You've got to feel sorry for Sarah Connor. Try as she might, she just can't seem to finish off Cyberdyne Systems--the eventual progenitor of the malevolent super-AI Skynet--with any sort of finality, despite blowing up their headquarters in Terminator 2. And every time she turns around, there's yet another pesky Terminator who has just beamed back through time to finish off her son John, who (as we all know) is humanity's only hope in the machine-controlled future.

Skynet and its minions chalk this up to the persistence of "several alternative world-lines" coexisting in "a state of quantum superimposition." But how's this for an explanation: it's fun to watch Sarah, John, and company run from, then run to, then ultimately beat up on Terminators, and as long as there's an interested audience, Skynet will keep sniffing out these devilish little temporal loopholes.

Military-SF juggernaut S.M. Stirling takes the helm in a "fully authorized" new series that picks up where T2 left off: mom and son are on the lam in Paraguay, lying low and running a shady trucking company. Then a retired spook moves in next door, a burly Austrian type who--get this--looks just like Arnold Schwarze... um, the 800 Series Model 101. The harried John and mom, paranoid by necessity, suspect something's afoot and soon find themselves embroiled in yet another adventure involving this mysterious new stranger, the old family of Miles Dyson (the Cyberdyne scientist who took it in the kisser in T2), and a super-sexy I-950 whom Skynet has sent back in time to set things straight.

Now realize that just because this sequel is "official" and "fully authorized" doesn't necessarily mean that the story lines will jibe with the T3 movie--assuming it ever comes out. But, of course, any discrepancies can just be blamed on yet another temporal anomaly. --Paul Hughes


From Publishers Weekly
Based on the world created in the motion picture written by James Cameron and William Wisher, this superior franchise fiction is the next best thing to Terminator 3. Stirling (Against the Tide of Years, etc.) is a skillful writer of action SF who has studied both the first Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) carefully. He gets the details right, and he's also thought about how, after two failures, the evil master computer of the future would modify the robots it sends back in time to kill its nemesis before he grows up. The new Terminator is female, mechanically and genetically enhanced but able to masquerade as a normal woman. She interacts with and attempts to manipulate a large cast of characters that includes, naturally, Sarah Conner and her now-teenaged son, John. Mother and son imagine they're safely hidden in Paraguay, their anti-machine crusade over, until they are noticed by a retired secret agent who happens to be a double for the nasty Arnold Schwarzenegger/first Terminator. When he innocently discovers who they are, the new Terminator also finds out and sends mechanical assassins after them. And the novel, which has been moving along steadily and efficiently, shifts into high gear. Stirling structures the plot well, and the action builds to a gripping climax which doesn't really conclude much, since this series obviously is intended to run many more books. If they're done this well, it will be an enjoyable ride. (May 8)Forecast: Robots from the future won't be able to stop this sequel to the $204-million domestic grossing T2 film from charging up genre bestseller charts.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
Both Sarah and John Connor have survived repeated attempts on their lives by advanced Terminator killing machines sent from a grim tomorrow to ensure the total destruction of humankind. Now, hiding out from the U.S. Government in Paraguay, Sarah and her brilliant son have linked up with Dieter von Rossbach -- a former counterterrorism operative and the human model for the original T-800 -- awakening him to the nightmare to come and drawing him into their revolution. Because the Cyberdyne Corporation's plan to launch its dread Skynet program was not destroyed, merely postponed. And the machine masters of the near future have sent a terrifying new breed of enforcer back to the Connors' time: a cyborg so humanlike that detection is virtually impossible; a relentless hybrid killer who understands how her human prey think and feel...and die.


