Customer Reviews

T2: The Future War

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

with Infiltrator, I thought we were in for a good read with this series. Unfortunately, it's just disintegrated. Nevermind movie continuity, Stirling has characters featured in Infiltrator who mysteriously disappear in this one when they should be there. It's a solid story, if you can ignore the glaring errors and mistakes.

So bad it's a blast to read. Jam packed with the author's political views, especially hilarious when they have nothing to do with the plot! There's nothing like giving book contracts to the mentally disturbed. Look out Vegans and environmentalists! You'll be target number one when Skynet rules, aparently. Also hilarous are the dropped characters and storylines, like the group of college students who have their own chapter to almost never be mentioned again. Also: There's a gas shortage! Don't waste gas! We have to get somewhere quickly for this plot twist, let's drive! And remember, if you disagree with Sterling's political views you are an "idiot activist in an idiot cause," so there!

T2: The Future War is the third book in a series that follows the characters of
The Terminator movies from where the movies leave off to future world that was
described so chillingly in the first movie. Stirling is faithful to the movies, and keep
his characters consistent with those on the big screen. He expands on the story
told in the movies and provides a good deal of background information and detail
on how the Terminator future can to happen. The problem with T2: The Future War
is that most of the plot and themes in the book are so simplistic that I found myself
skimming chapters to get to the paragraphs where SkyNet unleashes a new round of nasty machines upon humanity. The characters were so shallow that I simply did not care what happened to them. To make things worse, the ending is pre-ordained so there was no real suspense in the story.

A more serious problem, however, was that the book was full of cliches. For example, environmentalists and ecologists are portrayed as cold-blooded, fascist who are incapable of thinking for themselves. Stirling seems to be using this book
to editorialize on groups that he does not like, and he assums that his readers share his views. I lost interest after a few chapters.

Stirling has written some very good stories, but this is not one of them. Read The Children's Hour to see Stirling at his best.

"T2 The Future" is the third book by S.M. Stirling. This books starts right before Judgement Day though years of battling the Skynet. While this might have be good idea for the third teminator movie, it just didn't work well for this series. The writer left many details that would have explain the action of his characters. I believe that Mr. Stirling could have given the characters more emotions, like he did in the first two books. Also since the book had alot on jumping in the future, its clear that the reader lost alot that could have made the book better. As I said before, this have been better if it was a movie and not a book.

It's the same old song and dance. The left-wing revolutionaries fighting against the right-wing Nazis. Leninist/Marxists versus concentration camps. Science fiction is especially plagued by this utter lack of creativity, and sadly so. The T2 series is no exception. If you want to know who is evil I can tell you ahead of time they have blue eyes (sometimes "piercing blue eyes") and/or blond hair. If you want to know who is good, just check their skin color. If they are non-white then they're fighting for justice and freedom. This is not to say that we should be rooting for whites over blacks. I don't mean that. But this predictable politically correct dogma that Stirling serves up is so by-the-book that it lacks fire and imagination. Stirling has done better in the past and I hope he'll do better in the future.

For those working in the field of artificial intelligence, it is perhaps disconcerting that this field has been represented in stories and movies in the fashion that it has. It might be difficult to sell a book or a movie ticket though if one were to guide its plot with what is currently being accomplished in artificial intelligence. There is no doubt that robotics still remains a focus of research, and many identify the field of artificial intelligence with the development of robots. However, there have been major advances in artificial intelligence in the last decade in areas such as financial engineering, Ecommerce, bioinformatics, music composition, and network engineering. Artificial intelligence has thus found practical application, but these applications don't make for nice plots in movies and books of fiction.

That being said, it is still fun to read the stories and attend the movies that engage in the pure fantasy of robot armies and humanity's attempt to engage themselves in a "war against the machines." Viewing these stories or movies as entertainment though results in high expectations in their ability to thrill readers or fill them with dread. At least for me, this book did not do that. I personally cannot think of anything more terrifying than to be engaged in a confrontation with entities that do not sleep, have no conscience, and whose sole function is to see me and other humans dead. This story though did not fill me with any apprehension or any type of disquieting feeling when reading it. The machines did not occupy enough space in the story, but instead were merely lurking in the background. There were conflicts of course between them and the human resistance led by John Connor, but the battles, as described in the story, were not very exciting. The numerous scene changes in the story exacerbated this I think. The author wanted evidently to emphasize that the war against the machines was a global conflict, and so the story kept switching between various geographic locales. A few concentrated, intense battles in a few locations would better do the job of capturing the reader's attention and motivate empathy with the characters.

