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.
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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
Membership was later extended on an invitational basis to selected other living heroic fantasy authors, including
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." [1 ].
An early anthology including works by members of the group was Swords Against Tomorrow, edited by Robert Hoskins (Signet Books, 1970), which featured pieces by four of the eight members at the time. Also significant was the series of sword and sorcery anthologies edited by L. Sprague de Camp for Pyramid Books and Putnam from 1963-1970, which featured SAGA members' writings along with those of other (usually earlier) fantasists. Of particular note is The Spell of Seven (Pyramid Books, 1965), in which four of the seven pieces were from members. 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.
The works of SAGA as a group were showcased in the following anthologies: