Berserker's Star (Berserker Saga) [Mass Market Paperback]

Fred Saberhagen (Author)

Book Description

Series: Berserker Saga | Publication Date: March 2, 2004

Fred Saberhagen continues his Berserker Series®, a chronicle of a war between humanity and the terrifying race of sentient machines bent on death and destruction. Pilot Harry Silver's name is know throughout the galaxy. While he has defeated his share of Berserkers, he has also stolen a powerful weapon from the Space Force, making him a fugitive from the life he once knew. Looking for an adventure Harry agrees to bring a passenger aboard his ship: Lily, a woman who is on a quest to retrieve her husband.

It won't be easy, as Lily's husband has joined a secretive religious cult on Maracanda, an almost-planet lodged between a shifting black hole and a neutron star. While the landscape of Maracanda is treacherous, so too, may be the people around Harry Silver. For as the search for Lily's husband deepens, Harry finds himself investigating a larger mystery and looking for missing persons, almost ending up one himself.

And, as always, there is the threat of death from above, in the path of a machine whose only intent is to kill.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this plodding entry in veteran Saberhagen's Berserker series (Berserker's Planet, etc.), Harry Silver, whose main claims to fame are his oversized weaponry and his love of poetry, has a cargo of parts to sell. Unfortunately, the planet he has just landed on, Hong's World, is being evacuated because its sun is going nova. To make some money, Harry agrees to take two businessmen/smugglers and the sweet if somewhat dimwitted Lily Gunnlod (who's seeking her errant husband) on a trip to the planet Maracanda. That world, the novel's real star, is an "azlaroc-type habitable body" where, due to its proximity to a neutron star and a black hole, the normal laws of the universe don't hold. When Harry's ship is confiscated on arrival, an old associate, Kul Bulaboldo, promises Harry that, in exchange for a little unspecified help, Kul will get Harry's ship back. As they travel across the planet's surface, Harry, Kul and Lily contend with such phenomena as rocks that perambulate, extreme gravities and narcotic soil, when not running afoul of the agents of the Berserker machines, AIs that want to exterminate all living creatures, starting with humanity. Readers will enjoy Harry's acts of derring-do, but the lengthy descriptions of Maracanda's bizarre properties grow tiresome.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Space adventurer Harry Silver returns in this latest entry in Saberhagen's immensely, deservedly popular Berserker saga. A woman charters Silver's ship Witch of Endor to rescue her husband from a cult on the planet Macaranda. After foiling two attempts to kidnap him, Silver starts to suspect everything and everybody around him, including Bulaboldo, an old friend with large ambitions and few scruples. For instance, Bulaboldo depends on Macaranda's peculiar physics, gravity, and breakdown zones (areas in which modern technology won't work) for the success of his drug-exporting ring. But besides providing Bulaboldo cover, those conditions may become the means by which so-called "goodlife" humans (i.e., Berserker sympathizers) can get a sufficient supply of antimatter to induce a catastrophic nova in the neutron star in the system that includes Macaranda. The good guys win in the end, but only after much suspense and action that grabs and holds even with Saberhagen's understated prose as their vehicle. Moreover, dark notes and surprises spice the moment of victory. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Tor Science Fiction (March 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765343215
• ISBN-13: 978-0765343215
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #275,887 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Very full of surprises, February 24, 2005

By 

Patrick J. Callahan (La Crosse, WI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Berserker's Star (Berserker Saga) (Mass Market Paperback)

This is the first berserker novel I have read in several years. I found it quite entertaining, largely for the quite extraordinary stellar system, which consists of a black hole, a neutron star "pulsar," and a "habitable body" called Maracanda. This place is NOT a planet, as several characters keep repeating almost as a mantra.

The concept -- for the sake of entertainment at least -- is that the gravitational distortions of massive objects in a tight orbit have created weirdness on the habitable portion of Maracanda. Traveling around or adventuring on Maracanda is quite an experience of time and space dilation.

The characterization is not very deep for the most part, although the protagonist Harry came to life pretty well for me. He is part rogue and part "the last honest man." There's a kind of love linkage in the character of Lily, although the author never really has time or room to build this into too much. Really, Harry's first love is his intelligent ship, the Witch. The ship is actually a better developed character than some of the characters.

As a very "fun read," I give this book pretty good marks. As for quality, I think the author succeeded in creating an imaginary place that is -- ta ta! -- ORIGINAL and that keeps you guessing.

The berserkers are a fun concept -- a bit like the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica or the "replicators" in SG-1. In short, legion of self-replicating robots with the gone-wrong mission imperative of exterminating all life. These are not original, but they make pretty good -- and scary -- villains. Because in the war with the berserkers, it appears mankind is LOSING . . .

If you want a fun read that keeps you turning pages, and some very original ideas spun off of Einstein's relativity and astrophysics -- I think you will like this. It is not "War and Peace" but it is fun -- and good of its kind.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Maracanda was a dangerous place..., April 1, 2004

By 

Michael Valdivielso (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Berserker's Star (Berserker Saga) (Mass Market Paperback)

An almost-planet, trapped between a black hole and a neutron star, this is the last place youi would think Harry
Silver would end up at. But being on the run from the Space Force makes for an interesting life and, as he is always looking for more adventure, he agrees to take some passengers to this world.
Little did he know he would have to deal with the Space Force, drug smugglers, missing persons and, of course, berserkers.
366 pages, very focused, much better than the last few Berserker books. Still, I would of liked more berserkers.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Tedious and meandering, November 15, 2004

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Berserker's Star (Hardcover)

Years ago, Saberhagen published a series of short stories on berserkers which collectively became classics. Since then, his productivity on this idea has slowed. But he recently released this book.

Sadly disappointing compared to his earlier work. Part of the reason may have been that his short stories intrinsically had to have tighter focus. Here, the plot meanders over a zany unearthly landscape. Perhaps Saberhagen was trying to show his ability in fashioning a truly bizarre arena. But it was hard to identify with any of the characters.

Though the main character shows some potential. Akin to the Stainless Steel Rat, Slippy Jim diGriz, in Harry Harrison's novels.

More to the point, people who read Berserker novels want to see descriptions of actions against the Berserkers. Not the tedious shilly shallying of this book.

Saberhagen is capable of far better than this sloppy rendition.