Karl Edward Wagner

Karl Edward Wagner
Karl Edward Wagner at writers panel, World Fantasy Conference, Seattle, 1989.
Born	(1945-12-12)December 12, 1945 Knoxville, Tennessee, US
Died	October 14, 1994(1994-10-14) (aged 48) Chapel Hill, North Carolina, US
Nationality	American

Karl Edward Wagner (12 December 1945 – 14 October 1994) was an American writer, poet, editor and publisher of horror, science fiction, and heroic fantasy, who was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and originally trained as a psychiatrist. He wrote numerous dark fantasy and horror stories. As an editor, he created a three-volume set of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian fiction restored to its original form as written, and edited the long-running and genre-defining The Year's Best Horror Stories series for DAW Books. His Carcosa publishing company issued four volumes of the best stories by some of the major authors of the so-called Golden Age pulp magazines. He is possibly best known for his creation of a series of stories featuring the character Kane, the Mystic Swordsman.

His disillusionment with the medical profession can be detected in the stories "The Fourth Seal" and "Into Whose Hands". He described his personal philosophy as nihilistic, anarchistic and absurdist, and claimed, not entirely seriously, to be related to "an opera composer named Richard". Wagner also admired the cinema of Sam Peckinpah, stating "I worship the film The Wild Bunch".

Wagner was the fourth and youngest child of Aubrey J. Wagner and Dorothea Huber. His father was an official of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Wagner earned a history degree from Kenyon College during 1967, and a psychiatry degree from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. As noted above, he disliked the medical profession, which he abandoned upon establishing himself as a writer.