F/SF

Good, but not nearly as good as Berserker/s Planet. This is fairly typical scifi, where the aliens are rogue machine intelligences. Classic scifi. ( )

Berserker Wars is another volume of vignettes from Fred Saberhagen dealing with the continuing battle of mankind against the formidable robotic nightmares - the berserkers. In this volume, like in the first volume called "Berserker", Saberhagen presents a series of vignettes, apparently acquired by the telepathic Carmpan race directly from the minds of the primary actors in each set of scenes. This volume, was to me, a darker set of stories than either of the other Berserker volumes that I've read so far.

In fact, there was some overlap between this volume and the original Berserker volume. In this volume, we get the following stories: Stone Place, The Face of the Deep, What T and I Did, Mr. Jester, The Winged Helmet, Starsong, Some Events at the Templar Radiant, Wings Out of Shadow, The Smile, Metal Murderer, and Patron of the Arts. Stone Place, The Face of the Deep, What T and I Did, Mr. Jester and the Patron of the Arts were all included in the original Berserker volume.

The Metal Murderer had an interesting cameo with Sherlock Holmes. All in all, though, this volume was about the sacrifices that mankind made to ensure status quo against the berserkers. Those sacrifices were made nobly - knowingly and valiantly but they didn't win the war - and perhaps that fact is the most telling. That mankind's heroes will knowingly do everything within their power to resist even when that resistance does not guarantee victory. Then again, that appears to be Saberhagen's main thrust - that the berserkers can be beaten but it's a war of attrition and that it takes individual efforts in their individual ways to overcome the machines. ( )