The art of speculative fiction lies in the ability to create a plausible future that tells us a great deal about our present. This critically acclaimed recording by narrators Aaron Lustig and Henry Strozier chronicles human reactions on earth to an invasion by alien exterminators intent upon wiping out all sentient life on earth.

To defeat the ultimate weapon, you must become one...Once, mankind feared the berserkers, killer machines determined to eradicate all life in the universe. But the Berserker Wars are over and the threat of the sentient doomsday devices is over.Or is it?The berserkers are back, stronger and more unstoppable than before. And one strange child, half human and half machine, may be humanity’s only hope—or its final destroyer.

Five hundred years have passed since the combined fleets of humanity met and broke the berserker armada at Stone Place. But though the human victory was total, one of the killer machines—weaponless, its star drive a ruin—managed to limp to a secret sanctuary on a planet called Hunter's World. Over the years since then, a new cult has arisen there: a cult dedicated to Death as the only and ultimate good.For Hunter's World has become Berserker's Planet.

The great blue Berserker's destruction of the human colony Shubra was swift and merciless. And when it was over, Niles Domingo's daughter lay among the dead. Now Niles Domingo is a man with a mission: vengeance at any cost.With one small ship, Niles sets out against the great Berserker called Leviathan, tracking it through the interstellar mists of the Milkpail Nebula. He is sure he is ready for anything, but nothing can prepare him for the astonishing discoveries that lie between ...

Long, long ago, two alien races fought a war of extinction. All that is left of either of them are the berserkers: vast, thinking, spacefaring, killer machines whose sole purpose is to destroy all living things. For the first time in all of their history, they have met a life form that has a chance of stopping them.In the cold reaches of space, the berserkers seize a floating laboratory full of human germ-plasm being stored for retrieval and growth in a future colonization project....

The Empress of the Eight Worlds has been assassinated. Prince Harivarman, exiled on the Templar Radiant, suspects that he will be the next victim. Help is scarce: Anne Blenheim, the fortress’ clear-eyed, fair commander, is favorably disposed toward the Prince, but her first responsibility is to the Templar High Command. And Chen Shizuoka, a Templar recruit sympathetic to Harivarman’s cause, is being stalked by planetary security forces. When Prince Harivarman discovers an operable Berserke...

In a sector of the Galaxy occupied by Earth-descended people, one Berserker computer has suddenly and mysteriously developed a tactical strategy unlike anything the human opposition has seen before. Shiva, like the Hindu god of destruction after which it was named, annihilates entire colonies with the help of its fiendish subordinates.Commander Claire Normandy struggles to prepare for Shiva's attacks, while Pilot Harry Silver realizes that he must deal with his own demons in order ...

Master storyteller Fred Saberhagen continues his bestselling Berserker series, detailing humanity’s war with the dreaded juggernaut-like machines programmed to destroy all life in the galaxy.On the Twin World planets, Prairie and Timber, Plenipotentiary Gregor is determined to serve his government—even if it means executing innocent Huvean hostages, invaders from another planet—and even though Gregor’s own granddaughter, Luon, is in love with a Huvean. But now the Berserkers are th...

Before George Lucas' Death Star and before Star Trek's Doomsday Machine came the Berserkers, intelligent, space-faring killing machines whose sole purpose is to destroy all life. The Berserkers have developed a new trick: Berserker units that can pass for human-created androids. They're gambling on the advantage this gives them and massing for an all-out attack on human-held space.But the humans have developed a trick of their own. They've cracked the Berserkers' basic cod...

Somebody was testing a planet-killing weapon on Mars—and the next target was EarthMars is the staging ground. Earth is the target. A storm of invasion gathers as the Red Planet pales and Earthscientists—amateurs and professionals alike—race to discover what it portends. Worse news: The horde of selfreplicating probes suspected as the cause—implacable and all-consuming in its own right—may be only the tip of afull-scale assault.Ideas—the only useful weapon when ...

By the close of the twenty-first century, almost half a million souls have already abandoned Earth to live in satellites orbiting the strife-ridden planet. Each of these forty-one Worlds is an independent entity boasting its own government and culture, yet each remains bound to the troubled home World by economic pressure.A brilliant student of political science born and raised in New New York, the largest of the orbiting Worlds, young Marianne O'Hara has never been to the surface ...