Reviews: Dorsai! and Berserker
Once I got my brain more or less re-knit together following the Interesting Times, I started on a concerted plan to whittle down the small army of unread books on my shelves. This pile includes quite a few moldie oldies, classics, and semi-classics of science fiction that I've been meaning to read since approximately forever ago. So without any further ado, here are some thoughts on two books that go ZAP! in the night.
Dorsai! by Gordon R. Dickson (1960)
*****
How can you not love that exclamation point? It's so endearing. If I ever write anything in a mil-SF vein, I'm going to call it Holy Fuck! That Guy Has a Laser!
There is much of scholarly interest here, since you can see how elements of Dorsai! formed the backbone of Hammer's Slammers and thus nearly the entire military SF sub-field. In narrative terms, Dorsai! is diverting but less than successful. Its vintage is intrusively apparent, and it offers a universe devoid of even the Heinleinian Competent Woman. In Dorsai! human females have only two apparent skills-- being decorative and throwing fits.
In the universe of Dorsai! the worlds of humanity have become over-specialized, and their interstellar economy is based on trading the services of their respective experts. The Dorsai are super-soldiers of legendary skill, not to be provoked by lesser men, though how they acquired these traits and how their planet/society shapes them is all severely underexplained (contrast this with, say, the Sardaukar and Fremen of Dune, whose savagery is explicitly justified by the harshness of their environments).
Donal Graeme, an atypically introspective Dorsai, is our protagonist, and the novel follows his rise from position to position, battle to battle, as his fame and influence grows. Most of these incidents are mildly interesting little puzzles, but at no point do any of them seem to offer Donal real danger, or to require real improvisation and risk. About the worst he faces is the physical strain of a repeated space-warp in an effort to create the illusion that his tiny fleet is a much larger sequence of attacking waves; the issue here is that the strain is still willingly self-inflicted rather than a consequence of coming up against a truly formidable or interesting antagonist. Finally, the end of the novel contains an intrusion of stark mysticism that I find jarring, even if it is explained by the longest unrelieved expositional babbling in the whole book.
Dorsai! does have the charm of offering certain phrases and patterns of speech that have left common use. "Not all the other worlds of men combined would dare to try conclusions with that one world of soldiers born and bred!" says the back-cover blurb. Heh. I love the quaint and unwieldy sound of "try conclusions." Dorsai! is also a relic of a time when the term "black man" was, bizarrely, more likely to mean "white dude with very dark hair" than "dude with dark skin."
All in all, a hearty "meh." Dickson put a lot of ambition and research into the cycle that Dorsai! kicked off, there's no denying that, I just don't think the pieces knit as intended in this book. His later novella in the same milieu, "Soldier, Ask Not," was stronger.
Berserker by Fred Saberhagen (1963-67)
*****
I've been meaning to look into Saberhagen's Berserker milieu since I read the short story "Wings Out of Shadow" in this anthology... um... jesus, eighteen years ago. Never let it be said that I am some mere dilettante of procrastination; I am a goddamn gratification-delaying tyrannosaurus.
The Berserkers are implacable alien death machines, relics of some long-ago interstellar war, programmed by their creators to eradicate life. They took their job description very literally*, and now they prowl the galaxy, making sentient organisms go squish. This is the sort of conceit that makes one's inner 14-year-old glow with approval.
Unfortunately, this collection of linked short stories has a frequent "puzzle of the week" feel to it, and since each story is a tale of one or more human beings finding some clever or blitheringly idiotic way to foil a Berserker, the cumulative effect is to diminish their sense of menace. Also, Saberhagen conceived the Berserkers in an era when the horizons of computer intelligence and response were less broadly imagined. As a result, the Berserkers are not quite as dim as the sort of critically defective supercomputer James T. Kirk used to beat up on Star Trek:
KIRK: "Computer! I tell you, I am a rooster, and yet I wear pants!"
COMPUTER: "LOGICAL FALLACY! DOES NOT COMPUTE!" (Politely explodes, releasing all the hot women it was holding prisoner for some reason.)
... but they're not that much better.
And I really could have done without the story in which a damaged Berserker space vessel is re-programmed by a human prankster to throw a gigantic custard pie at pursuing human spaceships.
A custard pie. Really?
