Intro & Credits
The Berserker Series
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Intro & Credits
This short piece of non-fiction by Fred Saberhagen
was published in The Great Science Fiction Series: Stories
from the best of the series from 1944 to 1980 by twenty all-time
favorite writers (1980) edited by Frederik Pohl, Martin
Harry Greenberg, and Joseph Olander. The
book was composed of short stories or excerpts from the various
science
fiction
series,
further recommended reading, and commentaries, many written by
the series' authors themselves. "The
Berserker Series" is a brief and interesting reflection by Fred
Saberhagen that served as introduction to the editors' selection
for the Berserker series: "Sign of the Wolf." "The
Berserker Series" is reprinted here with Fred's generous permission.
Originally printed in The Great Science Fiction Series,
Copyright (C) 1980 by Frederik Pohl, Martin Harry Greenberg,
and Joseph Olander; reprinted here by permission of Fred Saberhagen,
the author.
The Berserker Series
by
Fred Saberhagen
It seems to me sometimes that writing the first story in a series
may be just a little bit like dying, or being born-the person
doing it has, at the time, no idea of just what he or she is
getting into ultimately.
The first Berserker story began not
with a Berserker at all. There was simply an idea about a
clever way of constructing a
game-playing computer. This idea, when I began to write it,
clothed itself (for no particular reason that I was conscious
of at the
time) in the form of deep-space adventure. Only when plot and
setting were ripe for it did the villainous machine, as if
it were the secret designer of the whole event, come bursting
out
of concealment in my subconscious and race through my fingers
to assemble itself upon the typed-out page. I sat there regarding
its description with a mixture of satisfaction and bewilderment.
In one sense, I had never imagined such a thing as a Berserker
machine until that moment. And in another, equally valid sense,
it seemed that I had always known of its existence; it seemed
not so much an invention as a recognition.
Of course I am neither
the first writer nor the last to use the basic idea: an automated
killer machine, almost indestructible
itself, going on with its programmed task long after its
living creators have been destroyed. Whether I have done better
or
worse
with the idea than other writers have, Berserkers have come
to be identified with me and I with them, though they actually
represent
less than half of my published science fiction. Part of the
blame or credit for this state of affairs ought to go to
Fred Pohl,
who bought the first Berserkers for Worlds of If and Worlds
of Tomorrow back in the early 1960s, and urged me to write
more,
with the argument that a series of stories would have a much
greater impact on the public than an equal number of equally
good but unconnected tales.
Fred was perfectly right. During
this year-1977, and the year's not over as I write-that first
Berserker story has
earned several
times, in reprint fees, what I received for its first magazine
appearance; my evil robots have established footholds in
the realm of board- and computer-games; and new stories
in the
series are still in demand and still being written.
I have
begun to suspect that if the histories of science fiction written
fifty years from now take note of me for
anything,
it will be for the Berserkers. I think I can now begin
to understand in a small way the mixed feelings that
Conan Doyle
developed
for Sherlock Holmes.
Originally printed in The Great Science Fiction Series,
Copyright (C) 1980 by Frederik Pohl, Martin Harry Greenberg,
and Joseph
Olander; reprinted here by permission of Fred
Saberhagen,
the author.
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