In a press release to Variety Halycon announced the auction would be closing:

"Over the past few weeks, Halcyon and its professionals have engaged in in-depth discussions and negotiations with numerous serious potential buyers, including several major movie studios," Halcyon said. "In addition, a number of attractive refinancing alternatives have also been presented. In order to maximize the value of a transaction for all of the company's creditors and stakeholders, we are fully analyzing all these options."

Haylcon, which has filed for bankruptcy, explained in November that they would find their "stalking horse" bid, or one bid which they pick as representing a minimum bid price for the assets. But apparently, they have done away with this part of the process. Many people believe that this is a bad sign for the future of Skynet.

Over at Nikki Finke's blog the comments are pretty telling:

From: Fan of the First Three Terminators, Not This One:
Look at it logically. These dopes paid 25 million for the franchise (well, they defaulted on the payments, and got sued by the hedge fund that loaned them the money but why get technical?) They got sued by their producing partner for 160 million bucks for fraud before the film even opened because they were already welching on money they owed people. They filed for bankruptcy before the DVD even came out. This Terminator grossed 60 million less than the last one, despite the rise in ticket prices. And since DVD sales are in the toilet everywhere, and that's where a high-budget tentpole actually goes into profit, whoops, no profit. Oh, and the TV show from the franchise tanked too. Also the video game and the Six Flags ride, because Six Flags went bankrupt.

Maybe the Pizza Hut Terminator Salvation Pizza was good, that I don't know, but if it was like the movie it cost too much to make, came in a flashy package, but was ultimately flat and tasteless. Therefore this franchise is worth:

From Warner Borg:
I'll tell you what the problem is here. They are expecting someone to offer a big money for the rights and no one has. And frankly, no one will.

Why? Because the Terminator brand is played out at this point. It needs to go away for a few years and then reappear with some hot new talent behind the camera. No one is going to pay a premium for a franchise they can't get started ASAP. If someone like Fox or WB does snap up the rights to the franchise then expect them to get it for a bargain and sit on the rights for a few years.

The numbers that were being floated around by Halcyon ($75m+ !!!!!!!) for the rights were absolutely laughable.

It's sad, but we tend to agree. James Cameron should just buy this up on the cheap, and decide who should be in charge of resurrecting this series. But if this goes the way people are predicting, it could be many, many years until we see another Terminator film — and don't hold your breath for a worthy installment.

Star Wars
Whether it's Han Solo's unseen girlfriend, Anakin preparing for a podrace or a very human Jabba, these ten clips show that George Lucas' space opera was more fun before it was edited.

Star Trek
Klingon torture! William Shatner's original death! Skydiving Captains! Ten clips to give you a good feeling about what you've missed so far.

Robot Movies
Never mind the Transformers, it's the Terminator material amongst these five clips that are must-sees. Especially the Arnold bit from T3.

Super-Heroes Can Save Us
Fifteen clips from Iron Man, Hulk, the X-Men movies as well as Batman and Superman's long careers on celluloid to remind you that sometimes, deleted scenes can add little to a movie - and sometimes, they can add an entire character. Go check out the Superman clone you've never met before.

All That College Stuff from Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen:

Lt. Traxler Should've Let Someone Else Talk To Reese in The Terminator:

Sarah Connor Decides To Become Bad-Ass in The Terminator:

Meet William Candy, The Face Behind Your Robotic Overlords, from Terminator 3:

You've probably already heard about the lawsuit and the bankruptcy filing — but we've read the legal filings, and we have some more info about the tangled web below. The most important question for movie-lovers, however, is: Does this mean Terminator 5 (and 6) are doomed? Will the legal battles and money disputes keep the movie rights tied up indefinitely?

People familiar with the lawsuits tell io9 that Terminator 5 will definitely still happen — although different sources disagree about how long it'll take. But sources seem to agree that Terminator Salvation made too much money ($371 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo) for anyone to stand in the way of a fifth outing.

