Fred Saberhagen (1930-2007)

It is with sadness that I pass word that Fred Saberhagen died on Friday, June 29, 2007, after a long illness.

He had a long and distinguished career in the fields of science fiction, fantasy and horror. He wrote tales of Dracula and Sherlock Holmes.

He was probably best identified, for me, with the tales of the Berserkers, implacable alien machines bent on destroying organic life (including us).

Wikipedia entry and official site.

Addendum: The family will announce a date for a Memorial Celebration later this year. In lieu of flowers donations would be appreciated to any of the following: Doctors without Borders, Catholic Relief Services, SFWA Emergency Medical Fund, or John XXIII Catholic Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico. If you would like to send an email message to the family please use the link to contact me, and I will pass your words on.

Here's an excerpt from my favorite Berserker tale:

The Face of the Deep

He rode in a crystalline bubble of a launch about twelve feet in diameter. The fortunes of war had dropped him here, halfway down the steepest gravitational hill in the known universe.

At the unseeable bottom of this hill lay a sun so massive that not a quantum of light could escape it with a visible wavelength. In less than a minute he and his raindrop of a boat had fallen here, some unmeasurable distance out of normal space, trying to escape an enemy. Karlsen had spent that falling minute in prayer, achieving something like calm, considering himself already dead.

But after that minute he was suddenly no longer falling. He seemed to have entered an orbit—an orbit that no man had ever traveled before, amid sights no eyes had ever seen.

He rode above a thunderstorm at war with a sunset—a ceaseless, soundless turmoil of fantastic clouds that filled half the sky like a nearby planet. But this cloud-mass was immeasurably bigger than any planet, vaster even than most giant stars. Its core and its cause was a hypermassive sun a billion times the weight of Sol.

The clouds were interstellar dust swept up by the pull of the hypermass; as they fell they built up electrical static which was discharged in almost continuous lightning. Karlsen saw as blue-white the nearer flashes, and those ahead of him as he rode. But most of the flashes, like most of the clouds, were far below him, and so most of his light was sullen red, wearied by climbing just a section of this gravity cliff.

The whole tale is available online, here. Wonderful descriptions, wonderful tale.

Addendum (ongoing): Walter Jon Williams remembers Fred Saberhagen. Las Cruces Sun-News (New Mexico) obituary.

Posted by Fred Kiesche at July 2, 2007 03:00 PM