Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N Part Twenty Two: Frederick Saberhagen

This is an ongoing sporadic series, in which I explore classic fantasy and science fiction works. Appendix N is the bibliography of Gary Gygax's original Dungeon Masters Guide, and lists a range of classic SF and fantasy authors that influenced his interest in the fantastical. See the first part of this series for more information.

Frederick Saberhagen

The first thing I needed to get straight concerning Saberhagen is: how is his name supposed to be pronounced? Which A’s are long and which are short. Turns out both are long – “Say-ber-hay-gun”. Glad I sorted that out.

Saberhagen was born in Chicago, but later moved to Albuquerque (with or without taking a left turn is uncertain). He served in the Korean War and began writing while working as an electronic technician for the Motorola Corporation. Although he’s probably best known for the Berserker series of science fiction novels, and perhaps the Swords series as well, these are not the ones given in Appendix N. Compared to many of the Appendix N authors, his life seems to have been largely drama free.

The Empire Of The East

The recommendations in the Appendices for Saberhagen are a little bit odd. Appendix N recommends The Changeling Earth, while Appendix E recommends The Changeling Earth and The Broken Lands. Now, The Broken Lands is Book One of the Empire of the East trilogy, and it turns out that The Changeling Earth is Book Three, also known as Ardneh’s World. So it took a bit of detective work to figure them out. And, I’ve no idea why the middle book (The Black Mountains) is not recommended so I decided to read that as well, because, well, it would be odd otherwise.

The Broken Lands

The Empire of the East is a despotic and cruel polity that forms the antagonist throughout the trilogy, which sees gradually higher and higher functionaries as the main foe. We are shown this casual cruelty in the opening chapter as the potentate Ekuman has an old man tortured for information. Ekuman is concerned about a mysterious figure known as Ardneh who is prominent among the scattered rebels that oppose his rule, not least because he realises from an old document that Ardneh and Ekuman are the reverse of Indra and the demon Namuci. Indra, that is, who is the Hindu god of thunder, who rides a mythical beast called The Elephant.

We switch to the young man Rolf, who is sort of the protagonist in this saga, who returns to find his family killed by Ekuman’s forces. Which made me realise that despite the absolute Joseph Campbell nature of this, the only other time (so far) that this has happened in the Appendix N stories were in Andrew Offutt’s War of the Gods on Earth series, which I read off my own back rather than as a recommendation. Most of the other heroes spring fully formed and have little to no tragic backstory.

So with Rolf we get a kind of heroes journey as he ends up joining the rebels including martial artist Mewick, reluctant leader Thomas, and overweight wizard Loford. The rebels are aided by talking giant owls, who oppose the flying reptiles of the Empire when they can (but the birds are nocturnal, the reptiles diurnal). Eventually Rolf discovers the mythical Elephant, or rather an ancient technological device emblazoned with an elephant logo, which is actually a tank.

And so we get the gist of Saberhagen’s setting – ancient technology risen to mystic levels, while magic of a sort raises elementals and demons that are as hazardous to the summoner as they are to their enemies.

The Black Mountains

At the end of the previous book, an Imperial satrap called Chup is heavily wounded and his wife Charmian, daughter of Ekuman, escapes the destruction of her father’s fortress. Chup here is healed of his wounds and tricks Rolf into helping him escape, but then also saves Rolf from Imperial soldiers.

The rebels have grown in strength, and now they threaten Som The Dead, the undying Lord of the Black Mountains and master of the demon lord Zapranoth. We follow Rolf and the magician Grey as they use a Djinn of Technology to create a fleet of balloons in order to launch a beachhead against Som’s fortress, we follow Chup as he negotiates the treacherous politics of the Empire, and this time the technology comes in the form of the Valkyries, medi-vac helicopter drones that carry wounded men away to a bear-like being known as Lord Draffutt who heals them with a strange pool of healing liquid, even able to restore people from beheading. It’s suggested that Draffutt once was a simple beast (maybe a loyal dog) that was altered long ago.

I once read of a rule of writing trilogies – that each volume needs a plotline that resolves in that volume, one that resolves in the following volume, and one that resolves in the final one, so there should be roughly three plots running through each. The threat of the Empire is the three-volume thread, as is the mystery of Ardneh. This volume resolves the plot of Rolf’s missing sister Lisa set up in the previous one. What it sets up to carry over remains to be seen, of indeed it does. There are several unresolved elements.

Ardneh’s Word/The Changeling Earth

Some of the side characters in Saberhagen’s story get dropped – we don’t see or hear of Rolf’s foster sister Lisa again, despite her having a useful role in the last book in defeating the demon lord Zapronoth. We do, however, get more Rolf, Chup and Charmian, and a bit of Mewick. The reluctant leader Thomas makes a brief cameo offscreen, and we get a new character in the form of Charmian’s cursed serving maid Catherine.

The story reaches its climax, and we, via Rolf, learn of the secret of Ardneh and why the world is how it is. Ardneh is a machine intelligence designed to restore the world in case of its destruction in a nuclear war. The war is largely averted by the use of a technology that causes The Change; much like Lin Carter’s Gondwane epic, the laws of physics are altered, but less whimsically. The devices that bring about The Change cause nuclear warheads to cease to function, but also allow entities such as elementals and demons to appear, and one such demon, the most terrible and powerful of them all, is formed from a detonating nuclear warhead that is caught between two competing waves of Change, becoming the monstrous Orcus.

We also meet John Ominor, Emperor of the East, as he casually has a man impaled for his amusement. Ominor is responsible for caging Orcus, and much of the story is about how the evil bring about their own destruction. There are ties back to Draffutt and the healing pools of the last books, other preparations that were set up as the same time as Ardneh in order to aid recovery after the war (very Foundation, come to think of it).

Saberhagen allows for just enough setbacks and danger that you are never quite sure if the good guys will prevail or not, compared to many in this series where you know that they will. His characters are often a bit undeveloped – the most interesting, despite Rolf’s initial hero’s journey introduction, are the love-hate couple of Chup and Charmian, each seeking to destroy the other but relenting at the last minute, held together by ties that they desperately resist. Saberhagen has a nice balance between clear and direct writing but also evoking a sense of wonder and mystery around the magical elements – when the wizard Wood, for example, is attempting to sacrifice Chup as a means to loosen the bonds that hold Orcus, he envisions it as lubricating the lock and hinges on Orcus’ cell using the substrate of Chup’s life.

Inspirations

Of all the magic-tech settings so far, this one I think has the best balance, and a nice in-universe explanation, and the magic remains nicely magical (and a little chaotic) rather than simply being psychic powers. There are a few things that could be lifted into a game, especially the nature of Orcus. This is not, I think, the origins of D&D Orcus since the name goes back further than that (Orcus and Demogorgon get a mention in Paradise Lost, for example). It may be the origins of intelligent talking giant owls in D&D, however.  Beyond that, I don’t recall anything that seemed like a direct inspiration, but you could easily take some of the spells, magic items, and technological items and insert them into a D&D game. A useful DM tip, for example is the fact that Elephant’s weapon systems are no longer operative, so it becomes more like a fancy battering ram. Technological elements can have whatever in-built limitations the DM desires.