"Terminator 4 was a big hit, and everybody who was connected with that movie was pretty happy with it, and the're looking forward to a Terminator 5 and a Terminator 6 down the road," says a source familiar with Halcyon. All that needs to happen is for Halcyon to get rid of some liens that its financing company put on its assets (see below) and the company will move forward. (The holding company only filed for Chapter 11, or restructuring, bankruptcy.) Even though Terminator Salvation was more expensive than anticipated — something Halcyon blames on Pacificor — it still made a healthy profit.

Another source familiar with the case agrees, but says that the courts may have to get involved in the question of who owns the Terminator movie rights, and that may take some time. At the end of the day, someone will emerge holding those rights, and that someone will be highly motivated to put together another installment — but it may or may not be Halcyon co-founders Victor Kubicek and Derek Anderson.

So how did we reach this apocalyptic legal scenario?

The Terminator movie rights are at the center of a massive power struggle between the producers of Terminator 4 and their financial backers, and the allegations are already flying like a squad of Hunter-Killers. We read the filings that Halcyon Co. put forth in their lawsuit against their financing company (Pacificor) and one exec in particular, Kurt Benjamin, and it reads like a thriller, with deception, double-crosses, deadly plane crashes and ticking clocks.

In a nutshell, Halcyon got wind of an opportunity to buy the Terminator franchise in 2006, but to do this they needed to raise cash in a hurry. Halcyon co-founders Victor Kubicek and Derek Anderson met up with Kurt Benjamin, who helped raise money from Pacificor. But in their lawsuit, Halcyon claims that Benjamin never revealed that he was an employee of Pacificor. So Halcyon allegedly gave inside information to Benjamin — including the fact that they were desperate to raise money in time to buy the Terminator rights — and then Benjamin turned around and gave that info to Pacificor. That inside info allegedly allowed Pacificor to strong-arm Halcyon into agreeing to tougher loan terms.

Later, Benjamin allegedly used his inside info about Halcyon to extort a salary out of the company, driving it deeper into debt and forcing it to seek a second loan from Pacificor at tougher terms. After Pacificor's founder died in a plane crash, Halcyon allegedly became even more dependent on Benjamin to negotiate continuing finance from Pacificor, because Benjamin claimed nobody else at Pacificor even knew about the Terminator deal. Halcyon claims it was left with no choice but to pay up Benjamin's alleged "blackmail," which added to its debt load — at one point, Halcyon claims that it worried it would run out of money a scant few months before T4 was due to come out.

The upshot of all this is that Halcyon is apparently deeper in debt to Pacificor than the Terminator producers had bargained on. And according to their legal filings, Pacificor put a lien on all their assets "in a deliberate and desperate attempt to seize control and ownership of the Halcyon entities and the [Terminator] franchise," and to keep Halcyon from paying off its creditors. "As a result of the Lien, Halcyon has been unable to obtain financing that would enable [it] to meet its obligations, which could potentially result in Halcyon's loss of the [Terminator] Franchise."

A spokesperson for Halcyon declined to comment on pending litigation.

But Benjamin, the main defendant in one of Halcyon's two legal actions, tells io9 "everything that's alleged in their lawsuit, every allegation, is a lie." He adds: "This is just salacious creative writing, and I highly recomend that they and their lawyers work more on writing science fiction."

Both the Halcyon co-founders and their attorney knew all along that Benjamin worked for Pacificor, he claims. And far from acting as a go-between in the lending negotiations between Pacificor and Halcyon, Benjamin says he had no part in the discussions once he introduced the two parties. And after Pacificor's founder was killed in that plane crash, Anderson and Kubicek "coerced me to work with them," says Benjamin. Benjamin claims he wasn't even drawing a salary from Pacificor — he was just paid on commission for any deals he set up, which means his first paycheck didn't even materialize until January 2008.

And the reason why Terminator Salvation wound up costing more than expected, according to Benjamin? Producers Anderson and Kubicek wasted the money on personal expenses. "They're known in most Hollywood circles as the glitter twins," claims Benjamin. "The minute these guys got the funding, they went on wild spending sprees."

Looking at these storyboards, we wish we could go back in time and give Terminator Salvation's entire budget to James Cameron, circa 1991, so he could film these intense post-apocalyptic battle sequences. There's also an extra Sarah Connor nightmare, which includes Arnold Schwarzenegger menacing her son, and a fiery nuclear holocaust. And you glimpse concept art for the Terminator's cryogenic "hybermatrix."

