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T2: Infiltrator
by SM Stirling
(Gollancz, £6.99, 499 pages, paperback, published 11 July 2002.)
This is a novel set in the world of the Terminator
movies. It is a competently written SF action thriller, but it is rather
hamstrung by the constraints of the movie-defined world that it works
in and uses some clichés, such as that computers can find out
anything anywhere quite quickly. It was an enjoyable page-turner, but,
like many action thrillers, by the end I didn't feel that the time had
passed profitably. I thought it could have been shorter by half and
I had become irritated by some of the things that went on. Some of these
seemed to be due to the limits of the Terminator scenario. Indeed, do
we -- does the market -- want another Terminator movie, never mind a
book?
The main terminator in the book is new generation, female, terminator
who is a cyborg rather than a robot and who has human emotions, the
better to infiltrate human society. Her development and growth in the
post-Judgement Day future (and I'm assuming that anyone reading this
knows the basic scenario) is the best part of the book, because it is
largely free of the movies' limits. Her thoughts, which are ruthlessly
dedicated to destroying human opponents of Skynet (the sentient computer
who wants to destroy humankind), are well portrayed and her character
is convincing. She is sent back to the present, where Sara and John
Connor (who will lead the humans in the future) are older -- John is
16. Then things start to get a bit daft in ways that might work OK in
an action movie, might, but don't reading a book when you have
time to reflect. For example, dogs can reliably sense terminators, so
it is completely against character for the Connors to not have one because
John misses the poochie that got wasted in Terminator 2, all
of which is dwelt upon at such length that one come to see this as totally
out of character for ruthless survivors. A passing comment would have
been OK, but going on about it several times just fills up words and
gets annoying. There are other wastes of paper like this.
The infiltrator builds several big Arnie style terminators. She wants
to kill the Connors and also facilitate the research that leads to Skynet
being built. For some reason, all the terminators have the same face.
This was allowable in a movie just about 'cos it is the face we love,
but in a book -- why! The Connors' next-door neighbour also happens
to be -- inexplicably really -- the original human prototype of the
terminators. So we've got all these tough blokes running about with
big Arnie's face (they're all six foot six too, no stilts required).
Cue a farce or the Monty Python sketch where everyone is called Bruce?
Na, the good -- i.e. human -- guy scares the Connors a bit and nobody
else really notices. Besides, by now the Connors are so f***ing hard
that the terminators are just gun fodder for them really. One titanic
struggle with an indestructible robot is dramatic, the destruction of
seven of them one-by-one gets tedious and predictable. The chief terminator
turns out to be surprisingly un-bullet-proof as well. If I'd been the
author, I'd have sent five of those shape-shifter guys from Terminator
2 and to hell with human empathy. In a plot where the future can
be changed, I'd have killed a Connor or two to maybe bring 'em back
later as well. Instead, John gets the mandatory serious but not immobilising
flesh wound and Sara is merely shot a zillion times with a magnum 52
(presumably the handgun equivalent of volume 11 on the amplifier; yea,
yea I'm sure it really exists weapons nerds) and has to be left on a
stretcher for the paramedics. She lives... I think Skynet's only hope
is to send back John Wayne. Man, he didn't even need to reload!
Review by Richard Hammersley.
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