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View Full Version : RIP: Fred Saberhagen


ShannonA
07-03-2007, 06:15 PM
I just got word that Fred Saberhagen died a couple of days ago. I wouldn't have guessed he was an older writer, though that's apparently because he didn't start until his mid-30s; he was 77.

I'll remember Saberhagen best for his Book of Swords trilogy and the Books of Lost Swords that followed. There was something about this idea of a dozen magical artifacts, occasionally changing hands, and affecting the face of the world as they did that was intriguing and interesting.

I never got into his Berserker books for which he's probably better known. Perhaps because there were so many that I didn't know what to read when, perhaps because the basic premise just didn't catch me.

The premise was, of course, about killer robot spaceships. It's been overplayed since, but Saberhagen was there first.

In honor of Fred I'm going to make sure the books of his that I own go into the index in the next few days.

Anaka
07-03-2007, 06:59 PM
That's too bad. It seems like we're losing a lot of the good ones lately.

Ineti
07-04-2007, 04:37 AM
I love his Swords series. I picked up the first book in his Empire of the East series this evening. I figure the best way to remember him is to read the books he left for us to enjoy.

Brad Ellison
07-05-2007, 02:34 PM
I'm a huge fan of his Dracula novels. He took Stoker and history, combined them, put a slightly different slant on things and ended up with one of the most unique and awesome vampire heroes ever.

From the Dracula books, I started reading the Berserker stories. The best of those, especially the ones featuring Johann Karlsen, rank with the best space opera ever.

He's the guy who had Dracula and Sherlock Holmes team up to solve the case of the Giant Rat of Sumatra. He once turned the Battle of Midway into a Berserker story. One of the swords novels featured Holmes and Watson, thinly disguised, in a fantasy setting. The man had a knack for writing stories with ideas that made me say "goddamn I wish I'd thought of that first."

I'm sad now.

Quasar
07-08-2007, 04:05 AM
Yeah. The Swords series is what I remember him from too. Loved those.