These storyboards come from 1991's Terminator 2: The Book Of The Film, which includes the entire movie's original script illustrated by stills — or, in the case of these unfilmed scenes, by storyboards and art. It's out of print, but you can get a used copy on Amazon. Many thanks to David J. Williams for mailing us his copy!

The deleted Future War sequence, page 1

The deleted Future War sequence, page 2

The deleted Future War sequence, page 3

The deleted Future War sequence, page 4

The deleted Future War sequence, page 5

The deleted Future War sequence, page 6

The deleted Future War sequence, page 7

The deleted Future War sequence, page 8

A deleted scene involving the T-1000.

Some concept art/storyboards for the peaceful future coda showing an older Sarah Connor.

The Terminator ensconced.

Another stunt sequence involving the T-1000 which didn't get filmed.

Sarah Connor's nightmare, page 1

Sarah Connor's nightmare, page 2

Sarah Connor's nightmare, page 3

Sarah Connor's nightmare, page 4

The Terminator in his "Hybermatrix."

So in case you've been living in a bunker, waiting for the nuclear bombardment to begin, the Terminator franchise is about a super-computer named Skynet, which decides to eliminate the threat of humanity with yummy, cleansing nuclear fire. But a few humans survive, and they fight back against Skynet's robotic rule over the planet. The humans' leader is John Connor, a badass resistance fighter. Skynet discovers time travel and sends robots back in time to kill John Connor's mother, Sarah, before he can be born, and later to kill the young John Connor. But Skynet's time-traveling robots always fail, and John Connor lives to fight the robots in the future. Okay? Okay. Also, the person who gets sent back in time to protect the young Sarah Connor is Kyle Reese, who becomes John Connor's father.

To get ramped up for Terminator Salvation, you can read all about the making of the film. You can look at some fantastic concept art here and here and here. And you can read about the construction of the Hydrobots, the underwater Terminators. You can watch some clips. You can even read a synopsis.

But if you really want to go deeper into the whys — and more importantly, the whens — of the Terminator universe, you can read our obsessive-compulsive effort to catalog every timeline in the movies and the television show. Every time someone travels through time, you get a different version of reality. (And the future in Terminator Salvation is the product of many, many trips through time, as John Connor says in the trailers: "This isn't the future my mother warned me about." Too bad that scene doesn't appear in the movie.) If our own timeline catalog wasn't OCD enough, you can also admire one fan's all-consuming whiteboard.

You can also read my essay about why this is the best year to be a Terminator fanatic, back when Terminator: The Sarah connor Chronicles was still on the air and I was still pumped for Terminator Salvation. Ah, those giddy, innocent days back in April.

And then you can read our review of Terminator Salvation, which talks about how it all goes south.

So after you see Terminator Salvation, you may wonder what the heck happened to make this movie such a mess. Our past coverage provides some clues: for one thing, Christian Bale explains that John Connor only had a small role in the film, until he put his foot down — and you can see in the film how Connor's storyline doesn't really warrant quite so much screen time. Moon Bloodgood talks about a key scene between herself and star Sam Worthington, which had to be hacked up because she showed her breasts in it. (You can tell — it's raining, and then suddenly, it's not.) The whole film leads up to a dark, super-weird ending, which McG explains here — and which had to be scrapped after it was leaked online.

And then, once you're fully briefed on Terminator Salvation, you can look back and read up on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the show that brought a level of psychological intensity and thought-provoking storytelling to the franchise that we'll probably never see again. Here's our complete primer on the show, written before the final episode but still pretty helpful. Want to know more about the philosophy behind the show? We interviewed creator Josh Friedman twice, here and here. And here's our chat with Shirley Manson and Summer Glau about playing killer robots, from Wondercon.

The weird innards-revealing ad is supposed to show how cutting-edge the phone is, and highlight the fact that you can see the phone's inner workings. Says Beckham, "I love classic watches so a phone that exposes its mechanics while also being so stylish is really unique."

