Doomsday Machines
A Doomsday machine is a hypothetical construction which could destroy all life, either on Earth or beyond, generally as part of a policy of mutual assured destruction.
In Fred Saberhagen's 1967 Berserker stories, the Berserkers of the title are giant computerized self-replicating spacecraft, once used as a doomsday device in an interstellar war aeons ago, and, having destroyed both their enemies and their makers, still attempting to fulfil their mission of destroying all life in the universe. The 1967 Star Trek episode "The Doomsday Machine" written by Norman Spinrad, explores a similar theme.
Alien doomsday machines are common in science fiction as "Big Dumb Objects", McGuffins around which the plot can be constructed. An example is the Halo megastructures in the video game franchise Halo, which are world-sized doomsday machines.
Read more about this topic: Weapons In Science Fiction
Famous quotes containing the words doomsday and/or machines:
“Even an attorney of moderate talent can postpone doomsday year after year, for the system of appeals that pervades American jurisprudence amounts to a legalistic wheel of fortune, a game of chance, somewhat fixed in the favor of the criminal, that the participants play interminably.”
—Truman Capote (1924–1984)
“The machine has had a pernicious effect upon virtue, pity, and love, and young men used to machines which induce inertia, and fear, are near impotents.”
—Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)