The Telzey Amberdon series
by James H. Schmitz
 

Commented-List of Stories,
with Story Collection Titles

The Telzey Amberdon series begins in Schmitz's Hub benchmark year of 3500 A.D., and spans only a couple of years of elapsed time. These stories comprise a subset of Schmitz's larger Federation of the Hub series. The Telzey stories should be read in chronological order, particularly the first half-dozen; the chronology of the later stories is not clear.

[ The essay Demigoddess of the Mind: James H. Schmitz's heroine Telzey Amberdon discusses and analyzes "Novice", "Undercurrents", & "Resident Witch". Before reading that analysis, it's critical to read those truly excellent stories — in this sequence. There are major plot spoilers in that essay. ]
  

Begin here. We meet Telzey. An introduction to Telzey and her awakening powers of mind, starting here with rudimentary xenotelepathy: direct communication with alien minds. She is an extremely resilient teenage girl, giving us hints of the formidable girl she soon will become.
  

Novella, a two-part serial in Analog; the second-longest Telzey Amberdon story. A potential-murder thriller. Chomir the arena hound is an awesome dog.
 

One of the lesser stories. This deals with telekinesis — physical action at a distance via mental force.
  

A thrilling combination of physical and mental danger, outdoor adventure and mental combat. Chomir the arena hound (from "Undercurrents") is also a principal in this story.

A teleporting alien beast. Dark and suspenseful, a lead-in to "The Lion Game".
 

Novella, a two-part serial in Analog; the longest Telzey Amberdon story.

The setting is the portal network on the planet Tinokti, which a long-hidden strain of bioengineered, leonine humans — the Elaigar — have infiltrated, and are secretly beginning a push against the Hub civilization. The portal network allows the Elaigar to whisk in closed circuits all around the planet without mingling with the population.

"The Lion Game" is a great thriller; mental powers are less important here. The action is very fast-paced, the variety of alien and more-or-less human races is fascinating. What rough beasts slouch and race through the mazy network ... Embedded within the plot of racing action and strange faces (kind Bug-Faces in the Kelly Freas cover painting) is a fascinating meditation on character types.

The Company Planet of the title is Fermilaur, a subtly dangerous place, offering beauty to the beautiful and other things as well. An excellent, suspenseful story.

Fermilaur was famous both as the leading body remodeling center of the Hub and as a luxurious resort world which offered relaxation and scenery along with entertainment to fit every taste, from the loftiest to the most depraved. It was only three hours from Orado, and most of Telzey's friends had been there. But she'd never happened to get around to it until one day she received a distress call from Fermilaur.
  

Into the tangled skein of minds. A tremendous story.s
  

Trees that give you what you want, everything you want ... Sirens. There's a distant echo here of Homer's Odyssey and a closer one of Heinlein's Methuselah's Children.

The very likable Trigger Argee, heroine of A Tale of Two Clocks and other Schmitz stories, is introduced into the Telzey Amberdon series at this point. Trigger is about ten years older than Telzey; she shares a couple of the following adventures as well. The Baen Books collection wisely includes "The Pork Chop Tree" as prologue to "Compulsion", properly introducing Trigger as well as the Old Galactics. A fine story.

Professor Mantelish and the Psychology Service woman Pilch, both in A Tale of Two Clocks, also reappear here.

A brief quotation from "Compulsion" is included in Schmitz's ComWeb.
  

Telzey and Trigger are captured by a group trying to take over the government of the planet Askanam (whence the dog Chomir). Good adventure: mental, physical, power politics — as they try to stay out of the deadly arena games.
  

Telzey is coerced into helping a crooked psi discover what has gone wrong in his mining operation on a sparsely-populated planet. A rather horrific alien monster here.
  

The climax of the Telzey Amberdon series.

A Martridrama is a stage play with full-size android puppets. Martri puppets are programmed for a very limited repertoire, but within their stage settings and acting to scripts, they easily pass for human in looks, speech, movements.

Few Martriphiles saw anything objectionable in having puppets killed literally on stage when a drama called for it. It was an essential part of Martri realism. The puppets were biological machines; the emotions and reactions they displayed were programmed ones. They had no self-awareness — that was the theory.

Following a suspicious lead, Telzey is trapped on an island whose owner uses a Martri computer to operate the whole island as a giant Martri stage. A great multilevel adventure, fascinating interplay — but it is so easy to remove a puppet from a stage.

"The Telzey Toy" is a profound and disturbing story. Is Martridrama in logical progression from the stadium and arena of antiquity to our movie and videogame of today, with only the mechanical representation improving? Or does our beloved drama of disposable images and puppets too much resemble the real, manipulated populations throughout history, whose tyrants always have treated their victims as puppets?

You don't think Martridrama is in our future?
  

Trigger Argee really is the main character in this story, with Telzey mostly offstage. Another variation on the theme of strange and often deadly entities passing for human in the huge and diverse culture of the Hub. We meet several different types here, unsettling individually; and very disturbing as a theme.

  

  Telzey Amberdon stories have been reprinted singly and in various combinations, with nine fine stories in three early collections; read them in this order:

1. The Universe Against Her
2. The Lion Game
3. The Telzey Toy
     

Another way to read the series is in the complete sequenced set from Baen Books (unfortunately marred by some abridgement and editorial meddling), collected in the following two omnibus Schmitz volumes (with some other Hub stories); read them in order:

1. Telzey Amberdon
2. TnT: Telzey & Trigger
     

Another omnibus collection from Baen:

The Hub: Dangerous Territory
other Federation of the Hub stories (not in the above collections).
  

A very good representative assortment of Schmitz stories:

The Best of James H. Schmitz
some Hub stories which are also in the above collections.

© 2002, 2024 Robert Wilfred Franson

  
Analog August 1971 cover
Analog January 1971 cover
by Frank Kelly Freas
  

The Federation of the Hub
Self-Maintaining Science Fiction Universe
by James H. Schmitz