Berserker (Saberhagen)

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.

Related Topics:
Fred Saberhagen - Space opera - Self-replicating machine - Doomsday weapon - Interstellar war - Machine intelligence - Asteroid

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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.

Related Topics:
Short story - Sentient life - Homo sapiens

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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.

Related Topics:
Telepathic - Aggression

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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.

Related Topics:
Puzzle story - Protagonist

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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.

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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.

Related Topics:
Traitor - Collaborator

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