About the Author
A well-regarded author of alternate history science-fiction novels, S.M. Stirling has written more than twenty-five books, including acclaimed collaborations with Anne McCaffrey, Jerry Pournelle, and David Drake. His most recent novels are T2: Infiltrator, The Peshawar Lancers, and the Island in the Sea of Time trilogy.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
S. M. Stirling contributes a welcome, but puzzling, entry into James Cameron's world of the Terminator. It's been widely rumored that the next Terminator movie, currently in development, deals with the continued story of Sarah and John Connor. Some common rumors that I've heard are that Arnold Schwarzenegger, in one form or another, is back as a protector to the Connors; they are to face a new threat in the form of a female terminator; and the events will occur prior to the apocalyptic world of post-nuclear Los Angeles depicted in the earlier two films. Funny how these three points serve as the major skeleton of Stirling's new book, T2: Infiltrator. This is clearly not the movie tie-in version. Or is it?

But first, a bit of history: Cyberdyne Systems, a computer research company creates a defense system called Skynet that, in the interests of eliminating human error, removes humans entirely from the decision of when to launch nuclear weapons. This system is too advanced for humanity's good and, soon after going online, it decides to launch its missiles -- setting off a worldwide nuclear war. At its conclusion, Skynet remains fully intact, sentient, completely integrated with machinery of all kinds -- and determined to make mankind extinct. While the world suffers from nuclear fallout, Skynet automates weapon facilities and creates and unleashes equipment designed to destroy all remaining vestiges of humanity. Skynet's mechanical minions, the Terminators among them, succeed in wiping out all but a guerrilla movement led by John Connor, who provides the sole resistance against the machines.

Ultimately, Connor wins and Skynet sends Terminators back in time with the hopes of changing this future. By killing Sarah Connor and her son John in our present, Skynet will prevent the development of this deadly duo and will ensure its own existence in the future. John himself, aware of these attempts on his past, moves to block Skynet by sending a rewired Terminator of his own back in time to aid his adolescent self in evening out the odds.

In Stirling's incarnation, T2: Infiltrator, we find the Connors, 10 years after the events of T2: Judgment Day, running black market weapons out of Paraguayan jungles. Wanted for the destruction of various Cyberdyne installations, they live disguised and in exile, fearful they will be arrested by unbelieving authorities. But unbeknownst to them, a new threat has arrived on the horizon -- sent by the future Skynet whose very creation they have been unable to prevent. The character's name is Serena Burns, an alias for the prototypical Infiltrator-950. The I-950 is mostly human, but enhanced with an impressive array of useful cyborg components. This configuration allows the I-950 to more easily infiltrate human populations. And infiltrate she does: as Cyberdyne's own Chief of Security! Sent from the future, she is charged with watching over the fledgling company and ensuring that Skynet itself develops into the entity that it eventually becomes. But she also possesses the ability and the equipment to create several additional allies under her personal command: more Terminators.

In the Connor corner, however, is a retired Austrian antiterrorist agent, Dietrich von Rossbach, who, to their initial horror, looks exactly like -- you guessed it -- Sarah's ruthlessly cold hunter in the first Terminator, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger! How this is all explained I'll leave to S. M. Stirling. And whether any of this bears any resemblance to the upcoming Terminator 3 movie will have to go unanswered for the time being. Until that time rolls around, allow me to state that this is a very enjoyable entry into an already terrific franchise. (Peter Russo)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Nineteen ninety-one. Terminator 2: Judgment Day hits the screen, dominating theaters worldwide. The largest grossing film of the year with unprecedented special effects, T2 redefined the blockbuster movie. But its millions of fans have been left without new stories, new ways to revisit one of the most popular science-fiction universes. Until now.

In the tradition of the bestselling Star Wars novels, the blockbuster adventure continues, in the first officially authorized Terminator novel. Following T2 Sarah and John Connor have escaped to Paraguay. But they soon discover that Cyberdyne—the company who would build Skynet, the computer that would create the Terminator units—is still active, and hard at work. To finish the job once and for all, Sarah and John have to battle the most insidious Terminator yet— one cleverly disguised as a woman!

SYNOPSIS

Sarah Connor and her son, John, know the grim tomorrow that awaits their species if the Cyberdyne Corporation gets their Skynet system on-line. Targeted for annihilation because of their future destinies, the Connors have already survived two separate attempts on their lives by advanced Terminator killing machines.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly