Book 11 for my 2025 goal of 30 books for the year! Still going!

Suddenly, I found myself back in a Fred Saberhagen mood. Saberhagen is one of those science fiction/fantasy authors who doesn’t get enough attention these days, considering how many enjoyable books and short stories he has written. I’ve talked before about his fantasy Book of Swords trilogy, following the journeys of twelve swords of power and the mischief and misery the bring with them. On the sci-fi side, Saberhagen is well-known for his Berserker series of books, telling stories of a collection of ruthless mechanical war machines. I’ve blogged about the first two in the series, Berserker and Brother Assassin, and decided recently to read the third book, Berserker’s Planet (1975).

Three books into the Berserker series, my impression is that each book looks at a different spin on the Berserkers and their schemes to destroy all life. The first book was a collection of short stories about the Berserker war machines; the second book focused on the Berserkers using time travel to try to destroy a world. This third book looks at the Berserkers using religion as their weapon…

The novel is set 500 years after the Berserkers first wreaked havoc upon humanity. They were only stopped when a general named Karlsen managed to outwit and outmaneuver the machines, destroying their main invading force and driving the rest out of sight. On their way to an illegal hunting expedition on the world known as Hunter’s Planet, a luxury spaceship owned by wealthy businessman Oscar Schoenberg stops some 500 light years from the world to listen to the broadcasts of Karlsen and the Berserkers during their climactic battle at the planet itself. (This in itself is just a clever science fiction way to start the book, imagining that if we can travel faster than the speed of light we could in principle listen to our own history.)

The hunting expedition, consisting of six people, three men and three women, then travel to the planet itself to take advantage of the start of its “summer” at the northern pole, when massive predators come out of hibernation and are ravenous with hunger. But they also learn of a tournament being held by the primitive humans living on Hunter’s Planet: a tribute to the god Thorun, where sixty-four of the best warriors on the planet will battle to the death two at a time until the final warrior will enter Thorun’s hall and sit beside the god himself.

The tournament captures the interest of Schoenberg and his fellow travelers, and they are welcomed to spectate the bloody tournament of Thorun. (Though the inhabitants of Hunter’s Planet ended up in a pre-industrial state thanks to the Berserkers, they are still familiar with spacecraft and outworlders.) But what they do not realize is that the entire tournament has been planned and orchestrated as a trap by a Berserker that has been living in secret on Hunter’s World for centuries… and it has its mechanical eyes set on claiming the visitors’ spaceship for itself and its plan to continue the extermination of all living beings…

Berserker’s Planet might be considered a novel that is half-fantasy, half-science fiction, in that we spend a lot of time following the tournament and the bloody battles that it contains. One can clearly see Saberhagen making a not-so-subtle analogy between the humans that are happy to kill each other for some mystical goal and the Berserkers that are simply carrying out programming of masters that are long dead. Indeed, the whole novel is a bit of meditation on the brutality of humanity, not only through the tournament but through the sport hunting of the visitors and, later, actual human sacrifices in the temple of Thorun. Particularly striking is that the possible savior of the planet, the only one who can stop the Berserker in the end, is the guest on the spaceship who is least violent and least interested in witnessing the gruesome tournament spectacle.

I must admit that I grew a bit bored with all the tournament battle descriptions, as we don’t spend much time learning about the participants and their motivations for participating. This changes somewhat as the number of combatants is whittled down to four and the contestants start to wonder whether they have been told the truth about the tournament itself. The climax of the novel is quite satisfying, however, as various disparate parts of the narrative — the tournament, the fighters, the visitors, a resistance movement against Thorun, and the Berserker — all come crashing together in one final moment of violence.

Saberhagen’s Berserker stories are, in general, a lot of fun and a nice blend of adventure and science fiction. We get interesting science fiction concepts in a breezy, fast-paced narrative that contains plenty of action and twists. Berserker’s Planet continues this trend, and I will almost certainly grab the next novel in the series to see where it goes next.