oyster@uwmacc.UUCP (Vicious Oyster) (07/08/85)
In article <1977@ut-ngp.UTEXAS> mercury@ut-ngp.UTEXAS (Larry E. Baker) writes: > >In the Berserker stories, the Berserkers were... > I sorta remember a request for Berserker information (i.e. names and ordering of books) a while back, but I don't remember ever seeing a response. Having never read a Berserker book, but being continually assaulted by references, I have decided to fill the void in my life by doing some heavy-duty catching-up. I would be interested in getting an ordered list of Berserker books. PLEASE reply by mail; I promise to post a follow-up summary if and when I get sufficient response. -- - joel "vo" plutchak {allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!oyster "Take what I say in a different way and it's easy to say that this is all confusion."
hester@uci-icse (07/12/85)
From: Jim Hester <hester@uci-icse>
Most of the Berserker stuff is in short story form, and while the short
stories in a given book may (or may not) be ordered, the relation
between them and the stories in another book are not always clear.
There may be a strict ordering: I like the stories but have not studied
them carefully. In any event reading in strict order of fictional time
is not necessarily advisable, since you may need familiarity with
Berserkers to understand some of Man's first encounters with them. The
following commented lists describe the order, such as it is, which I
would advise reading them.
READ THESE IN THE ORDER LISTED:
Berserker (1967): short stories
The original. It covers much history in a reasonably coherant fashon.
{ The Ultimate Enemy (1979), The Berserker Wars (1981) }: short stories
Read these two collections in either order, it doesn't matter.
Berserker Base (1985): short stories tied together
This strongly hints at a possible end to the wars.
Saberhagan (Berserker's creator and author of all the others)
asked several well-known SF authors to each write a Berserker
story, and then he wrote (fictional) forwards and afterwards
which tie them all together into a single FANTASTIC story. But
you need the background of the previous stories to appreciate it.
READ THESE (or don't) IN ANY ORDER
AND AT ANY TIME AFTER READING BERSERKER (1967):
Berserker Man (1979): novel
This hints at another possible end to the wars. My memory is weak
on this one, since it did not impress me as a Berserker story.
Nice enough tale, but I seem to recall it centering on humans without
much Berserker interaction. The plot could have been associated
with ANY war, not specifically Berserkers. Worth reading, but
don't expect to learn much about Berserkers.
Brother Assassin (1969): three related novellas
All concern one planet's time-travelling battles with Berserkers.
Again, nice tales and well worth reading, but not very
Berserker-specific (there ARE Berserkers in these tales, but they
are in the background almost all of the time).
Berserker's Planet (1975): novel
If you liked the way the Illiad describes battles ("and X swung
at Y and missed and then Y swung at X and missed and then X
cunningly replied with a low stab, but was thwarted, and then Y
tripped over a stone but regained balance in time............"),
then you'll love this. Otherwise it's crap; the only one I
actively disliked, mostly out of sheer boredom and reaction to
the pointlessness. A damaged Berserker sets itself up as a God
of War on a planet of primitives as a way to coerce them into
killing each other, and you literally get 200 pages of pitiful
description of swordplay; nothing enlightening about Berserkers
or Man's battles against them. Even the false God is only
mentioned a couple of times in the third person (by the primitives
as they kill each other in its name).