Karl Edward Wagner (1945 - 1994)
Karl Edward Wagner was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. He earned a degree in history from Kenyon College in 1967 and a degree in psychiatry from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Despite this training, Wagner disliked the medical profession and abandoned it upon establishing himself as a writer; his disillusionment with the medical profession can be seen in the stories 'The Fourth Seal' and 'Into Whose Hands'. As well as being a multi-award winning author, Wagner was a highly successful editor and publisher of horror, science fiction and heroic fantasy, creating a definitive three-volume set of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian fiction, and edited the long-running and genre-defining Year's Best Horror and Fantasy series. Wagner is perhaps best known for his creation of the long-running series of stories featuring Kane, the Mystic Swordsman. He died in 1994.