Fred Saberhagen Is Gone

I've written a more formal obituary for ComicMix, but I feel like there are things I haven't said.

Saberhagen was one of my very favorite writers when I was a teenager, and I feel now like I've neglected him since then, maybe because he wasn't as "cutting-edge" as other writers I liked. (Saberhagen was always good, but never hip.) I loved the Berserker books to death, and Empire of the East, and Coils, and especially The Veils of Azlaroc, which is a book I think about (mostly that amazing, wonderful concretized metaphor at its heart) once a week or so even now.

And how can you not love a guy who says "I have had no prophetic dreams about breakfast this morning"? That is a clever man, and a class act. I never managed to meet Fred -- I was very rarely in his part of the country, and I don't think he came East much -- so now I never will.

Sorry I never met you, Fred. And sorry I wasn't out there talking up your books as much as I probably should have been.