“If
people ask me for the ingredients of success, I say one is talent, two is
stubbornness or determination, and third is sheer luck. You have to have two
out of the three. Any two will probably do.” – Fred Saberhagen
Born
on this day in 1930, Saberhagen wrote science fiction and fantasy, and is most
famous for his Berserker series of short stories and novels. He also was one of the first writers to put
together a series of vampire novels in which the vampires (including the famous
Dracula) are the “good guys.” “I used the
same tools that make any writer good,” he said, “plus a cheerful willingness to
suspend belief.”
A native
of Chicago and a Korean War veteran, Saberhagen went to work for Motorola after
the war and where he was at when he started writing fiction seriously at the
age of about 30. His first
novel The Golden People came out in 1964 following a series of successes
with magazine articles and short stories.
He said he was “filled with ideas” and just felt the urge to write every
day. “Ideas are
everywhere,” he said. “It's the paperwork, that is, sitting down and
thinking them into a coherent story, trying to find just the right words that
can, and usually does, get to be a writer’s labor.”
Still writing “serious science,” too, he served
as editor and writer for all Chemistry articles in the Encyclopædia
Britannica from the late 1960s through
the mid-‘70s. But, from that point until his death in 2007
he only wrote science fiction.
As for
advice to aspiring science fiction writers, he said, “The advice would be the
same as for any kind of fiction. Keep
writing, and keep sending things out, not to friends and relatives, but to
people who have the power to buy. A lot of additional, useful tips could be
added, but this is fundamental.”
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