Dave Freer
Dave Freer is a South African-born, Australian-based science fiction author writing mostly humorous or alternate history novels.
Biography
Freer was born and educated in South Africa. He grew up on the edge of a city next to a ~500-acre nature preserve of coastal bush. His father crewed on a commercial fishing boat on weekends. After a stint in boarding school, where he learned "Smoking, strong drink and pursuit of wild women", he was conscripted at the age of 17 into the South African Defence Force and sent to the Angolan border as a medic. "My choices were five years in jail, leave the country, or go in for a year. I'm a strong swimmer, but the Atlantic seemed too large...." The year stretched into two. Afterwards he married, went to university and became an ichthyologist, then worked as research officer for the Western Cape commercial shark fishery. To make ends meet, and alleviate writing "amazingly dull" papers on fishery matters, he moonlighted as a commercial diver for a mussel farm. He managed a fish farm for a time, but the farm was forced to close and he started to write. Six years and 74 rejections later, his first book was published by Baen Books.Dave is an ardent rock-climber and has opened many routes near Morgan's Bay in the Eastern Cape. He is also an accomplished chef, winetaster, and also enjoys fly-fishing and diving.
For many years he lived near Mount West in the Kwa-Zulu Natal Midlands with his wife, Barbara, and two sons, Paddy and James. In early 2010 he and his wife emigrated to Flinders Island, in the Australian state of Tasmania. He and his family are now naturalized Australians.
Dave has his own forum at Baen's Bar, a website, and a blog about "the Freer Family's adventures and misadventures emigrating to Flinders Island".
His literary agent in the United States is the OnyxHawk agency.
Awards
His 2008 Novel, Slow Train to Arcturus, won the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novel in the Preditors & Editors Readers Poll 2008.Drowned World
This young adult steampunk is set in an alternate 1970s earth where one scientific discovery was never made leading to massive global warming.- Cuttlefish launches the series and was released 07/12 by Pyr.
- Steam Mole is the follow-up novel revolving around the same cast 12/12 by Pyr.
Assiti Shards Universe
163x series
- A Lineman for the Country novella in Ring of Fire
- Diving Belle novella in Ring of Fire II with Gunnar Dahlin
Dragon's Ring series
- Dragon's Ring
- Dog and Dragon
Fish Story series
- Fish Story, Episode 1 with Andrew Dennis and Eric Flint
- Fish Story, Episode 2 with Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis
- Fish Story, Episode 3 with Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis
- Fish Story, Episode 4 with Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis
- Fish Story, Episode 5 with Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis
- Fish Story, Episode 6 with Andrew Dennis and Eric Flint
- Fish Story, Episode 7: We're Going to Need a Bigger Pub with Andrew Dennis and Eric Flint
- Fish Story, Episode 8: The Yellow Sub... with Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis
- Fish Story, Episode Nine: Love at First Bite with Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis
- Fish Story, Episode Ten: The A-Team with Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis
- Fish Story, Episode Eleven, The End of Mankind with Andrew Dennis and Eric Flint
- Fish Story, Episode Twelve: Make It More Complicated with Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis
- Fish Story, Episode Thirteen, The Plot to End the Universe with Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis
- Fish Story, Episode Fourteen, Punctiphobia: An Inordinate Fear of Spots with Andrew Dennis and Eric Flint
- Fish Story, Episode Fifteen: They Came from Beyond with Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis
Heirs of Alexandria series
Note: a significant amount of text, and a couple of major characters in this work, are adapted from stories written by Lackey in the Merovingen Nights shared universe series. That series was started by C. J. Cherryh in her novel Angel with the Sword.
- The Shadow of the Lion
- This Rough Magic
- A Mankind Witch
- Much Fall of Blood
- Burdens of the Dead
Karres series
- The Wizard of Karres with Eric Flint and Mercedes Lackey
- The Sorceress of Karres with Eric Flint
Pyramid series
- Pyramid Scheme
- Pyramid Power
Rat, Bats and Vats series
- Rats, Bats and Vats
- The Rats, the Bats and the Ugly
Novels and novellas
- The Forlorn
- Crawlspace, military/social satire, with Eric Flint in JBU1.6 and in Best of JBU 2007
- Slow Train to Arcturus, with Eric Flint , winner of the Preditors & Editors Readers Poll 2008 for SF/F novel
- Stardogs
- Joy Cometh With The Mourning , a non-science fiction mystery.
- Changeling's Island
- Tom
Short stories
- "Genie out of the Vat", military SF, in Adventures in Far Futures, edited by T. Weisskoph
- "The Red Fiddler", with Eric Flint, in Bedlam's Edge Techno for Baen, 2005), edited by Rosemary Edghill and Mercedes Lackey.
- "Candyblossom" in Probe , in JBU Volume 1.1, and in The Best of JBU 2006
- "The Tinta Falls Catfish", with Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis, in JBU Volume 1.2
- "Flashing the Loch Ness Monster", with Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis, in JBU Volume 1.3
- "Thin Ice" in JBU Volume 2.1
- "The Yellow Submarine", with Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis, in JBU Volume 2.2
- "Love at First Bite", with Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis, in JBU Volume 2.3
- "Jack October" in Fates Fantastic Anthology, edited by Dan Hoyt
- "The End of Mankind", with Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis, in JBU Volume 2.5
- Regency Fay in Something Magic This Way Comes, edited by Sarah Hoyt
- "Boys" in The Future We Never Had, edited by Rebecca Lickiss
- "Wetware 2.0" in Transhuman, and in Approaching the Singularity Anthology, edited by Mark Van Name and Toni Weisskoph
- "The Witch's Murder", with Eric Flint, in The Dragon Done It, edited by Mike Resnick and Eric Flint
- "The War, Me, Seventeen Million Dollars, and a Stripper", in Front Lines, edited by Denise Little
- "The Poet Gnawreate and the Taxman" in Better Off Undead, edited by Daniel M. Hoyt
- "Pirates of the Suara Sea", with Eric Flint, in Black Sails, Fast Ships, edited by Jeff Vander Meer
- "Soot" in Witch Way to the Mall, edited by Esther Friesner
- "Wolfy Ladies" in Strip Mauled, edited by Esther Friesner
- "If Music be the Food of Love" in Fangs for the Mammaries, edited by Esther Friesner
- "Pinked Djinn" in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine 42, edited by Edwina Harvey
- "Neither Sleet, Nor Snow, Nor Alien Monsters" in Citizens, edited by John Ringo and Brian M. Thompson
- "Like Ghost Cat and a Dragon's Dog" in Free Short Stories 2012.