The enormous psychological pressure on humans that would be engaging in a machine war is not brought out in the story. Interestingly though, the author portrays the anti-technological Luddites as being tricked by the machines in supporting their war against humanity. The Luddite voices are being heard all over the globe now, not only against machine intelligence but practically every technological advance, and it is perhaps a carthasis to see them protrayed as they are in the story. Whatever their motivation to be engaged in an anti-technological crusade, it is doubtful that their efforts will reach a level of fruition that is satisfying to them. With faster processing, more sophisticated software, and with increasing applications that are driven by the needs of industry, business, and the military, the field of artificial intelligence continues to advance. One can easily imagine scenarios, based on these applications, where thinking machines play a dominant role in human affairs, and perhaps may get to the point where their autonomy becomes a threat to humankind. It is doubtful though that artificial intelligence will be discontinued as a technology. Stories like the one in this book will continue to entertain with various degrees of success. The real story of machine intelligence is much more interesting though...indeed much more.

In reading science fiction, the reader automatically assume a healthy dose of literary license - futuristic technology, space flight, incredible inventions, amazing biotechnology, etc. Here the trouble is the plot.

First there is the idea that with sentient Skynet all these various groups operate under the radar. The social analysis is on par with a high school freshman. For starters, we meet a new heroine in Alaska, named after Lenin. For at least twenty years Marxism has been taken seriously only on university campuses and maybe North Korea but for some reason we must read twaddle about this "social movement." More ridiculous is the group setting up Nazi-like concentrations camps (they even talk like the Gestapo) for the rest of poor humanity which makes zero sense.

Why in the world would intelligent, killer machines go to the trouble of recruiting human allies to round up stragglers, build concentration camps, release deadly viruses and, when they get sick, send those unfortunates to ANOTHER camp to be killed. None of this action is in any way related to logic or rational thinking. All the machines had to do was build a few copies and start killing folks or let them starve to death. It is just so absurd.

Then there's Sarah, heading off to South America like we'd take a ride to the mall (and this is after a global nuclear holocaust). How John rises from Alaskan back-woodsman to Grand Martial of Humankind is never fully explained (how can it be?) We also learn that the reason all this is happening is that John misinterpreted / misunderstood the final words of his former love as "enter" instead of "erase". Now THAT makes a whole lot of sense, right?

I had real hopes for this but when we read about Nazis and Commies and Luddites and people killing survivors it's just too much. Skip this one if at all possible.

While I liked the first two entries in this series, this one is weak. Stirling seems in a hurry to finish off the series and the great story line he began in "Infiltrator" and "Rising Storm" falls flat here.

I assume the pressure of deadlines and a restricted amount of page space are to blame?...or perhaps the author had other projects that were more important?

Its too bad that a strong series had to fininsh on this note.

I just finished reading this book and was very disappointed with it over all. The quality was not equal to the first two books in the Triliogy. I feel like there was an entire book missing. At the end of Rising Storm we were in Paraguay and "little Sister" Alissa had found the Conners. Suddenly in this book we are in Alaska and absolutely no mention of her as if she never existed. Feel it was written in a hurry to get it released at the same time as the movie.

...The first two books in this series were great!, this one was not! I was very disapointed with it. I felt the author didnt have is heart into this book and it heavily lacked in imagination and it was apparent that the writer was rushed through writing this book to get it published within a deadline.

Many of the character building plots were weak, underdeveloped, and worst of all, completely irrelevant to the story. This book really should have been broken down into a couple of books because the first 3/4 of this book cover a 6 month span of events then all at once you are left hanging at a major event at the end of a chapter and then next chapter the author sling shots you 3 to 7 years from that point of the story. It leaves you desperately trying to figure out what the heck happened. This book is very difficult to follow and I found myself having to re-read several areas of the book to figure out the details of what happend and why. Also I found the events of Judgement Day to be totally ridiculous. It was obvious that the author knows little to nothing about computer technology and I found it laughable that computers are taking over cars, tractors, and lawnmowers are driving themselves wildly in attempts to mow people down. Come on, the time line for Judgement Day is our present time. I feel that a more plausable set of events could be developed. This was primarily where I felt imagination was misplaced and not well thought out.

Other problems that bugged me: The book never explained why the Terminators are cloned after Dieter. I felt Sarah was too super human and larger than life. I expected her character to die in battle. Also I expected Dieter to be captured and cloned and his clones used to infiltrait the resistance like they did in the previous books. Its almost like a completely different author wrote this book without reading the first two books in the series. There were so many holes in this story line that it left me completely irratated after finishing the book.

However if you have read the first two books, you must read it just to go along for the ride. I hope the last Movie will make up for it.