Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA)

The Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA) is the name of a literary group of American fantasy authors active from the 1960s through the 1980s, noted for their contributions to the fantasy subgenre of heroic fantasy or "Sword and Sorcery." The group served as a vehicle for popularizing and promoting the respectability of the subgenre.

Membership

Its name notwithstanding, membership was open to women as well as men. Early members were often more celebrated for their science fiction writings than their fantasy, as fantasy as a distinct literary genre was then hardly recognized. Entry to SAGA, however, depended solely on their fantasy credentials. The initial members and the works that formed the basis of their membership were
* Poul Anderson (for his novels "The Broken Sword" and "Three Hearts and Three Lions")
* Lin Carter (for his "Thongor" series)
* L. Sprague de Camp (for his Pusadian tales and his work in popularizing Robert E. Howard's "Conan")
* John Jakes (for his tales of "Brak the Barbarian")
* Fritz Leiber (for his "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" series)
* Michael Moorcock (for his tales of "Elric of Melniboné")
* Andre Norton (for her "Witch World" series)
* Jack Vance (for his "Dying Earth" stories).

Membership was later extended on an invitational basis to selected other living heroic fantasy authors, including
* C. J. Cherryh (for her "Morgaine" novels)
* Diane Duane (for her novel "The Door into Fire")
* Craig Shaw Gardner (for his tales of "Ebenezum")
* Avram Davidson (for "The Phoenix and the Mirror" and numerous other works)
* Katherine Kurtz (for her "Deryni" novels)
* Tanith Lee (for her "Birthgrave" series)
* Roger Zelazny (for his "Dilvish" stories and "Amber" series).

History

According to Lin Carter, the guiding force behind the group, SAGA started out on an ad hoc basis, its main activities being to get together for drinks at science fiction conventions and bestow pompously complicated titles on each other (Michael Moorcock, for example, was styled "Veiled Thaumaturge of the Mauve Barbarians of Ningg"). The group remained fairly informal, with few expectations of its members; Moorcock in particular has noted he "wasn’t really an active member." [http://www.multiverse.org/article1408.html [1] ] .

Later SAGA showcased its members’ work through the series of "Flashing Swords!" anthologies edited by Carter and published by Dell Books from 1973-1981.

Carter and SAGA also sponsored The Gandalf Award (named after Gandalf the wizard, who appears in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien) from 1974-1981, which was administered by the Worldcon Committee and awarded by the Hugo nomination and voting system. The Gandalf consisted of the Gandalf Grand Master Award, presented to individuals for outstanding lifetime achievement or significant bodies of work in heroic fantasy, and the Gandalf Book Length Fantasy Award. The latter award was presented only in 1978 and 1979, while the former was awarded in all years.

With the collapse of Carter’s health in the 1980s the anthology series, the Gandalf award, and likely SAGA itself all went into abeyance.

Bibliography

The works of SAGA as a group were showcased in the following anthologies:

# "Flashing Swords! #1", Lin Carter, ed. (1973)
# "Flashing Swords! #2", Lin Carter, ed. (1975)
# "", Lin Carter, ed. (1976)
# "", Lin Carter, ed. (1977)
# "", Lin Carter, ed. (1981)

ee also

*Flashing Swords!
*Gandalf Award