Before I can talk about the book Terminator Salvation: Trial By Fire by Timothy Zahn, which follows upon the events of the 2009 movie Terminator Salvation, I need to provide a bit of background.
Arnold Schwarzenegger truly was a machine in 1984 when James Cameron's movie Terminator burst onto the scene. He played a cyborg assassin from the future sent to the past to stop John Connor from being born. To do that, he needs to kill Connor's mother, Sarah (Linda Hamilton) before he could be born. Of course, the Terminator wasn't the only thing sent back in time. Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) was also sent back by the John Connor of the future to prevent this from happening. These three characters — John, Sarah, and Kyle — are intrinsically tied across time throughout the entire series.
Putting aside the dangers of time travel and altering the future by affecting the past, Terminator was a science fiction phenomenon that inspired two other movies further exploring the potential of world domination by machines — Terminator 2: Judgment Day (T2) in 1991, and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (T3) in 2003. Though I would like to forget T3, the first two were amazing films with special effects and ideas that really pushed science fiction films to become more technologically adept.
I saw Terminator Salvation in May 2009 and seem to be firmly in the minority when it comes to thinking the movie didn't suck. Personally, I liked the film and feel it held true to the spirit of the original three films. Unlike the first three Terminator films, which started in the "present" of 1984 and headed toward the inevitable "Judgment Day" when the machines take over, Terminator Salvation picked up in 2018 after the machines had already taken over.
Skynet, an artificially intelligent computer system, started a nuclear war to destroy or enslave humanity to better protect it. The Resistance is a loose federation of quasi-military groups around the world hoping to destroy the machines and free mankind. The machines are pretty good at plotting to destroy the Resistance too.
[Spoilers ahead if you haven't seen Terminator Salvation yet.]
At the beginning of the film, John Connor (Christian Bale) isn't quite the all mighty Resistance leader he is when he sends Kyle Reese back in time in the first movie. But he's rising through the ranks. After a successful attack on a Skynet base, he stumbles upon evidence of new type of Terminator incorporating human tissue. Along the way, they also discover a group of human prisoners used for some sort of experimentation. After John and his team leave with the rescued prisoners, one more form rises from the rubble — Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington)...
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