Berserkers: The Beginning

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Summary: How do you fight an enemy that isnt alive?
Review: Berserkers are killing machines leftover from an interstellar war. Saberhagen's treatment of the theme has earned classic sf status. This omnibus volume combines Berserker and The Ultimate Enemy, which is not a bad thing of you don't have them. The most amazing thing to me is the astonishing leap from the initial appearance in a game-theory story (The Fortress Ship) to the emotional power of the second story, Goodlife, dealing with a boy raised by a Berserker ship. Avoiding formula, Saberhagen uses the stories to explore the boundary between life and non-life, most of the best stories keying on some essential gulf, in a couple instances, reserving the essential revelation to the last sentence. Try The Peacemaker or Patron of the Arts. The Johann Karlsen cycle is completed in the first volume, including the classic Stone Place, Mask of the Red Shift, In the Temple of Mars, and the Face of the Deep. The stories from Ultimate Enemy are linked only by the Berserkers themselves, but most are very good, and Wings Out of Shadow, The Game, Pressure, and What Do You Want Me to Do to Prove I'm Human Stop, are classics. My only criticism is that there are a couple of other short Berserker tales that could have been included to provide a complete ominbus of Berserker short fiction. One of my favorite SF series.

Rating:
Summary: How do you fight an enemy that isnt alive?
Review: How dose one kill what isnt alive, how do youhurt somthing thats feels no pain,how do you reason with something that knows only how to kill, how do you survive aginst somthing that has never lost and will never stop? Bersekers is a book about a group machines created millions of years ago with an artifical brain. These brains knew one thing and had one objective, kill all life. They had traveled threw the galexy for hundreds of millions of years killing all life they came across untill they ran into a small group of life that refused to die, man. This book is made of many short stories from boath sides of the war. They tell of the berserkes never ending pursuit for the end of life and of the human fight aginst geniside. I liked this book because its diffrent. The good guy doesnt always win but story stays posotive. In my opinion its one of the best sci-fiction books I have ever read.

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Summary: The Best of SF
Review: If you haven't read Fred Saberhagen's stories about the Berserkers, you haven't read some of the best science fiction ever writen. Buy this book--you won't be disappointed!

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Summary: Can't We All Just Get Along?
Review: Saberhagen's Berserkers have been scaring you pitiful humans for years. Powerful, insensate, planet-sized warships dedicated to wiping out all life everywhere. Now, I come to you as a representative of a powerful machine civilization to offer you peace. Berserkers are only a myth. We robots are perfectly friendly. There is no need to fear. Hemphill, put down that blaster! Argh! Help, goodlife! Save me!