Berserker (Saberhagen)

First appearances

The first story, "Without a Thought" (1963), was basically a puzzle story, whose protagonist must find a way to simulate intelligence to fool an enemy trying to determine whether there was any conscious being present in a spaceship.

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 used it as the basis of many stories. A common theme in the stories is of how the apparent weaknesses and inconsistencies of living beings are actually the strengths that bring about the killer machines' eventual defeat.

The second story, "Goodlife" (1963), introduces human traitors or collaborators who cooperate with the Berserker machines to stay alive for a little longer.

Backstory

The original Berserkers were designed and built as an ultimate weapon, by a race now known only as the Builders, to wipe out their rivals the Red Race, in a war which took place at a time corresponding to Earth's Paleolithic era. The Builders failed to ensure their own immunity from Berserker attack, or they lost those safeguards through an unknown malfunction that changed the Berserker programming, and they were exterminated by their own creation very shortly after the demise of the Red Race. The Berserkers then set out across the galaxy to fulfill their core programmed imperative, which is now, simply, to destroy all life wherever they can find it.

A similar premise, though on a much smaller scale, was previously introduced by Walter M. Miller, Jr. in the 1954 short story “I Made You,”, described by reviewer N. Samuelson as "A pure ‘sorcerer’s apprentice’ sketch, about a war machine on the moon which kills anyone who comes within its range, including one of its programmers, because its control circuits are damaged.".

List of species

The Berserker stories features many different characters originating from many different species, human and alien. These include:

Berserkers

The Berserkers are intelligent machines, created by an organic race in the past as a doomsday weapon, a group of robots with one goal: to destroy all organic life.

Berserkers exist in a multitude of shapes, sizes and forms. The most common Berserkers are large spherical interstellar spacecraft, heavily armed and armored, equipped with self-replicating factories, and capable of producing numerous scout craft, foot soldiers, and other weapons of war.

Little is known of the Berserkers' history other than that they were created to destroy the Red Race, who are now extinct. The creators of the Berserkers are known as the Builders, who were also later destroyed by the Berserkers.

The Builders

The Builders were a precursor race, of whom little is known other than they created and were later destroyed by the Berserkers. Saberhagen describes them thus:

"And of the Builders themselves, their own all-too-effective weapons, the berserkers, had left nothing but a few obscure records—video and voice recordings. Those videos had recorded slender, fine-boned beings, topologically like Solarian humans with the sole visible exception of the eye, which in the Builder species was a single organ, stretching clear across the upper face, with a bright bulging pupil that slid rapidly back and forth." "In most of the ancient Builder graphics, no matter how elegantly enhanced, the berserkers' creators showed as hardly more than stick drawing of orange glowing substance. Now for the first time in history it was plain to Solarian eyes that that orange color and brightness were the result of some kind of clothing, the exposed skin being a dullish yellow where it showed on the face, the four-fingered hands, and across part of the chest."

The Builders created the Berserkers in a genocidal war with the Red Race, which ended in both races' extinction by the Berserkers.

Red Race

The Red Race was another precursor race, of which little is known other than that their extinction was the Builders' purpose in creating the Berserkers millennia ago.

Carmpans

The Carmpans are a patient and peaceful species; their culture is one of logical reason, pacifism, and philosophy. They lend what support they can to the Humans, but in non-martial forms. They are incapable of direct aggression, but they do possess one special power, a telepathic ability to speak to other sentients across the stars, a method of communication that the Berserkers cannot spy on.

Although their bodies are described as boxy and machine-like, the Carmpans are also a biological lifeform and thus a target for the genocidal programming of the Berserkers. As such, they have allied themselves with the human race against the Berserkers.

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.

Humanity

Homo sapiens, referred to as "Earth-descended" or "ED" Humans, or as "Solarians," are the only sentient species aggressive enough to counter Berserkers.

The Berserkers have severely threatened human civilizations and wiped out millions. The remnants of human civilization have learned to be wily in order to survive. Berserker technology is much more advanced than that of any known human society. The survivors are disparate and lack the ability to act as a united foe to the Berserkers.

Goodlife

The Berserkers are known to cooperate with each other, most of the time. They sometimes spare the lives of human (or other organic) traitors or collaborators, known as "goodlife", who are willing to cooperate to help destroy other lifeforms.

Qwib-qwib

Later stories involve the Qwib-qwib, an anti-Berserker berserker.

Adaptations

A board game based on the series was produced by Flying Buffalo Inc in 1982.

A comic book adaptation is being created by Fan-Atic Press.

Related concepts

Other examples of science fiction stories containing replicators (self-replicating machines) bent on the destruction of organic life include:

Self-replicating machines, also known as Von Neumann machines, raise the question of how to prevent their becoming Berserkers or grey goo.

"The Doomsday Machine" is a Star Trek episode about a planet-eating machine from another galaxy

The Festival is a civilisation of uploaded minds with strange designs on Humanity, in Singularity Sky by Charles Stross

The Hypotheticals, intelligent Von Neumann machines with strange designs on Earth, in Spin by Robert Charles Wilson

Inhibitors, in the fiction of Alastair Reynolds: a formerly organic race, completely converted over to machine form, who are non-sapient, and describe themselves as "post-intelligent"

The Killers, a civilization of self-replicating machines designed to destroy any potential threat to their (possibly long-dead) creators, in The Forge of God and sequel Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear.

Reapers, machine intelligences bent on the destruction of organic life, in Mass Effect

Necrons, an ancient race of skeleton-like robots in Warhammer 40,000

Skynet an artificial intelligence bent on the destruction of mankind, and its agents the Terminators, in the movie The Terminator and its sequels

The Xymos Nanoswarms in Prey by Michael Crichton

The (!*!*!), a machine intelligence/civilization bent on the extermination of organic life, from the Bolo (tank) stories about a fictional type of artificially intelligent superheavy tanks