The Berserker Series by Fred Saberhagen
The Berserker Series is a collection of science fiction works centered around an interstellar conflict between humans and intelligent, self-replicating machines known as berserkers. Originally created by a race called the builders as a doomsday weapon to exterminate another race, the berserkers subsequently turned on their creators, leading them to roam the galaxy in search of any life to destroy, particularly targeting intelligent beings like humans. The series includes both anthologies and novels that explore the ongoing war between humans and berserkers, with stories often featuring individual human encounters with these relentless machines.
The anthologies typically present shorter narratives that delve into specific human-berserker confrontations, while the novels provide a broader narrative arc, following characters through multiple battles and often culminating in human victories. Themes of existential value and the nature of life versus destruction are prevalent throughout the series, inviting readers to reflect on the significance of existence in the face of overwhelming odds. Notable stories include "Smasher," where humans defend against a berserker fleet, and "Patron of the Arts," which examines the juxtaposition of art and destruction during a berserker attack. Overall, the Berserker Series presents a thought-provoking exploration of conflict, survival, and the human condition in a universe dominated by relentless machines.
On this Page
Subject Terms
The Berserker Series
First published:Berserker (1967), Brother Assassin (1969), Berserker’s Planet (1975), Berserker Man (1979), The Ultimate Enemy (1979), The Berserker Wars (1981), The Berserker Throne (1985), Berserker: Blue Death (1985), Berserker Base (1985), Berserker Lies (1991), and Berserker Kill (1993)
Type of work: Stories
Type of plot: Science fiction—artificial intelligence
Time of work: Prehistory to the distant future
Locale: The part of the Milky Way galaxy settled by humans
The Plot
Before humans appeared on Earth, two interstellar races, known to humans as “the builders” and “the red race,” fought a war of extermination lasting for centuries. Hoping finally to win the war, the builders created an ultimate doomsday machine, a spacefaring, intelligent, self-replicating weapon programmed to destroy any life it encountered. The weapon, called a berserker by humans because of the intense and chaotic violence of its attacks, was a success and wiped out the red race.
Unfortunately for the builders (and humans), the ber-serkers realized that the builders also were life and exterminated them as well. Now berserkers roam the galaxy searching for life in any form. They especially seek intelligent life such as humans because these are the only life-forms likely to provide any resistance to the extermination program. Berserkers have no inherent urge toward self-preservation (they are urgeless) but seek always to achieve the maximum destruction of life in expenditure of their resources.
Because berserkers are self-replicating and intelligent, they can build themselves in different shapes as required by a particular mission. The originals were space-going battleships, but in the stories they appear as everything from imitation horseshoe crabs to androids dressed in preserved human skin. In all cases, they are bent on destroying any intelligent life they find, with no regard for their own survival, and they are usually well equipped for that mission.
The books are divided into two types, anthologies and novels. The stories in the anthologies vary in length and are usually supplemented by some amount of linking text. In all cases, the stories and novels tell the human side of the ongoing berserker-human war. The anthologized stories usually focus on the resolution of a single human-berserker encounter, whereas the novels pursue the principal characters through several such encounters, usually culminating in a major victory for humanity.
In the short story “Smasher,” which appears in The Ultimate Enemy and Berserker Lies, for example, a human space force successfully defends a populated water world against a berserker fleet attack. One of the ber-serker ships crashes on an almost unpopulated neighboring (and equally watery) planet still carrying a portion of its cargo intact. The cargo is small berserkers resembling horseshoe crabs, intended to scuttle unnoticed across the sea floor toward human habitations that they would then disassemble with an assortment of destructive tool-limbs. The crash site world is inhabited only by four scientists studying the fauna. One of them is killed by the berserkers, but the remaining three survive by luring the machines into a pond filled with a native predatory crustacean resembling a cross of shrimp and praying mantis. The smashers, as the crustaceans are called, confuse berserker and crab as humans were supposed to, and they destroy the menace.
In “Patron of the Arts,” a story in Berserker, the art treasures of Earth are being transported to Tau Epsilon to protect them from a possible berserker attack on the home world. One of these treasures is a living artist who is so jaded by his existence that he is almost completely unconcerned by his impending death when his ship is captured in a berserker attack. After the crew members are killed resisting the berserker boarding party, he begins painting a portrait of a berserker, which he admires for its deadly efficiency. A boarding robot, speaking for the space-going berserker outside, asks what he is doing. He tries to explain the concept of art, which the berserker interprets as praise of that pictured. The machine then asks him, “What is good?” He asks what the berserker considers good, receiving the response “To destroy life is good.” He agrees that life has little to recommend it but does not agree with the berserker’s enthusiasm for death and cannot find life to be completely without value. In response to the berserker’s query about this statement, he shows the robot Titian’s painting Man with a Glove. The berserker asks him what it means, and he refuses to reply.
After the robot leaves him, he takes the painting to the airlock, intending to put it in an escape capsule so that it, at least, might be saved from the berserker. He finds a stowaway girl in a crate and has to decide whether her life is worth more than the painting. He sends her on her way and returns with the Titian to his portrait of the berserker. He is now disgusted by his work. The ber-serker robot returns and informs him that because he has praised the berserker, his ship has been repaired and put back on course so that other humans can learn from him how to praise what is good. After the berserker’s boarding party departs, he declares that he can change, is alive, and will paint again.
The novels tend to be more similar to “Patron of the Arts.” They involve characters attempting to destroy a berserker or simply to survive an attack by one or more of them. They often involve character development and an affirmation of the value of existence. Typical of these is Berserker: Blue Death, in which the main character is a sort of space-going Captain Ahab seeking vengeance against a particular berserker, known as “Leviathan” or “Old Blue,” because he holds it responsible for the deaths of his wife and daughter. In this pursuit, he almost loses his humanity, becoming a shadow of the death machine, but he rediscovers the value of his life after killing the man who killed his daughter and destroying the berserker.
There are two structurally exceptional books in the series. Brother Assassin comprises three novellas that form a continuous plot of novel length. Likewise, Ber-serker Base is an anthology of short stories by multiple authors forming a continuous plot. Fred Saberhagen wrote the first short story and linking text. Readers should be aware that most berserker short stories were published in more than one anthology.