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.

Works by James H. Schmitz with their own trope pages include:

 * Federation of the Hub series
 * The Witches of Karres

Other works by James H. Schmitz contain examples of:

 * 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