The main Hub sequence first appeared in book form as A Tale of Two Clocks ( 1962 vt Legacy 1979), A Nice Day for Screaming and Other Tales of the Hub (coll 1965), The Demon Breed (September-October 1968 Analog as 'The Tuvela' exp 1968) and portions of A Pride of Monsters (coll 1970). Psi Powers are frequently found, especially Telepathy.Īt the heart of this common Universe is the Federation of the Hub and its Overgovernment, under which various agencies operate – notably the Psychology Service that monitors criminal use of Psi Powers. Many of his stories, as a result, focus less on moments of Conceptual Breakthrough than on the pragmatic operations of teams and bureaux involved in maintaining the state of things against criminals, Monsters and unfriendly species in this they rather resemble the tales of Murray Leinster, though they are more vigorous and less inclined to punish adventurousness.

After Agent of Vega, most of his best work shares a roughly characterized common background, a Galaxy inhabited by humans and Aliens with room for all and numerous opportunities for discoveries and reversals that carefully fall short of threatening the stability of that background, whose stabilizing function is commonly encountered in the kind of Future History underlying the argued vision of the galaxy as published in Astounding during the two decades – 1950 to about 1970 – of Schmitz's greatest activity. From 1949, when 'Agent of Vega' (July 1949 Astounding) appeared as the first of four stories featuring sentient Robot Spaceships and 'Galactic Zones' troubleshooters with Psi Powers, later assembled as Agent of Vega (coll of linked stories 1960) – they are also included in Agent of Vega and Other Stories (coll 2001) with many other tales – he regularly produced the kind of Genre SF for which he remains most warmly remembered: Space-Opera adventures, several featuring female Heroes depicted with minimum recourse to their 'femininity' – they perform their active tasks, and save the Universe when necessary, in a manner almost completely free of sexual role-playing Clichés. (1911-1981) German-born author whose parents were American in the US from 1938, serving with the USAF in World War Two his first story was 'Greenface' for Unknown in August 1943.

The Lion Game by James H. Schmitz