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Originally Posted by crich70
James H. Schmitz had some good stuff written during his lifetime. A good portion of his works are in the Baen free library for download now. Not quite hard SciFi but good all the same. One of his that I've been reading has a mixture of a galactic civilization and telepathy. He didn't produce a lot in his lifetime but it is good reading.
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I'm pretty sure almost everything by Schmitz is available through the Free Library.
Schmitz wrote primarily in a setting called "The Federation of the Hub", a far future human interstellar civilization further in toward the galactic center. His main protagonists are Telzey Amberdon and Trigger Argee.
Telzey is the teenage daughter of a pair of Federation bureaucrats, who is also a powerful xenotelepath, capable of establishing mental communication with aliens as well as other humans. She has a guarded relationship with the Federation's Psychology Service, which keeps an eye in humans with psi powers. Centuries before Schmitz's setting, the first humans in the hub fought each other in wars of unparalleled ferocity, which apparently destroyed Earth. The wars seem to have been caused by the emergence of psi powers among humanity, as powerful psis established dominance over their societies and attempted to expand their dominance to others. The Psychology Service exists in part to guard against a repeat of such conflicts.
Trigger Argee is an older woman who is a high level troubleshooter for the Federation, and winds up teamed with Telzey in one book.
Other Schmitz volumes include _Agent of Vega_, a set of stories not in the Hub universe featuring a high level troubleshooter for a future interstellar polity centered on Vega, and _The Wizard of Karres_, in which Captain Nicholas Pausert of Nikledepain finds himself induced to purchase three young witches who had ben enslaved on the Imperial planet of Porlumma. The witches had been captured by Imperial slavers while on a jaunt. Maleen, Goth, and the Leewit, the witches of the title, prove a handful, and Pausert finds himself pursued by almost everyone for various reasons related to the witches and their abilities.
_The Wizard of Karres_ may be Schmitz's best known book, and is considered a classic. It's a delightful romp, and spawned a Baen Books sequel called _The Wizard of Karres_, by Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint, and Dave Freer. (Schmitz had written a sequel, but the manuscript disappeared in a move.)
Schmitz's work is not normally though of as "hard" SF, but is strongly recommended.
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Dennis