James H. Schmitz Books In Order

Publication Order of The Hub Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of The Witches of Karres Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

James H. Schmitz
James Henry Schmitz was born October 15, 1911 in Hamburg, Germany. He was educated at a Realgymnasium in Hamburg, and he grew up speaking both German and English. The family spent the First World War in America, then returned to Germany.

In 1930, he traveled to Chicago to attend business school, and then switched to a correspondence course in journalism. Since he was unable to get a job because of the Great Depression, he went back to Germany so that he could work with his dad’s company. He lived in various German cities, where he worked for the International Harvester Company, until his family left in 1938 just before World War II broke out in Europe.

Schmitz, during World War II, served as an aerial photographer in the Pacific for the United States Army Air Forces. After the war, both he and his brother-in-law managed a business which manufactured trailers until the closed up the business in the year 1949.

After the war’s end, he made a home for himself in California, where he would stay until he died.

James primarily wrote stories, which he sold mainly to Astounding Science Fiction and Galaxy Science Fiction.

His first published story was “Greenface”, which was published in August of 1943 in Unknown. Most of his works are a part of the “Hub” series, although his best known novel is “The Witches of Karres”, a non-Hub related story that concerns juvenile “witches” with genuine psi-powers and their escape from slavery. The novel was nominated for a Hugo Award.

James is best known as a writer of “space opera”, and for his strong female characters (like Trigger Argee and Telzey Amberdon) who didn’t conform to the stereotype of the “damsel in distress” that was typical of science fiction of that time period.

Schmitz, with his popular equality-between-the-sexes style of fiction, eased the way for later authors like James Tiptree, Jr. Sheri S. Tepper, Joanna Russ, Kit Reed, Connie Willis, as well as other science fiction authors that used female protagonists and feminine perspectives more than half the time.

Author Mercedes Lackey places her first meeting with science fiction at the age of ten or eleven, when she just happened to pick up her dad’s copy of James’ “Agent of Vega”.

James died at the age of 69 on April 18, 1981 in Los Angeles, California of congestive lung failure after a five-week stay in the hospital. He was survived by Betty Mae Chapman Schmitz, his wife.

“The Witches of Karres” is the first novel in the “Witches of Karres” series and was released in 1968. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.

Captain Pausert believed that his luck had finally turned, however he didn’t yet realize that it was a turn for the worse. On second though, make that a turn for the disastrous.

Unsuccessful in business, unlucky in love, he believed that he had finally made good with Venture, his battered starship, cruising around the fringes of the Empire and successfully selling off the odd-ball cargoes which nobody else had been able to sell off. He was ready to return back to his own home, where his one true love was faithfully waiting for him, at least that’s what he hoped.

However he then made the fatal mistake of setting three slave children free from their masters (who were suspiciously eager to be rid of them). They were only trying to be helpful, however those three adorable little girls soon made Pausert the mortal enemy of his home planet, his fiancee, the Empire, the dread pirate chieftain Laes Yango, warlike Sirians, psychopathic Uldanians, and even the Worm World, which is the darkest threat to mankind in all of space.

And it was all because of those harmless looking little girls that were in fact three of the universally feared and notorious Witches of Karres.

“Eternal Frontier” is a stand alone novel and was released in 1973. Earth’s colonists have divided into the Swimmers, who spend their whole lives in zero-gravity and claim they’re the next step in evolution, and the planet dwelling Walkers.

The Swimmers regard those that prefer to live on the surface of a planet as being little better than unevolved apes, as the Walkers aren’t about to say farewell to the planets that they grew up on, and believe the Swimmers aren’t advanced at all, but just deranged.

Crowell, who was born a Swimmer but is now a Walker by choice, gets caught in the middle while the two sides prepare to go to war. Then he learns about the true cause of the altercation: this hidden alien race attempting to provoke a war of extinction.

“Telzey Amberdon” is a novel in the “Telzey and Trigger” series and was released in 1992. Telzey Amberdon was just in her teens when she learned she was a telepath. Not just a telepath, but really a xenotelepath, able to communicate mentally not only with humans, however with alien intelligences. And she ended up turning out to be one of the most powerful telepaths in the history of the galactic civilization called the Hub.

First she was forced to deal with an alien race which humans had yet to realize were intelligent, and who were about to eliminate those troublesome humans that thought they were colonizing an uninhabited world. Then, she needed to fend of the secret psi agents of the Psychological Corps that took a dim view of any telepath, let alone one with Telzey’s powers, operating outside of their control. Next, she stumbled across this telepathic serial killer, who used an unstoppable predator, under his mental control, to hunt down and murder his victims, and Telzey was to be the catch of the day.

It was pretty fortunate for the human race that she survived, since she next found she was in the middle of this secret war between two hidden races of genetically engineered humans. They called it the “Lion Game”, and they made the mistake of believing that in such a clash of predators, that Telzey was only a harmless kitten. However when the dust ended up settling, Telzey would be the only one left standing and purring.