The novel “Berserker” by Fred Saberhagen was published for the first time in 1967. It’s a fix-up of various short stories published in previous years.

During an ancient space war, two species fought each other to their mutual extinction. Of that war there what remained are only spaceships run by artificial intelligences equipped with powerful weapons, the ability to self-repair after suffering damage in battle and to build more spaceships with the characteristics needed for war.

The end of the war for these robotic machines were built for doesn’t stop their activity, which moves towards other species with the aim to lead them to extinction too. Among the sentient species, the Earth-descended humans seem to be the only ones who can fight these enemies they named the Berserkers.