Telzey Amberdon is a fictional character in a series of science fiction short stories and two short novels by American writer James H. Schmitz, taking place in his "Federation of the Hub" fictional universe, presumably in the mid-4th millennium. She is introduced as a fifteen-year-old genius, a first-year law student, living on the human-settled planet Orado (whose name comes from Eldorado by a pun). Through interaction with alien psychic animals on a resort planet, she discovers that she has psychic powers. Upon her return to her home planet, her abilities are recognized by a mechanism at the spaceport reentry gate and she is effectively made an agent of the Psychology Service. A major pattern in the stories is the development of her powers. Eventually she teams up with the redheaded secret agent Trigger Argee. The series ends inconclusively; in the last story, a villain makes a duplicate of her, who gains a separate identity and name.
The series features one of the few imaginings (the "ComWeb") of the internet before its existence—although the system takes a half-hour to download a document of modest length.
The Telzey stories were originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact between 1962 and 1972. The series was quite popular, often getting the cover illustration. Most of it was assembled in three books: The Universe Against Her (short story collection, Ace Books 1964), The Lion Game (short novel) and The Telzey Toy (short story collection) (both DAW Books 1973).
In 2000 all of the Telzey and Trigger stories were republished by Baen Books, "edited and compiled" by Eric Flint into three collections with some connecting material by Flint: Telzey Amberdon, T'nT: Telzey & Trigger (where both heroes feature) and Trigger & Friends (dated January 2001, for Trigger only). The books remained in print as of June 2007. They were made available for download at Baen Free Library in 2005, but are no longer downloadable in 2016.
| Title | Analog issue | Collected in | |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Novice" | June 1962 | The Universe Against Her | Telzey Amberdon |
| "Undercurrrents" | June/May 1964 | ||
| "Goblin Night" | April 1964 | The Lion Game | |
| "Sleep No More" | August 1965 1965 | ||
| "Resident Witch" | May 1970 | The Telzey Toy | T'nT: Telzey & Trigger |
| "Compulsion" | June 1970 | ||
| "The Telzey Toy" | January 1971 | T'n'T (as "Ti's Toys") | |
| "Company Planet" | May 1971 | T'nT: Telzey & Trigger | |
| "Glory Day" | June 1971 | ||
| "Poltergeist" | July 1971 | Telzey Amberdon | |
| "The Lion Game" | August 1971 | The Lion Game | |
| "Child of the Gods" | March 1972 | T'nT: Telzey & Trigger | |
| "The Symbiotes" | September 1972 | ||
T'nT: Telzey & Trigger includes as Prologue to "Compulsion" the Trigger-only story "The Pork Chop Tree", originally published in February 1965 Analog.
"Telzey Amberdon, age 15, is a genius, a law student, and a psi supergirl who can save the Federation in a fortnight, and still make it home in time for her sixteenth birthday party."
