[T2 01] • Infiltrator

Return to the blockbuster Terminator universe, with the untold adventures of Sarah and John Connor!

Following TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, Sarah and John Connor fled to Paraguay, until one day Sarah spots a Terminator unit in the town square. A great cat-and-mouse game ensues before she realizes he′s an actual man, an ex-counter-terrorist named Dieter, the man the T-100 will be modeled on. After she tells him her story, he tells her another. He′s discovered that Cyberdyne is still active, and about to create Skynet. So she, John, and Dieter set off to finish the job. But first they must face the most insidious Terminator unit yet, one that can easily pass as human and who has all the resources of Cyberdyne, as well as several Terminators, at its command.

Amazon.com ReviewYou'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 WeeklyBased 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.

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