T2: Infiltrator

1st edition paperback, vg++

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