Description: Hardcover. 8vo. Chilton Books, Philadelphia & NY, 1965. 159 pages. First Edition/First Printing. DJ has light shelf-wear present to the DJ extremities. No ownership marks present. Text is clean and free of marks, binding tight and solid, boards clean with no wear present. James Henry Schmitz (October 15, 1911 – April 18, 1981) was an American science fiction (SF) writer born in Hamburg, Germany of American parents. Schmitz is best known as a writer of "space opera", and for strong female characters (such as Telzey Amberdon and Trigger Argee) who didn't conform to the damsel in distress stereotype typical of science fiction during the time he was writing. James Schmitz 1st Ed A Nice Day For Screaming Other Tales From The Hub HC w/DJ Click images to enlarge Description Up For Sale Today is A Nice Day For Screaming And Other Tales Of The Hub by James H. Schmitz Hardcover. 8vo. Chilton Books, Philadelphia & NY, 1965. 159 pages. First Edition/First Printing. DJ has light shelf-wear present to the DJ extremities. Bound in cloth with titles present to the spine. Boards have light wear present to the extremities of the boards. No ownership marks present. Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid A Nice Day for Screaming and Other Tales of the Hub (1965) is a collection of a half-dozen stories by James H. Schmitz. Each story is said to depict events occuring on a single day in the center of the galaxy in the year 3500 A.D. I doubt if the stories were originally written according to this plan, but it is not a bad unifying idea for a collection. Magazine publications spanned from 1961 through 1965. One story was published in Amazing, while the other five are from Analog. Five of the stories are well-crafted entertainments, but the sixth is something special. FROM WIKIPEDIA: James Henry Schmitz (October 15, 1911 – April 18, 1981) was an American science fiction (SF) writer born in Hamburg, Germany of American parents. Schmitz wrote mostly short stories, which sold chiefly to Astounding Science-Fiction, which later became Analog Science Fiction and Fact, and to Galaxy Science Fiction. Gale Biography in Context called him "a craftsmanlike writer who was a steady contributor to science fiction magazines for over 20 years." Schmitz is best known as a writer of "space opera", and for strong female characters (such as Telzey Amberdon and Trigger Argee) who didn't conform to the damsel in distress stereotype typical of science fiction during the time he was writing. His first published story was "Greenface", published in August 1943 in Unknown. Most of his works are part of the "Hub" series, though his best known novel (Gardner Dozois, long-time editor of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, said it "is usually thought of as Schmitz's best work") is The Witches of Karres, concerning juvenile "witches" with genuine psi-powers and their escape from slavery. Karres was nominated for a Hugo Award. During recent years, his novels and short stories have been republished by Baen Books, edited and with notes by Eric Flint. In an introductory essay comparing Schmitz with contemporary author A. E. van Vogt, Dozois wrote, "Although he lacked van Vogt's paranoid tension and ornately Byzantine plots, the late James H. Schmitz was considerably better at people than van Vogt was, crafting even his villains as complicated, psychologically complex, and non-stereotypical characters, full of surprising quirks and behaviors that you didn't see in a lot of other Space Adventure stuff." And his universes, although they come with their own share of monsters and sinister menaces, seem as if they would be more pleasant places to live than most Space Opera universes, places where you could have a viable, ordinary, and decent life once the plot was through requiring you to battle for existence against some Dread Implacable Monster; Schmitz even has sympathy for the monsters, who are often seen in the end not to be monsters at all, but rather creatures with agendas and priorities and points-of-view of their own, from which perspectives their actions are justified and sometimes admirable—a tolerant attitude almost unique amidst the Space Adventure tales of the day, most of which werre frothingly xenophobic. From 1949, when "Agent of Vega" appeared in ASF as the first of 4 stories later assembled as Agent of Vega (coll[ection] of linked stories 1960), he regularly produced the kind of tale 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. 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. 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. Greg Fowlkes, Editor-In-Chief of Resurrected Press, adds, "During the 50's and 60's "Space Opera" and James H. Schmitz were almost synonymous. He was famous for his tales of interstellar secret agents and galactic criminals, and particularly for heroines such as Telzey Amberdon and Trigger Argee. Many of these characters had enhanced "psionic" powers that let them use their minds as well as their weapons to foil their enemies. All of them were resourceful in the best heroic tradition." In an essay in the anthology The Good Old Stuff (1998), Dozois laments that the book Agent of Vega is "long out-of-print, alas, but one which – if you can find it – delivers as pure a jolt of Widescreen Space Opera Sense of wonder as can be found anywhere." However, the website Free Speculative Fiction Online freely offers Agent of Vega, along with several of Schmitz's other stories, including "Greenface", "Balanced Ecology," "Lion Loose," "Goblin Night", and many more. Schmitz wrote the introduction to the collection The Universes of E. E. Smith. Prefacing the Schmitz tale "The Second Night of Summer", in which humans on the planet Noorhut face an attack from aliens and are, unbeknownst to themselves, saved by the actions of a single woman with psi powers, Granny Wannattel, with the sole help of a friendly alien she calls her pony, Dozois wrote, Schmitz was decades ahead of the curve in his portrayal of female characters—years before the Women's Movement of the '70s would come along to raise the consciousness of SF writers (or attempt to), Schmitz was not only frequently using women as the heroines in swashbuckling tales of interplanetary adventure—itself almost unheard of at the time—but he was also treating them as the total equal of the male characters, every bit as competent and brave and smart (and ruthless, when needs be), without saddling them with any of the "female weaknesses"—like an inclination to faint or cower under extreme duress, and/or seek protection behind the muscular frame of the Tough Male Hero) that would mar the characterization of women by some writers for years to come. (The Schmitz Woman, for instance, is every bit as tough and competent as the Heinlein Woman—who, to be fair, isn't prone to fainting in a crisis either—but without her annoying tendency to think that nothing in the universe is as important as marrying Her Man and settling down to have as many babies as possible.) With his popular equality-between-the-sexes fiction, Schmitz eased the way for later writers such as Joanna Russ, James Tiptree, Jr., Kit Reed, Connie Willis, Sheri S. Tepper, and other science fiction authors who used female protagonists and feminine point-of-view more than half the time. Of "The Second Night of Summer", Dozois went on to write, "the hero of the piece is not only a woman, but an old woman ... a choice that most adventure writers wouldn't even make now, in 1998, let alone in 1950, which is when Schmitz made it!" Mercedes Lackey places her first meeting with science fiction at age 10 or 11, when she happened to pick up her father's copy of H. 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Price: 400 USD
Location: Charlottesville, Virginia
End Time: 2024-12-22T14:38:26.000Z
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Author: James Schmitz
Binding: Hardcover w/Jacket
Character Family: A Nice Day for Screaming
Country/Region of Manufacture: United States
Language: English
Original/Facsimile: Original
Place of Publication: Philadelphia & NY
Publisher: Chilton Books
Region: North America
Special Attributes: 1st Edition, Dust Jacket, The Hub Series; Science Fiction, Science Fiction Short Stories, A Nice Day for Screaming
Subject: Literature & Fiction
Topic: Science Fiction
Year Printed: 1965
Origin: American