If You Like The Terminator

(If You Like). The Terminator began life as a low-budget B movie seemingly destined for a short run at malls and drive-ins before blossoming into a billion-dollar franchise that launched the careers of director James Cameron and star Arnold Schwarzenegger. The original 1984 film not only spawned three sequels, a weekly television series, and countless novels, comic books, and videogames, it also redefined the science fiction genre with its blend of high tech and film noir. Here is the first book to explore the spectacular array of films, television shows, and other works that helped inspire The Terminator , as well as those that have drawn inspiration from it. If You Like The Terminator ... delves into the history of science-fiction cinema, from its earliest days to the golden age of the 1950s and beyond, encountering killer robots, time travelers and postapocalyptic wastelands along the way. This turbo-charged journey through time also reviews the improbable career of Arnold Schwarzenegger, revisits the action heroes of the 1980s, and reevaluates the films of James Cameron, before touching down in the computer-dominated realm of today's science fiction cinema and projecting the future of the Terminator franchise. From Metropolis to The Matrix , from Frankenstein to RoboCop , from H. G. Wells and Harlan Ellison to Roger Corman and Roland Emmerich, you'll find them all here in If You Like The Terminator .

We Fight Back Russia 2003. When it appears that the United States has unleashed its entire nuclear arsenal upon the world, Captain Dmitri Losenko, commander of the nuclear submarine Gorshkov, has no choice but to retaliate. His target? Alaska. Alaska 2018. Fighting for survival in the frozen wilderness, Molly Kookesh struggles to protect her makeshift Resistance cell from the Terminators. Inspired by John Connor’s radio broadcasts and following a brutal encounter with a fearsome machine, she decides it’s time to fight back… An official novel exploring the post-judgment day world of the hit movie Terminator ® Salvation™.

Riding the crest of popularity following Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Terminator Hunt continues the action where Aaron Allston's first Terminator 3 novel, Terminator Dreams left off, with an exciting original story of John Connor, Kate Brewster, and the human Resistance battling Skynet and its deadly robots. 2029 A.D.: Paul Keeley is a member of the Resistance who died over a year ago-or so everyone thinks, until he awakens in a hospital room and stumbles out into a raging battle between John Connor's elite team of Hellhounds and a group of Skynet robots led by the deadly Terminatrix. Back at Home Plate, Resistance headquarters, members of the Resistance discover that Paul has been brainwashed by Skynet. Living in a computer-simulated dream of the twentieth century, Paul, an expert on twentieth century life, was being used as part of an effort to train the T-X terminator for a time jump. John and Kate have no way of knowing where the jump will occur, so to prevent it from happening at all, they launch a daring plan to use John Connor as bait to capture the T-X. Meanwhile, Paul remains under suspicion, since no one knows how the brainwashing may still affect him. Capturing the T-X proves to be a deadly task with consequences nobody could foresee. The danger and suspense mount as Resistance action leads to an epic battle pitting human ingenuity and sheer courage against the coldblooded logic of machine intelligence. Fans of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines will not be disappointed. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

This volume of the classic stories of Philip K. Dick offers an intriguing glimpse into the early imagination of one of science fiction's most enduring and respected names. Since his untimely death in 1982, interest in Dick's work has continued to mount and his reputation has been enhanced by a growing body of critical attention as well as many films based on his stories and novels. Featuring the story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, which inspired the major motion picture Total Recall, this collection draws from the writer's earliest fiction, written during the years 1952-55. Also included are fascinating works such as The Adjustment Team (basis of the 2011 movie The Adjustment Bureau), Impostor (basis of the 2001 movie), and many others. "A useful acquisition for any serious SF library or collection." --Kirkus Reviews "More than anyone else in the field, Mr. Dick really puts you inside people's minds." --Wall Street Journal "The collected stories of Philip K. Dick are awe-inspiring." --Washington Post

