material seen in much of modern SF. When John Campbell (the editor of Astounding and Analog) died, he lost his primary publishing outlet and disappeared from the scene in a few years, dying about 1981. About three years ago, some older fans organized the "Schmitz List" as a meeting place on the internet for people interested in seeing him back in print. Jim Baen, the publisher of Baen Books, was an old fan of Schmitz's and was intrigued by the possibility of putting Schmitz back in print, using word-of-mouth advertising to overcome the resistance of the major book store chains to stocking mass market books by dead authors. The final catalyst for this process was Eric Flint, also a Schmitz fan, who proposed to organize a four volume series around Schmitz's Hub stories. "Telzey Amberdon" is the first volume of this set. If you like the older style of SF, or if you have children you would like to introduce to SF, this is an excellent choice.

For years I have scavenged the used bookstores trying to collect all the tales of the Hub written by James H. Schmitz, and now I can finally have them all. These wonderfully written tales of Telzey Amberdon, a young law student who discovers she has psychic powers, are an excellent introduction to James Schmitz and his Federation of the Hub. I eagerly look forward to the rest of the tales.