The end result, for all its length, is not another “series.” It is something much rarer, and more precious. It is one immensely talented writer’s kaleidoscopic vision of a future universe, painted like an impressionist master might portray the teeming life in a field. It is James H. Schmitz’s principal legacy to science fiction.
We will be presenting that universe in four volumes, centered on the three most important characters in Schmitz’s Hub universe: Telzey Amberdon, Trigger Argee and Nile Etland. Volumes One and Two present the Telzey saga, with Trigger making her first appearance as Telzey’s companion in Volume Two. Volume Three revolves around Trigger. Volume Four will focus on Nile Etland.
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This series is the culmination of what, for me, was a daydream for a quarter of a century. For that, I have many people to thank.
First and foremost is my publisher, Jim Baen. Without his support from the outset, this project would have been quite impossible.
Then, I want to make special mention of my co-editor, Guy Gordon. I did not know Guy when I began editing this project. I encountered him purely by accident, as I was surfing the web looking for anything related to James H. Schmitz. Quite to my surprise, I discovered that there was an entire site devoted to JHS—and an excellent one. (It’s still there, too—www.white-crane.com/Schmitz/index.htm, or do a web search for the words “Schmitz Encyclopedia”—and I urge anyone with an interest in James Schmitz to investigate it.)
With the collaboration of a number of other devoted fans, Guy set up the site and has spent the past several years assembling Schmitz’s complete writings and a host of secondary material. By now, he is quite probably the world’s expert on the life and work of James H. Schmitz. Guy and his colleagues generously offered to put those resources at my disposal, an offer which I eagerly accepted. In the months that followed, as we worked together preparing this volume, Guy’s role came to be the one which is formally recognized on the title page: co-editor of the series. It has been a genuine pleasure to work with him, and one of the unexpected benefits of this project.
I can’t mention by name all of the people who have been involved in the “Schmitz Mailing List”—there have literally been dozens—but the key figures require public acknowledgment for their work: Harry Erwin, Gharlane of Eddore, George Phillies, and Ken Uecker. And thanks also to Arnold Bailey, Patrick Campbell and Sharon Custer for their help along the way. Finally, I’d like to give a bow to all the many people in Baen Books’ web page (www.baen.com—then select “Hang Out at Baen’s Bar”) who cheered the project on from the moment I first tossed it out as an idle thought and Jim responded with an offer to throw his support behind the idea. Let it never be said that a chat room is simply a pleasant waste of time. In a very real sense, this series was born there.
The Federation of the Hub: An Overview
James H. Schmitz knew one of the cardinal rules of writing science fiction adventure: don’t inflict the reader with irrelevant background material—get on with the story! And so Schmitz seldom comes right out and tells us any facts about the Hub. (After all, when was the last time world geography came up in your casual conversation?) Part of the fun of reading Schmitz is piecing together the clues dropped here and there, because the Hub is an amazing place to visit.
Still, readers new to Schmitz might benefit from an overview of what the Hub is, and how it got there.
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In Schmitz’s future, humanity moved out from Earth slowly. In the first thousand years or so of interstellar travel only sporadic colonies were founded in what he refers to as the “Old Territories.” Terratype planets were rare and hard to find. In “The Symbiotes” we learn that “Old Territory people thought it had been proved there’d be a permanent shortage of habitable planets around. So that sets it back about eleven hundred years, when they’d begun to get range but didn’t yet know where and how to look.”
By the time of “Blood of Nalakia,” humanity has discovered a dense cluster of Terratype worlds known as “the Hub Systems.” It is there that most colonies are formed. The Hub (as opposed to the Federation as a political organization) is a star cluster—most likely a global cluster with fairly distinct boundaries.
But “Blood of Nalakia” is the only Hub story that mentions both Earth and the Hub. After that there is a huge break in human history known as “The War Centuries.”
Though he never wrote any War Centuries stories, Schmitz had some very concrete ideas about what happened then. “Humans fought one another for many star periods throughout [the Hub] with a sustained fury rarely observed in other species.” In one story he even lets drop the reason for the wars: psychological control of planetary populations. There are hints that entire planets died. One of them may have been the Earth.
The Earth—or, at least, its historical significance—is known to the inhabitants of the Hub, but they have no contact with it. There are references to species of monkeys, otters, horses, and sequoia trees that were “preserved in the Life Banks on Maccadon”—but there is no definitive word as to just what they were preserved from.
Out of this centuries-long, vicious war was founded the Federation of the Hub.
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The Federation is big. We learn in Legacy that there are twelve hundred and fifty-eight member worlds (including two hundred and fourteen restricted worlds), with a combined population of over six hundred billion. This provides Schmitz the room needed for all sorts of disparate cultures and adventures. If that weren’t enough, there are worlds outside the Hub like Precolonial worlds, I-Fleet territories, and the domains of various nonhuman intelligent species.
Although the sheer size of the Hub is mentioned several times, Schmitz never tells us its precise dimensions. Instead we are given the more relevant measure of how long it takes to travel from world to world. Some Hub planets are mere hours apart by “subspace” FTL flight. The frontiers are much farther. Manon is two weeks’ travel from the Hub, and Nandy Cline is three.
Neither are we given a timeline for all this. Unlike most science fiction writers who have written a large number of stories set in a single future universe, Schmitz organized his stories “horizontally” rather than chronologically. The majority of the stories, including all of the ones involving Telzey Amberdon and Trigger Argee, take place within a very short time span—not more than three years. We are given a cross-section of life in the Hub, rather than a linear series of adventures taking place one after the other.
Almost all the Hub stories take place 200 years after the founding of the Federation. But there are only two clues as to how far this is in our future. One is Trigger’s statement about the Old Territories being explored “eleven hundred years ago.” The other is that the dust jacket of the rare collection A Nice Day for Screaming, and Other Tales of the Hub states that the date is 3500 a.d. But we don’t know if that date came from Schmitz or the publisher.
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The physical facts about the Hub are less interesting than the political facts. But, again, the picture we get from Schmitz is impressionistic rather than precise.
The Federation is sometimes referred to as the Overgovernment—indicating that it is indeed a Federation in the political sense, and not just in name. Planetary governments take care of such things as taxes, police, courts, etc. To outward appearances, the Federation simply handles defense, colonization, and relations with alien species.
But appearances are deceiving. There’s a lot more going on behind the scenes. Because of our vantage point, we get to see more than the average citizen of the Hub. Schmitz has some exciting tales to tell, and exciting events tend to draw in the Federation.
The Federation has several major worries. Number one is preventing the return of the War Centuries. Second, is protecting the Hub from hostile aliens. And number three is advancing humanity as a species.
The Federation is ruled by the Council—and the Council rules by sending out members or deputies to direct the activity of the Departments. Telzey’s mother, Federation Councilwoman Jessamine Amberdon, is one, and is a member of the powerful Hace Committee. (It’s very interesting that this is an ethics committee.)
Often, these officials only pop up after the action is over, and seem mostly concerned with judging the performance of the actors. As one alien observes: “The Federation Council, though popularly regarded as the central seat of authority, frequently appears to be acting more as moderator among numerous powerful departments.”
These Departments include the Psychology Service, the Federation Navy, Precolonization (or Precol), Conservation, and Outposts. Despite that fact that Schmitz flew for the Army Air Force in WWII, he has little to say about the armed forces of the Hub. Heslet Quillan works for Intelligence, but we never see the organization. Trigger and Tate both work for Precol, but we see little of that. We never learn much about any of the other Departments of the Hub except, to a certain degree, the Psychology Service.