Berserker (Saberhagen)
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Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series is a space opera in which robotic self-replicating machines intend to destroy all organic life. These berserkers, a doomsday weapon left over from an interstellar war 50,000 years ago, are killer spaceships furnished with machine intelligence, operating from asteroid-sized berserker bases where they are capable of building more Berserkers and auxiliary machines. The name is a reference to human berserkers, reflecting the Berserker's violence and singleness of purpose.
The Berserker stories — many of the books are short story collections — describe humanity's fight against the berserkers. The term "humanity" refers to all sentient life in the Galaxy, emphasizing the common threat the berserkers pose toward of all forms of life. Homo sapiens, referred to as Earth-descended or ED humans, or as Solarians, are the only sentient species aggressive enough to put up a fight.
The major ally of the ED humans are the telepathic Carmpan, a subtle and mysterious species incapable of direct aggression. The first stories in the series are related by an individual Carmpan, the 3rd Historian, who seeks to chronicle life in the Galaxy and the struggle against the berserkers.
The first story, Without a Thought (1963), was basically a puzzle story where the protagonist faced a problem of simulating intelligence to fool an enemy trying to determine whether there was any conscious being present on a ship.
Saberhagen came up with the berserker as the rationale for the story on the spur of the moment, but the basic concept was so fruitful, with so many possible ramifications, that he has used it as the basis of many of his stories. A common theme in the stories is of how the apparent weaknesses and inconsistencies of living beings are actually the strengths that enable the machines' eventual defeat.
Later stories introduce goodlife, traitors or collaborators who cooperate with the berserker machines to stay alive for a while, and the qwib-qwib, an anti-berserker berserker.
Contents |
[edit] Berserker books
- Berserker (collection, 1967)
- Berserker Wars (collection, 1981)
- Berserker Blue Death (1985)
- Berserker Throne (1986)
- Berserker Base (1987)
- Ultimate Enemy (collection, 1987)
- Berserker Attack (collection, 1987) (Limited edition collection)
- Berserker Planet (1991)
- Berserker Lies (collection, 1991)
- Berserker Man (1992)
- Berserker Kill (1993)
- Brother Assassin (collection, 1993)
- Berserker Fury (1997)
- Shiva in Steel (1998)
- Berserker Star (2003)
- Berserker Prime (2003)
- Rogue Berserker (2005)
Some of the collections have duplicate stories.
[edit] Historical analogy
Some of the early berserker stories constitute a science fiction retelling of the events around the Battle of Lepanto (1571).
| In the Berserker stories | In history |
|---|---|
| Berserkers | Ottoman Turks |
| Venus | Venice |
| Esteel | Spain (cf. Espania) |
| Austeel | Austria |
| Stone Place | Lepanto |
| Johann Karlsen | Don John of Austria |
| Felipe Nogara | Phillip II of Spain |
| Mitchell Spain | Miguel Cervantes |
| Ships with C-plus cannon | Galeasses |
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- http://www.berserker.com/
- http://www.berserkerfan.org/ - The Taj: Official Fan Site of Fred Saberhagen's Berserker Universe
