Saberhagen, Fred (1930– )
Although many writers have written across a broad
spectrum of science fiction, fantasy, and horror,
most concentrate on one or at most two genres
and only dabble in the third. Fred Saberhagen is
one of the few who has been steadily active in all
three and is particularly well known in science fic-
tion circles for his Berserker series. He started writ-
ing in the early 1960s, producing his first fantasy
novel in 1968, The Broken Lands,the opening title
in a series that starts as science fiction set in a dis-
tant future when technology has been lost. The
two sequels, The Black Mountains (1971) and
Changeling Earth(1973), introduce magic as an al-
ternative to technology. The last novel was revised
in 1988 as Ardneh’s World.
During the 1970s Saberhagen wrote a number
of novels about Dracula, starting with The Dracula
Tape(1975), a memoir by the world’s most famous
vampire, who asserts that it was all a misunder-
standing and that he was just an innocent by-
stander. The count joins forces with Sherlock
Holmes in The Holmes Dracula File(1975) and
travels to Chicago to oppose the reborn Morgan Le
Fay in An Old Friend of the Family(1979). Al-
though the series appeared to have been discontin-
ued at this point, Saberhagen decided to add new
volumes after a lengthy gap. Dracula falls ill in A
Matter of Taste(1990) and battles an evil one of his
own kind who travels through time in A Question
of Time(1992). Dracula and Holmes are reunited
in Seance for a Vampire(1994), and Dracula must
battle his own brother in A Sharpness in the Neck
(1996). Another lapse followed, ended by A Cold-
ness in the Blood(2002), in which Dracula is caught
up in a search for mystical artifacts. Although
clearly supernatural, most of the novels in this se-
ries can be read as fantasy as well as horror.
Saberhagen began the more conventional
Swords series with The First Book of Swords
(1983), set in another world where technology has
been displaced by magic. The gods create 12 magi-
cal swords, and each title in the series follows the
history of one of the swords, ending with
Wayfinder’s Story(1992). Merlin’s Bones(1995) is
an unusual fantasy that starts in the future, with
Morgan Le Fay returning yet again, this time to
steal a time machine and return to Camelot.
Dancing Bears (1996) is a noticeable change of
pace, the story of a family of “were-bears” in pre-
revolutionary Russia. Saberhagen’s most recent
fantasy is the Book of the Gods series, which
began with The Face of Apollo(1998) and contin-
ued in Ariadne’s Web(2000), The Arms of Hercules
(2000), The God of the Golden Fleece(2001), and
Gods of Fire and Thunder(2002). The series in-
volves the Greek Gods and, in the final volume,
the Norse gods as well and often consists of
retellings of famous legends.
Saberhagen has also written a few additional
horror novels of note, most significantly Thorn
(1980), the story of a latter-day sorcerer, and Do-
minion(1982), in which Merlin is brought back to
life in the 20th century to battle ancient evil as
well as his own human shortcomings. The Franken-
stein Papers (1986) tells Mary SHELLEY’s famousS
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