Here's a video of the ad campaign, which weirdly doesn't make me want to get this human-killing phone at all:

[Guardian]

On the one hand, television's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has finally hit its stride, and it's asking similar questions about artificial intelligence and apocalypses as Battlestar Galactica or Twelve Monkeys. On the other, Terminator Salvation is looking like one of the summer's most interesting movies, with a plot about a man who discovers he's a cyborg.

These two versions of Terminator are utterly different from each other. They don't just contradict each other, they approach the basic premise of "killer cyborgs from the future" in wildly different ways. (Obviously, I haven't seen Terminator Salvation yet, so I'm going by the clips I've seen and my conversation with McG and some of the actors.) I can't remember a situation like this ever happening before: the Star Trek movies were on at the same time as TNG, DS9 and Voyager, but they were part of the same universe. Maybe the closest thing is The Dark Knight being in theaters the same year as Batman: The Brave And The Bold hit our television screens.

The difference is — apologies to Brave and Bold fans here — that both versions of Terminator seem ambitious. They're both trying to make a grander statement and create something better than disposable pop fluff.

If you've been watching Sarah Connor, you won't need to be told how ambitious that show is. It's like a sweeping novel, which delves intensely into the psyches of a half dozen or so characters. Every episode is full of introspection, but also little metaphors and artistic touches that reinforce the show's psychological investigation. Sarah Connor has grown into a fractured, paranoid, asskicking, reflective, complex character. Derek Reese's story arc, with his lost love from the future and all of his regrets, feels operatic. And then there's the great interplay between Ellison and John Henry. If the show has a weakness, it's that it's sometimes too ambitious and falls short of its aims. But even its harshest critics wouldn't accuse it of lacking ambition.

Meanwhile, I have no idea whether Terminator Salvation will be a great movie. But I do know that McG, and everyone else involved in making it, has been saying the right stuff about trying to create something more meaningful than just a summer splodebuster. McG's attempts to bring a new look to the series, with that "distressed" filmstock and a reliance, where possible, on practical effects by Stan Winston and company, seem like brave steps forward. Bringing on Jonathan Nolan to replace the Terminator 3 screenwriters also seems like a blessed relief. At the very least, it'll be miles better than T3 — the other day, someone asked McG about the humor in his film, and he said there isn't any. "There's not a great deal of humor and warmth in this world," he said. So no funny sunglasses, or "Talk to the hand."

But both continuations of James Cameron's vision are also asking very different questions: at its root, Sarah Connor Chronicles is about what it means to be human (in a similar way than BSG was), while Terminator Salvation will reportedly be all about how we view technology.

In T: SCC, our human characters struggle with the issue of fighting machines without losing their own humanity in the process. It's a constant question in the show: how far can you go before you lose what you're fighting to save? And at the same time, all of the show's artificial intelligences are probing the nature of humanity, and trying it on for size. Trying to understand what makes us humans tick (or stop ticking, if you apply enough pressure in the right spot.) You've got Cameron (Summer Glau) who's done ballet for no apparent reason other than enjoyment, who's tried to figure out how to become a better manipulator, and who's seemed to be practicing seduction on some occasions. You've got Catherine Weaver (Shirley Manson) who's struggling to pretend to be a good mother for the cameras. And then there's John Henry, who's literally getting schooled, not just in ethics, but in the nature and value of human life, by former FBI agent Ellison. Every week, the show opens up the question of human frailties, and human greatness, a little more.

Meanwhile, in every interview, McG hits the same notes about Terminator Salvation: it's about our relationship with high tech. We can now give people replacement hearts, replacement joints, replacement limbs, brain pacemakers, and so on. What does all this technology mean for our future, and can we trust it? (It seems like a good theme for a huge-budget movie that can afford to show lots and lots of shiny toys.) In the film, Marcus (Sam Worthington) thinks he's a human, until he realizes his own body is mostly made of metal. And then, in the movie's third act, John Connor has to decide whether to trust this apparently sympathetic cyborg, Marcus, with his life — and everything hinges on that question. Can we trust technology?

So in a sense, you could say Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Terminator Salvation are going in opposite directions with the same ideas. The good news is, they're both pretty exciting. And hey, did I mention there's a new T:SCC episode on tonight at 8? There is.

