Infiltrator (T2)

I love when authors are handed either a deal too good to pass up or are needing some extra barbecue cash, and take up the mantle of authorship to write shitty movie adaptation books. Piers Anthony wrote the novelization of ‘Total Recall’ (based on the PK Dick short), Orson Scott Card novelized ‘The Abyss’.. and apparently S.M. Stirling wrote a trilogy of Terminator Universe novels.

I picked up T2 Infiltrator for a two dollars at Goodwill. Anyone who knows me is aware that I really think Stirling is a bad writer. I like his plot lines and a lot of characters, but in general, I find that his books piss me off more than they are enjoyed, they drag on and are soooo soooo soooo heavy handed.. In this case, I thought, ‘hey, its show more Stirling, I should give it a shot. Worst expected scenario is that it would be hum drum and just pass some time’. Turns out that it was a damn good book.

Knowing that time is elastic, and apt to revert to it’s original shape, SkyNet’s goal is now to work in the background. It’s primary goal is to bounce the time line back to its original shape. To do this, SkyNet needs a more malleable and versatile tool. In the future, SkyNet is building a new terminator (go figure, right?), this one is grown in a captured slave human’s womb. It is born and immediately surgically implanted with gear, grown in spurts via chemicals, and given constant combat training. A permanent mental connection/lifeline to the SkyNet system to ensure an addiction to the computer “mother’.

This new Infiltrator model’s (the I-950) biggest problem is emotions. Drugs, surgery, and training have removed most of these obstacles, but these pesky emotions are actually why the Infiltrator was created. If you cant feel, you cannot successfully infiltrate. Humans have a tendency to be able to notice unfeeling machines. The trouble is making sure that the Infiltrator can be aware of emotion, but still hold true to it’s design.

The book starts off very slow, but the background info is needed. Picking up right after the end of the 2nd movie, Cyberdyne has been blown to hell and back and is burning rubble. Dyson’s family is torn up at the loss of their father/husband/brother. The Connor mother/son have disappeared to South America. It speeds up though, and gets difficult to put down within a reasonable period of time.

Book 2 and 3 are in the mail to me, I suppose I can say I like Stirling a lot better when he is writing under someone else’s initial premise, as opposed to his own. The book has been crafted in a way that makes none of the existing plot lines incorrect, this helped with my opinion.

One annoyance - It is hard to “Suspend disbelief” when things hit so close to reality.. see the below for an example.

Based on this book, all it takes to hide a killing machine from the future is to:

1. put it in a pleasantly shaped female body
2. teach it to use sex as a weapon
3. make it manipulative and cold
4. teach it to ignore it’s emotions unless they prove useful
5. make sure that it knows how to convincingly employ ‘small talk’
6. assume it is always right and that its desires are predestined;

I have to wonder.. Is nearly every woman I ever met a robot/cyborg out to kill mankind? show less

This is a sequel to the stories told in the movies "Terminator" and "T2: Judgement Day", of which I am a large fan. This may be a novelization of the coming movie, and if so I am really looking forward to it. The story picks up ten years later; Sarah Connor and her son John (now 16) are peacefully living in Paraguay under assumed names, hoping that their last mission indeed saved the future of mankind, but not betting too much on it. Their next-door-neighbor, a retired anti-terrorist agent and dead ringer for the "Terminator" models, discovers their secret just in time to help when they have to defend themselves against a female "infiltrator", a mostly human cyborg who has come to kill the Connors and redirect Cyberdyne Corporation show more toward the eventual establishment of Skynet. The novel, by the way, is well-told, intriguing and well-paced, with a nice deadpan humor. The only quibble is the sheer coincidence of living next door to the model for the "Terminator" series (there seems to be no logical reason for this happening), and the inconclusive ending which screams the author's intent at a fourth story. I hope the movie doesn't do the same; this would have been a quite fine and satisfying story had it concluded here. A good summer read. show less

follows Terminator 2. In many ways this reminded me of the Sarah Connor Chronicles tv show. No time jumping or friendly terminator though. The Connors meet up with the man the T800 was based on. And a more organic terminator, called an Infiltrator, is sent back to try to change things by creating Skynet instead of trying to kill the Connors. Even though that is still a mission priority. The Connors take her down, but she has a replacement hidden away for the next book. Her name was Serena and many of the situations were similar to the T:SCC but John was more charismatic, mature and starting to bear the burden of being mankind's next savior, instead of being a whiny teen with responsibility issues.