He was survived by Betty Mae Chapman Schmitz, his wife. James died at the age of 69 on Apin Los Angeles, California of congestive lung failure after a five-week stay in the hospital. Tepper, Joanna Russ, Kit Reed, Connie Willis, as well as other science fiction authors that used female protagonists and feminine perspectives more than half the time.Īuthor Mercedes Lackey places her first meeting with science fiction at the age of ten or eleven, when she just happened to pick up her dad’s copy of James’ “Agent of Vega”.

Schmitz, with his popular equality-between-the-sexes style of fiction, eased the way for later authors like James Tiptree, Jr. James is best known as a writer of “space opera”, and for his strong female characters (like Trigger Argee and Telzey Amberdon) who didn’t conform to the stereotype of the “damsel in distress” that was typical of science fiction of that time period.

The novel was nominated for a Hugo Award.

Most of his works are a part of the “Hub” series, although his best known novel is “The Witches of Karres”, a non-Hub related story that concerns juvenile “witches” with genuine psi-powers and their escape from slavery. His first published story was “Greenface”, which was published in August of 1943 in Unknown. James primarily wrote stories, which he sold mainly to Astounding Science Fiction and Galaxy Science Fiction. After the war, both he and his brother-in-law managed a business which manufactured trailers until the closed up the business in the year 1949.Īfter the war’s end, he made a home for himself in California, where he would stay until he died. Schmitz, during World War II, served as an aerial photographer in the Pacific for the United States Army Air Forces. He lived in various German cities, where he worked for the International Harvester Company, until his family left in 1938 just before World War II broke out in Europe. Since he was unable to get a job because of the Great Depression, he went back to Germany so that he could work with his dad’s company. In 1930, he traveled to Chicago to attend business school, and then switched to a correspondence course in journalism. The family spent the First World War in America, then returned to Germany. He was educated at a Realgymnasium in Hamburg, and he grew up speaking both German and English. James Henry Schmitz was born Octoin Hamburg, Germany.

The witches of karres