Earlier this month, we reviewed P.W. Singer's latest book, Wired for War, which examines the growing role of robotics in warfare, but also looks into the human component of technology and how these advances will impact the way in which we percieve - and fight - one another.

You open your book with a reference to the show Battlestar Galactica, and throughout, I caught a huge number of science fiction references, from the Terminator, Star Trek, Short Circuit, the Matrix and others. How close to truth do some of these fictional stories come? Will the machines rise up and kill us all?

The book is very much about how the machines that were once only used in science fiction are rapidly becoming battlefield reality.

I use these science fiction references not only because I was the kid who grew up with Star Wars bedsheets, who now consults for the Pentagon, but also because of the very real impact of science fiction on what we build, but also how we understand it. New technologies often can seem not merely incomprehensible, but unimaginable. Science fiction, though, helps to take the shock out of what analysts call "Future-Shock." By allowing us to imagine the unimaginable, it helps prepare us for the future, including even in war.

This preparation extends beyond future expectations; science fiction creates a frame of reference that shapes our hopes and fears about the future, as well as how we reflect on the ethics of new technology. One set of human-rights experts I queried on the laws of unmanned warfare referenced Blade Runner, Terminator, and Robocop with the same weight as they did the Geneva Conventions. At another human rights organization, two leaders even got into a debate over whether the combat scenes in Star Trek were realistic; their idea was that resolving this could help determine whether the fictional codes of the Federation could be used as real world guides for today's tough ethical choices in war. And, of course, every single roboticist knows Asimov's "3 Laws" by heart and they have become the reference point for ethical discussions about robots.

[On the other hand], I don't think we have that kind of world coming any time soon. You can't do a book about robots without dealing with the question of a robots' revolt, so there is actually a chapter in Wired for War on it. That is, what do the actual experts in both science and the military think about robot revolt and whether it's a likelihood, and why it might, or might not happen? Here's a hint: It is not The Terminator, but The Matrix that may be more informative.

Your book explores how the introduction of robotics changes elements of the military command structure. Specifically you note that generals have the ability to take a far more active role in the actions of a battle. Do you see this change as a positive one for how battles are conducted?

No. This is actually one of those dirty little secrets that people in military are somewhat afraid to talk about for risk of their own careers. I call it the rise of the "tactical generals."

Our technologies are making it very easy for leaders at the highest level of command not only to peer into, but even take control of the lowest level operations. One four-star general, for example, in the book talked about he once spent a full two hours watching drone footage of an enemy target and then personally decided what sized bomb to drop on it. Similarly, a Special Operations Forces captain talked about a one-star, watching a raid on a terrorist hideout via a Predator, radioing into tell him where to move not merely his unit in the midst of battle, but where to position his individual troops.

These enhanced connections certainly help commanders become better informed and take personal responsibility for the situation. Indeed, who knows the commanders' intent better than the commanders themselves? But the line between timely intervention and micromanagement is a fine one, indeed. For instance, the four-star general can do the job of the captains, but those captains can't do the same on the kind of big strategic issues that only a four-star general has the authority and experience to handle. Even more, we have to ponder the long term consequences. What happens when the young officers now being cut out of the chain or micromanaged advance up the ranks... without the experience of making the tough calls?

This leadership issue is not just one for the troops. Civilian leaders are also being tempted to intervene, as they also now have a new ability to watch and decide what's going on in wars. Referencing how President Johnson often tried to influence the broader bombing campaign in Vietnam, a former Service Secretary worried that ultimately "It'll be like taking LBJ all the way down into the foxhole."

My sense on this is that we have to start wrestling with all the tough questions that are beginning to flow out from a world in which science fiction-like capabilities are being used in our very real and very human world.

Fortunately, in looking at future challenges, the lessons of the past remain solid guideposts. For example, on the issue of leadership, General George Marshall, chief of staff of the U.S. Army during World War II, remains an apt model, even for 21st century leaders. New inventions like the radio and teletype may have given him what seemed like at the time a science fiction-like ability to instruct his officers from afar. Marshall's approach, however, was to set the broad goals and agenda, have smart staff officers write up the details of the plan, but ensure that everything remained simple enough that a lieutenant in the field could understand and implement everything on their own. Just as the bedrock values of good politics, ethics, and law remain the same, regardless of the technology or century, so does good leadership.