But it's not all bad-to-middling. Saberhagen has genuine sinister panache when he just lets it out of its cage. There's a fantastic sequence where a human-sized Berserker, concealed by mask and robe, is released at an interstellar dinner party in an homage to Poe's "Masque of the Red Death." Actually, most of the better stories (like that one) feature the decadent, cynical, quietly suicidal despot Felipe Nogara (the "Is he Japanese, Spanish, or Italian?" half-brother of the story cycle's obviously very caucasian hero, Johann Karlsen). Karlsen is one of the major disappointments of the story cycle, in that he has the "sole shining hope for humanity" role thrust upon him. Not just philosophically... the mathematical analysis of the Berserkers indicates that Karlsen is the prime threat to them in existence, that his exquisite generalship is humanity's greatest weapon, yadda yadda yadda... this is an SFnal variation of the Chosen One trope, and it's just not something that piques my interest.
I view it as an abandonment of the interesting humanistic question of how a species fights a war against an advanced and implacable foe through countless local acts of heroism, cleverness and sacrifice, and a turn to the realm of magical thinking... how One Special Leader can supposedly fix everything. It's a lasting and tragic theme in human history, our preoccupation with messianic figures, and even a worthy basis for stories... but not when it's unexamined.
I will read at least the next book in the series, very possibly before another eighteen years have passed, but I make no promises beyond that.
*****
*Honestly, when could building this sort of thing ever be considered a good idea? What is it with long-vanished science fictional precursor species anyway?
TECHNICIAN: Hey there, Autonomous Death Machine Alpha One, can you hear me okay?
DEATH MACHINE ALPHA ONE: I CAN HEAR YOU JUST FINE.
TECHNICIAN: Great, awesome. Look, I've finally got your supreme operating protocols here, and I'll, uh, read them to you, okay?
DEATH MACHINE ALPHA ONE: OKAY.
TECHNICIAN: Swell. Here goes. Uh, "The First and Highest Law: Seek out and destroy all life wherever it may be found, by whatever means necessary." You got that one?
DEATH MACHINE ALPHA ONE: YES. SOUNDS GREAT. HERE, HAVE SOME BULLETS.
TECHNICIAN: No, wait, there's still three more of these-- holy fuckin' cockweasels!
(KA-BLAM! KA-BLAM! KA-BLAM!)
Dorsai! by Gordon R. Dickson (1960)
*****
How can you not love that exclamation point? It's so endearing. If I ever write anything in a mil-SF vein, I'm going to call it Holy Fuck! That Guy Has a Laser!
There is much of scholarly interest here, since you can see how elements of Dorsai! formed the backbone of Hammer's Slammers and thus nearly the entire military SF sub-field. In narrative terms, Dorsai! is diverting but less than successful. Its vintage is intrusively apparent, and it offers a universe devoid of even the Heinleinian Competent Woman. In Dorsai! human females have only two apparent skills-- being decorative and throwing fits.
In the universe of Dorsai! the worlds of humanity have become over-specialized, and their interstellar economy is based on trading the services of their respective experts. The Dorsai are super-soldiers of legendary skill, not to be provoked by lesser men, though how they acquired these traits and how their planet/society shapes them is all severely underexplained (contrast this with, say, the Sardaukar and Fremen of Dune, whose savagery is explicitly justified by the harshness of their environments).
Donal Graeme, an atypically introspective Dorsai, is our protagonist, and the novel follows his rise from position to position, battle to battle, as his fame and influence grows. Most of these incidents are mildly interesting little puzzles, but at no point do any of them seem to offer Donal real danger, or to require real improvisation and risk. About the worst he faces is the physical strain of a repeated space-warp in an effort to create the illusion that his tiny fleet is a much larger sequence of attacking waves; the issue here is that the strain is still willingly self-inflicted rather than a consequence of coming up against a truly formidable or interesting antagonist. Finally, the end of the novel contains an intrusion of stark mysticism that I find jarring, even if it is explained by the longest unrelieved expositional babbling in the whole book.
Dorsai! does have the charm of offering certain phrases and patterns of speech that have left common use. "Not all the other worlds of men combined would dare to try conclusions with that one world of soldiers born and bred!" says the back-cover blurb. Heh. I love the quaint and unwieldy sound of "try conclusions." Dorsai! is also a relic of a time when the term "black man" was, bizarrely, more likely to mean "white dude with very dark hair" than "dude with dark skin."
