Brother Assassin

The planet Sirgol sits in a strange part of the space-time continuum, the only place in the universe where time travel is possible. And when the first Earth ship arrived, it was plunged 20,000 years into Sirgol's past, where the survivors became the first humans to live on the planet. And by the time the Berserkers arrived, Sirgol was a fully matured world with 400 million people which could assist Earth in its war against the enemies of life. However, now the Berserkers are ready to use time travel against the humans of Sirgol, and it is up to Time Operations to thwart their plans. Lieutenant Derron Odegard is the man on the spot, and he will be intimately involved in the time war. But, the war will cost Odegard more than he expected, and take him farther than he ever thought. I have always loved Fred Saberhagen's Berserker stories. To me, they are the quintessential villains, with no pity and no remorse. In this story, Mr. Saberhagen moves into new ground, pitting the Berserkers against humans in an alternate, but basically Earth equivalent, history. It's all here - the Neolithic, the late Roman Empire, and the Renaissance. But, what did I think of the story? Well, it's not as blood-chilling as the other, pure science-fiction, Berserker stories I have read. But, I must say that I found it a very good read, a very interesting story. If you are a fan of good science-fiction, or time travel stories, or love the Berserkers, then this is a good book to read. I enjoyed it, and think that you will too!

Hiding in their bunkers beneath a blasted world, the inhabitants of Sirgol are still not defeated. They have a unique colony world; their civilization is as old as Earth's, since Sirgol is the only planet known where time-travel can happen, and the first colonists dropped back thousands of years. Now the berserker machines have found them, and almost beaten them by scouring off the surface of their world, but the Sirgolians still have a chance as they fight the machines through the loops and bends of their planet's earthlike history. And on Sirgol, you can really go back and make it not happen. Saberhagen's berserkers are always a scary concept, but here they have a different side. It's a question critical to my own survival: how complicated can a machine be before it can be said to be 'alive?'

I've been a fan of Saberhagen for decades, his early Berserker books being his first I'd read. This one is by far the best I've read yet.The story takes place on a planet where a type of radiation surrounding the planet makes time travel possible. Human explorers who first came to the planet were caught unawares, sent far into the past and de-evolved so that they had to advance all over again.Now in the "present," they had learned to harness the radiation and look into the past and even travel there.When the Berserkers, planet-sized doomsday machines from some long-forgotten intergalactic war whose prime directive is to destroy all life, arrive they are repelled by the planet's defenses. They then try to make use of the time travel to affect the planet's past.The story starts kind of slowly, but soon has you in its grip so that you won't want to put it down.Check it out.

Overall, a good read, though it plays more like three good novellas stitched together with a decent framing story rather than a novel cut from whole cloth. As such it's fine, part tale of the berserker wars and part alternative history and part time travel. The essential idea is that Saberhagen gives planet Sirgol a history parallel to Earth's--but not quite identical. This lets Saberhagen offer interesting variations on the history of King Arthur, Galileo, and St. Francis of Assisi. My only minor complaint is a sexist gaff near the end (the hero wants the heroine to have his baby) that somewhat dates the book. Nonetheless worthwhile if you're a fan of Saberhagen and especially a fan of the berserker series.

This is yet another great Berserker book... Saberhagen goes into great detail about all the events of Sirgol's history, the planet literally comes to life... In this book time travel is the key. It's a race to stop the Berserkers from going back in time to destroy the planet's past.