Saberhagen, Fred 1930-2007 (Fred T. Saberhagen, Fred Thomas Saberhagen, Frederick Thomas Saberhagen)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born May 18, 1930, in Chicago, IL; died of prostate cancer, June 29, 2007, in Albuquerque, NM. Science fiction and fantasy writer. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Saberhagen worked by day as an electronics technician in Chicago, while at night his imagination roamed free. He published his first science fiction novel in 1964 and his first short-story collection in 1965, but it was his "Berserker" series, launched with an eponymous short-story collection in 1967, that determined his future. Overall Saberhagen published dozens of science fiction, fantasy, and quasi-horror titles, most often grouped into series. "Berserker" introduced a fleet of giant, computer-automated warships from outer space, determined to conquer the universe by destroying all organic life forms. The theme of the series was complex and highly developed enough to spawn more than a dozen successful sequels over nearly forty years. Critics routinely praised the author for action-packed, philosophical— even mystical—adventures, populated by aliens whose "characters" were as sharply defined as those of their human opponents. Another popular series was Saberhagen's "Dracula" books, a collection of at least eight titles, published between 1975 and 1994, in which Saberhagen looked at the classical vampire myth from the point of view of the count himself. He also used this device in novels about Frankenstein, King Arthur, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, and other historical and literary topics. The author's re-creation of historical events and settings earned him substantial praise from the critics, especially reviewers of the novel Merlin's Bones. The "Swords" trilogy and "Lost Swords" series were also well received. There are twelve swords, according to Saberhagen's premise, each endowed with a single supernatural attribute: woundhealer, stonecutter, farslayer, and so forth. Together they are supposed to possess the power to destroy the gods who made them. The series offered enough variety, in Saberhagen's hands, to generate at least a dozen stories, if only the author had lived long enough to write them all. Saberhagen's other series include "Empire of the East," a trilogy published between 1967 and 1973 and supplemented by a final volume, Ardneh's Sword, published in 2006; and the "Books of the Gods" series, offering up stories of Apollo, Hercules, and other giants of myth, published between 1997 and 2002. Saberhagen also published a number of titles that stand alone.

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New York Times, July 9, 2007, p. A17.