Berzerker Down

I just found out that Fred Saberhagen died on June 29. The information is a little slow filtering through the net. Bear with me as I unpack this.

Saberhagen was my first favorite author. Prior to him I had sort of grazed the science fiction shelves, picking up and reading whatever struck me as interesting. But once I clipped the Berzerker series I was hooked. I bought or borrowed everything he wrote. Some of it wasn't for me, but that was rare. He approached his characters with real humanity, and that's saying something. I'm sad I never got to meet him, but I am unimaginably grateful that I got to read him.