It's a much-imitated idea--used, for instance, in the Star Trek episode "The Doomsday Machine."
The Berserkers are often in the form of asteroid-sized ships, but can build new Berserkers in all shapes and sizes as they adapt new tactics to changing situations.
Saberhagen's stories span across centuries of warfare between humanity and the Berserkers, with many of the stories focusing on human ingenuity giving us victory over the implacable killing machines. This often allows for some absolutely wonderful twist endings, such as those found in the short stories "The Peacemaker" and "The Annihilation of Angkor Apeiron."
The 1967 novel Brother Assassin (which first appeared in
Galaxy Science Fiction magazine) introduces a fun new twist into the series.
The novel takes place on the only planet in the galaxy on which time travel is
possible. The planet Sirgol is surrounded by holes in space-time. When the
first human ship landed on Sirgol, it was tossed back in time tens of thousands
of years, with the warping effect wiping the memories of the crew. Civilization
on Sirgol had to literally start from scratch.
When the next human ship arrives at Sirgol ten relative
years after the first, they discover a thriving human civilization that's been
around for 20 millennia who can warn the newcomers about the space-time holes.
The planet is warned about the Berserkers in time to build a defense.
So when the Berserkers do arrive, they manage to wipe out
"only" about 90% of Sirgol's population. The survivors take refuge
underground. The inhuman enemy then tries using time travel to disrupt the flow
of civilization and change history. If they succeed, the humans on Sirgol won't
be advanced enough to fight back at all when the robots first arrive.
What follows are three separate adventures, linked together
by the same human characters. The Berserkers try to wipe out a tribe of
humans who would be the first to develop a written language. Humans from the
present can't travel back that far without losing their memories, so they send
back robots worked by remote control to act as bodyguards to the tribe.
After that, we discover that history on Sirgol roughly
parallels that of Earth, with the rise and fall of a Roman
Empire analogue. The Berserkers try to change history by killing a
king who keeps one nation from descending into a Dark Age after the Empire falls.
(The king is an analogue to King Arthur--Saberhagen borrows Sirgol's history
from Earth legend as well as fact.) This time around, countering the Berserkers move means to
somehow replace the dead king--at least until the duplicate can draw a
Berserker dragon out of hiding.
Then, the robots try more subtle means of changing history, mucking around with the results of the trial of a Galileo analogue during
Sirgol's Renaissance. Here, the book's protagonist must use an equally subtle
plan to get history back on the right track.
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