Fred Saberhagen
Fred Saberhagen was an American science fiction author born on May 18, 1930, in Chicago. He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1951 to 1955 and later worked as an electronic technician while pursuing his education. Saberhagen began publishing science fiction stories in 1961 and quickly gained recognition for his contributions to magazines like Galaxy. His well-known works include the "Berserker" series, which explores themes of humanity's struggle against autonomous killing machines from an interstellar war, and the "Empire of the East" trilogy, which delves into heroic fantasy.
Notably, Saberhagen's innovative approach is exemplified in "The Dracula Tape," where he reinterprets Bram Stoker's classic from Dracula's perspective, a concept that heralded a trend in revisionist vampire literature. He also ventured into diverse genres, producing works such as the "Book of Swords" trilogy and engaging in metafiction with titles like "The Holmes-Dracula File." His writing is characterized by a blend of lightheartedness and creativity, often transforming familiar narratives into new forms. Saberhagen's influence and contributions have made him a distinguished figure in the realm of speculative fiction.
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Fred Saberhagen
Author
- Born: May 18, 1930
- Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
- Died: June 29, 2007
- Place of death: Albuquerque, New Mexico
Biography
Frederick Thomas Saberhagen was born on May 18, 1930 in Chicago. He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1951 through 1955. He worked thereafter as an electronic technician for Motorola from 1956 through 1962, completing his education during the early years of that employment at Wright Junior College in Chicago. He began publishing science-fiction stories in 1961, quickly becoming a prolific contributor to Galaxy and its companion magazines; his work for these magazines included the early stories in what was to become Beserkers, an extensive series of space operas in which humankind is plagued by killing machines left over from an interstellar war. His first two novels, The Golden People and The Water of Thought, also featured problematic confrontations with aliens. In 1967, Saberhagen became an assistant editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica; the following year, he married Joan Dorothy Spicci and they later had a daughter and two sons.
While working on Britannica, Saberhagen carried the Berserker series forward and branched out into the fledgling field of heroic fantasy in the Empire of the East trilogy. However, when he left his job at the encyclopedia in 1973, his work became considerably more varied and ambitious. Specimens is another account of alien exotica, and The Veils of Azlaroc is set in a radically alien extraterrestrial environment. Love Conquers All is an ironic dystopia. His most ingenious book of the period however, was The Dracula Tape, which recounts the events of Bram Stoker’s classic novel from Dracula’s viewpoint, explaining that he was the innocent victim of van Helsing’s superstitious dread and careless medical practices. The novel anticipated the boom in revisionist vampire fiction launched the following year by Anne Rice’s similarly recorded confessional, Interview with the Vampire. The Holmes-Dracula File continued the metafictional theme; most of the later volumes in the Dracula series are conventional thrillers, but Holmes and Dracula got together again in Séance for a Vampire, and the cast of A Sharpness on the Neck includes Robespierre, Napoleon I, and the Marquis de Sade.
Saberhagen moved more explicitly into the burgeoning field of commodified fantasy in the Book of Swords trilogy and the more extensive Book of Lost Swords series, whose formularization reflects their origins as a role-playing game scenario, a fascination also exhibited in Octagon, an early account of virtual reality. His first collaboration with Roger Zelazny, Coils, is a thriller whose subject matter was rapidly overtaken by the emergence of cyberpunk fiction; his second collaboration, The Black Throne, is an enterprising homage to Edgar Allan Poe. A Century of Progress juggles alternative histories dexterously. The Frankenstein Papers was less successful as a transfiguration than The Dracula Tape but the application of a similar revisionist method to legendary and mythical materials worked well in The White Bull, the time-hopping Pyramids and After the Fact, the Arthurian fantasy Merlin’s Bones, the theriomorphic fantasy Dancing Bears, and the Book of Gods series launched with The Face of Apollo. Saberhagen’s best work combines a lighthearted breeziness with a talent for the innovative transformation of familiar materials.