title: Dave Freer
text: # Dave Freer
  
  Dave Freer is a South African–born, Australian-based, award-winning 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 (his last choice). "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 (through no fault of his own) and he started to write. Six years and 74 rejections later, his first book (The Forlorn) was published by Baen Books.
  
  Dave is an ardent rock-climber and has opened many routes near Morgan's Bay in the Eastern Cape (South Africa). 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.
  
  In 2022 he published Cloud-Castles, which won a Prometheus Award.
  
  