Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site topaz.ARPA
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!packard!topaz!hester
From: hester@uci-icse
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Berserker
Message-ID: <2691@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 12-Jul-85 14:07:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.2691
Posted: Fri Jul 12 14:07:51 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jul-85 16:44:36 EDT
Sender: daemon@topaz.ARPA
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 61

From: Jim Hester 

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).