Telzey Amberdon Book

James H. Schmitz was one of the classics of SF during the sixties. Later he was almost forgotten. Fortunately Baen Books decided to republish in four volumes all his short stories, novellas and one full novel (Legacy) related to the Hub, an interstellar federation dominated by humans, but enclosing also many extremely imaginative aliens. In addition to this, during some time Baen Books made several of the volumes available for free download from their web, a very interesting move in the publishing world, which seems entrenched in a war in defense of their publishing rights.

This is the first book in the series and centers around the character of Telzey Amberdon, one of the many strong women in Schmitz books. This makes him different from many other SF authors of his time, who usually depicted women as passive characters who should be protected by men. In the short stories in this volume we follow Telzey since she discovers her special psychic powers, along her slow learning process, until she becomes one of the strongest psi experts of the galaxy, able to face by herself, in the short story The lion game, two different inimical alien races who are also fighting one another.

I strongly recommend this book.