History
According to Lin Carter, the guiding force behind the group, SAGA began on the ad hoc basis of gathering for drinks at science fiction conventions and bestowing pompous, 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 has noted he "wasn't really an active member."
An early anthology including works by members of the group was Swords Against Tomorrow (Signet Books, 1970), a paperback original edited by Robert Hoskins. It comprised one novella and three novelettes by SAGA members and a novelette by Leigh Brackett. Several sword and sorcery anthologies edited by L. Sprague de Camp for Pyramid Books and Putnam from 1963 to 1970 featured stories by SAGA members along with other, usually earlier fantasists. Most noteworthy may be The Spell of Seven (Pyramid Books, 1965), in which four of the seven pieces were by members. SAGA later showcased the work of its members in the Flashing Swords! anthology series edited by Carter and published by Dell Books from 1973 to 1981.
Carter and SAGA created and sponsored the Gandalf Awards administered by the annual World Science Fiction Convention according to the Hugo Award procedures. From 1974 to 1981 the Gandalf Grand Master Award was annually presented to one person for life achievement in high fantasy writing. (The first recognized J. R. R. Tolkien, deceased that year, and SAGA members won the next four, and the last three winners never became members.) The Gandalf Award for Book-Length Fantasy was conferred in 1978 and 1979 upon one book published during the previous calendar year. It was dropped by Worldcon because it partly duplicated the Hugo Award for Best Novel.
With the collapse of Carter’s health in the 1980s the anthology series, the Gandalf award, and likely SAGA itself all went into abeyance.
Read more about this topic: Swordsmen And Sorcerers' Guild Of America
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“It is my conviction that women are the natural orators of the race.”
—Eliza Archard Connor, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 9, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)