Introducing autonomous systems into battle, either through Predator drones or Packbots, means that there is a huge amount of 'hands off' fighting on the part of soldiers - it takes them out of harm's way, which is generally seen as a positive step for how wars are fought. But what are some of the negative ramifications here?

This is a great illustration of the ripple effects of the future of war onto such areas as our politics.

I thought a former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reagan put it well, when he said, "I like these systems because they save lives. But I also worry about more marketization of war, more "shock and awe" talk to defray discussion of the costs. People are more likely to support the use of force if they view it as costless."
My sense here is that robots bode to take certain trends already in play to their final, logical ending point. With no more draft, no more declaration of wars, no war bonds, and now the knowledge that the Americans at risk are mainly just American machines, the already-lowering bars to war may well hit the ground. We may well be seeing this now, with the Pakistan drone strikes. We've had over 50 of these strikes into Pakistan over the last year and a half, essentially the opening round of the Kosovo War. Yet, because they are unmanned and none of our people are at risk, we barely even talk about it in our media or politics. I think of SF writers like Vernor Vinge and Joe Haldeman here, and the parallels in our real world.

One of the enduring images of Science Fiction is that of the humanoid robot, like C3P0 or from Isaac Asimov's books. But the robots that we have now aren't anything like that. Do you think that we'll see more robots in the future designed so that their forms follow function, or will we move towards humanoid models that are more familiar? Will we avoid human forms in battle so that soldiers don't start sympathizing with the robots?

For all of humankind's progress in making various vehicles to move us from place to place, nothing yet beats our own effectors made for walking. Wheeled vehicles can only operate on 30% of the Earth's land surface, tracked vehicles on roughly 50%, while legs can tackle nearly 100%. Moreover, almost all the adjustments we have made to that surface to make it of value to us, our cities and buildings, were designed for those with legs.

The result is that, while our image of robots as metal humans may come from a mix of Hollywood movies and arrogance, the reality is this "humanoid" form of two arms and two legs may well be a necessary design for many roles, especially in war. In 2004, DARPA funded a study of optimal military robots forms that found "Humanoid robots should be fielded – the sooner the better."

But the human form is just a shape that robots might take. There is no limit on its size. Asimo, the robot that Honda has spent over $100 million developing, is roughly the size of a person, while Chroino, a robot from the University of Kyoto, stands just a foot high. Then there are "Mechas," basically giant robots. The word "mecha" comes from the Japanese abbreviation meka, shorthand for all things mechanical. Mechas are a staple of video games like Metal Gear Solid and Japanese manga comics, in which the Tokyo of the future is filled with giant robots that do construction, policing, and, of course, fight wars. In western science fiction, mechas have appeared as huge, building-sized robots such as the Iron Giant and or as just slightly bigger than human robotic suits, such as the one famously driven by Sigourney Weaver in Aliens.

With these inspirations in mind, many organizations have taken to making mechas real. Toyota Motor Corp. for example has developed the i-Foot. It is a 200 kg robot that stands on two legs and can climb stairs. The most popular military mecha designs borrow liberally from the world of science fiction. Sakakibara Kikai Co., for example, makes the Land Walker, which is effectively the Star Wars AT-ST All Terrain Scout Walker made real (this was the machine that the Ewoks took on in Return of the Jedi). Its prototype stands on two legs, it is 11 feet high, and has a design of mounting two cannon.

The advantage of such mecha designs is that, just like with humans, legs gives such giants the means to step over any obstacles that might limit where a truck or tank could go. However, the legs are also the major weakness. Robotic legs remain incredibly complex and expensive, and less capable the bigger they get. Moreover, being tall may allow the mecha to look down on opponents, but it also means that every enemy out there can see it. And even if those enemies are as unsophisticated as the stupid, despicable little Ewoks (who are to blame for the ruination of the Star Wars franchise), all they have to do is take out the legs to ruin the mecha's day.

For similar reasons many disparage the humanoid design, for robots big or small. When most of us look in the mirror, we have to admit that our bodies are not perfect and not just in the extra pounds on our waistlines or crooked nose from that old football injury. For example, our visual sensors (our eyes) are really quite badly situated, create bad periphery, have multiple blind spots, can't see in multiple spectrums, and are blind in the dark.