Despite the heroic efforts of John Connor and Kate Webster, and the ultimate sacrifice of a T-850 terminator, Skynet became operational and mobilized its machine forces in all-out war against its prime enemy: mankind. More than twenty years later the war continues, fought by human resistance forces led by John and Kate, and by people in secret enclaves around the world. Raiding machine facilities, using small guerrilla forces to sabotage and destroy Skynet forces, the resistance is holding its own . . . but it's not enough. The self-aware AI that controls the robot terminators, the hunter-killers, and the rest of what used to be America's arsenal is too smart, too quick, too flexible to be defeated. Or perhaps the answer to human victory lies shrouded behind the mists of time. Before Judgment Day, Danny Avila was a programmer on the project that became Skynet. In the months leading up to Judgment Day he began to have nightmares involving Terminators rampaging and destroying the world. Then, two days before the holocaust, he disappeared. Found years later by John and Kate, completely amnesiac about events of his life prior to Judgment Day, he became a useful member of the resistance, with an uncanny ability to predict Skynet tactics. Now he is having Terminator dreams again, dreams of the days when he was on the Terminator design team . . . of the days when the world was on the path to destruction. Could there be some kind of psychic link between the Danny of today and the Danny of nearly thirty years ago---a mental "wire" through which thoughts and images are transmitted forward and backward in time? Might this one desperately stressed man living in two eras be the time machine the resistance needs to undo the devastation of Judgment Day? A daring and dangerous experiment may prove the salvation of mankind's future . . . At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Are cyborgs our friends or our enemies? Was it morally right for Skynet to nuke us? Is John Connor free to choose to defend humanity, or not? Is Judgment Day inevitable? The Terminator series is one of the most popular sci-fi franchises ever created, captivating millions with its edgy depiction of the struggle of humankind for survival against its own creations. This book draws on some of history’s philosophical heavy hitters: Descartes, Kant, Karl Marx, and many more. Nineteen leather-clad chapters target with extreme prejudice the mysteries surrounding intriguing philosophical issues raised by the series, including the morality of terminating other people for the sake of peace, whether we can really use time travel to protect our future resistance leaders in the past, and if Arnold’s famous T-101 is a real person or not. You’ll say “Hasta la vista, baby” to philosophical confusion as you develop a new appreciation for the complexities of John and Sarah Connor and the battles between Skynet and the human race.

"The self-aware computer defense system Skynet's years-long war on humanity nears completion, with only three-percent of the human population remaining. Seizing the opportunity for total annihilation, Skynet prepares a nuclear strike, even as a new model 808 Terminator sets its sights on John Connor and his resistance fighters. Their only hope is to take the fight to Skynet's mainframe at Thunder Mountain."--Publisher description.

From The Ashes, written by Hugo Award-winning author Timothy Zahn, sets the scene for the events chronicled in the movie Terminator Salvation, revealing the full story behind John Connor, the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators. In post-Judgment Day LA, two lost kids named Kyle and Star keep watch for Terminators; a jaded Marine struggles to keep his rag-tag community together in the face of unrelenting danger; and John and Kate Connor assemble their Resistance team for a brutal assault on a deadly enemy.

"...blest are those/Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled/That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger/To sound what stop she please." (Hamlet III, 2) I can imagine these Shakespearean lines occurring to my character Nebo Rhombus, confronted with obeying the mysterious will of the "plasmamorph" In "Instrument," one of three stories comprising Dangling Propositions. A force of life from Earth's atmosphere has revealed itself to Rhombus, an image consultant/promoter. It is determined to employ him to somehow lead humankind from a world-threatening course, before that course is cataclysmically corrected. A matter of course is also plotted in"The Superstoic," though on an individual scale. Whether ultra-reticent library worker Zharko Solovich is willing, he is held to account for his right to be silent in an alternate world where no such right exists. For compulsive mimic Bogustin Guisermann, who hides himself mirroring others, being unintentionally "gifted" with the ability to blind people to his presence, as a result of thought-projection experiments, may be the refuge from the"judging sight" of the world he's sought. In "Not to Behold," to be perceived, not to be perceived, seems the question.

As John Connor struggles with fears about his destiny as the head of the human resistance against the robotic forces of Skynet, a new advanced-model Terminator from the future is sent to kill him.