All in all, a hearty "meh." Dickson put a lot of ambition and research into the cycle that Dorsai! kicked off, there's no denying that, I just don't think the pieces knit as intended in this book. His later novella in the same milieu, "Soldier, Ask Not," was stronger.
Berserker by Fred Saberhagen (1963-67)
*****
I've been meaning to look into Saberhagen's Berserker milieu since I read the short story "Wings Out of Shadow" in this anthology... um... jesus, eighteen years ago. Never let it be said that I am some mere dilettante of procrastination; I am a goddamn gratification-delaying tyrannosaurus.
The Berserkers are implacable alien death machines, relics of some long-ago interstellar war, programmed by their creators to eradicate life. They took their job description very literally*, and now they prowl the galaxy, making sentient organisms go squish. This is the sort of conceit that makes one's inner 14-year-old glow with approval.
Unfortunately, this collection of linked short stories has a frequent "puzzle of the week" feel to it, and since each story is a tale of one or more human beings finding some clever or blitheringly idiotic way to foil a Berserker, the cumulative effect is to diminish their sense of menace. Also, Saberhagen conceived the Berserkers in an era when the horizons of computer intelligence and response were less broadly imagined. As a result, the Berserkers are not quite as dim as the sort of critically defective supercomputer James T. Kirk used to beat up on Star Trek:
KIRK: "Computer! I tell you, I am a rooster, and yet I wear pants!"
COMPUTER: "LOGICAL FALLACY! DOES NOT COMPUTE!" (Politely explodes, releasing all the hot women it was holding prisoner for some reason.)
... but they're not that much better.
And I really could have done without the story in which a damaged Berserker space vessel is re-programmed by a human prankster to throw a gigantic custard pie at pursuing human spaceships.
A custard pie. Really?
But it's not all bad-to-middling. Saberhagen has genuine sinister panache when he just lets it out of its cage. There's a fantastic sequence where a human-sized Berserker, concealed by mask and robe, is released at an interstellar dinner party in an homage to Poe's "Masque of the Red Death." Actually, most of the better stories (like that one) feature the decadent, cynical, quietly suicidal despot Felipe Nogara (the "Is he Japanese, Spanish, or Italian?" half-brother of the story cycle's obviously very caucasian hero, Johann Karlsen). Karlsen is one of the major disappointments of the story cycle, in that he has the "sole shining hope for humanity" role thrust upon him. Not just philosophically... the mathematical analysis of the Berserkers indicates that Karlsen is the prime threat to them in existence, that his exquisite generalship is humanity's greatest weapon, yadda yadda yadda... this is an SFnal variation of the Chosen One trope, and it's just not something that piques my interest.
I view it as an abandonment of the interesting humanistic question of how a species fights a war against an advanced and implacable foe through countless local acts of heroism, cleverness and sacrifice, and a turn to the realm of magical thinking... how One Special Leader can supposedly fix everything. It's a lasting and tragic theme in human history, our preoccupation with messianic figures, and even a worthy basis for stories... but not when it's unexamined.
I will read at least the next book in the series, very possibly before another eighteen years have passed, but I make no promises beyond that.
*****
*Honestly, when could building this sort of thing ever be considered a good idea? What is it with long-vanished science fictional precursor species anyway?
TECHNICIAN: Hey there, Autonomous Death Machine Alpha One, can you hear me okay?
DEATH MACHINE ALPHA ONE: I CAN HEAR YOU JUST FINE.
TECHNICIAN: Great, awesome. Look, I've finally got your supreme operating protocols here, and I'll, uh, read them to you, okay?
DEATH MACHINE ALPHA ONE: OKAY.
TECHNICIAN: Swell. Here goes. Uh, "The First and Highest Law: Seek out and destroy all life wherever it may be found, by whatever means necessary." You got that one?
DEATH MACHINE ALPHA ONE: YES. SOUNDS GREAT. HERE, HAVE SOME BULLETS.
TECHNICIAN: No, wait, there's still three more of these-- holy fuckin' cockweasels!
(KA-BLAM! KA-BLAM! KA-BLAM!)
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