The result then is that while humanoid robots are a central type of robot form, they will not be the only one. The same DARPA study that extolled the future of humanoid soldiers also found that two legs are not necessarily the optimal form. As Rodney Brooks of the company iRobot (named after the Asimov book, they are the people who brought you the Packbot military robot and the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner) predicts, "In the next 10-20 years, we will get over our Star Wars-Star Trek complexes and build truly innovative robots."

While we've brought up Asimov, we have to talk about his 3 Laws of Robotics, and you mention that the stories are all about the robots breaking those laws, or some sort of conflict with them. Do you think that there is any merit to the introduction of said laws, or some variation to try to protect us from our creations?

When people talk about robots and issues of ethics, they always seem to bring up Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics." But there are three big problems with these laws and their use in our real world. The first is that the laws are fiction! They are a plot device that Asimov made up to help drive his stories. Even more, his tales almost always revolved around how robots might follow these great sounding, logical ethical codes, but still go astray and the unintended consequences that result. An advertisement for the 2004 movie adaptation of Asimov's famous book I, Robot (starring the Fresh Prince and Tom Brady's baby mama) put it best, "Rules were made to be broken." For example, in one of Asimov's stories, robots are made to follow the laws, but they are given a certain meaning of "human." Prefiguring what now goes on in real-world ethnic cleansing campaigns, the robots only recognize people of a certain group as "human." They follow the laws, but still carry out genocide.

The second problem is that no technology can yet replicate Asimov's laws inside a machine. Roboticist Daniel Wilson's quote in the book puts it well. "Asimov's rules are neat, but they are also bullshit. For example, they are in English. How the heck do you program that?"

The most important reason for Asimov's Laws not being applied yet is how robots are being used in our real world. You don't arm a Reaper drone with a Hellfire missile or put a machine gun on a MAARS (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System) not to cause humans to come to harm. That is the very point! The same goes to building a robot that takes any order from any human. Do I really want Osama Bin Laden to be able to order about my robot? And finally, the fact that robots can be sent out on dangerous missions to be "killed" is often the very rationale to using them. To give them a sense of "existence" and survival instinct would go against that rationale, as well as opens up potential scenarios from another science fiction series, the Terminator movies. The point here is that much of the funding for robotic research comes from the military, which is paying for robots that follow the very opposite of Asimov's laws. It explicitly wants robots that can kill, won't take orders from just any human, and don't care about their own lives.

The bigger issue, though, when it comes to robots and ethics, is not whether we can use something like Asimov's laws to make machines that are moral (which may be an inherent contradiction, given that morality wraps together both intent and action, not mere programming). Rather, we need to start wrestling with the ethics of the people behind the machines. Where is the code of ethics in the robotics field for what gets built and what doesn't? To what would a young roboticists turn to? Who gets to use these sophisticated systems and who doesn't? Is a Predator drone a technology that should just be limited to the military? Well, too late, the Department of Homeland Security is already flying six Predator drones doing border security. Likewise, many local police departments are exploring the purchase of their own drones to park over him crime neighborhoods. I may think that makes sense, until the drone is watching my neighborhood. But what about me? Is it within my 2nd Amendment right to have a robot that bears arms?

These all sound a bit like the sort of questions that would only be posed at science fiction conventions. But that is my point. When we talk about robots now, we are no longer talking about "mere science fiction" as one Pentagon analyst described of these technologies. They are very much of our real world.

As robots are used more and more in battle, it should be noted that the United States is not necessarily the leader in their deployment - do you foresee any sort of arms race when it comes to robots? Will all the low-tech methods for disabling robots be part of that arms race?

Yes, the US is certainly ahead now in this revolution. But what should worry us is that in war, there is no permanent first mover advantage. The French and British first used tanks, and then watched the German panzers roll right over them. The same goes in technology. For example, how many readers are now looking at this article on their Commodore or Wang computers?

Today, 43 other countries are working on military robotics of some sort, including Iran, China, Russia, and Pakistan. And we must worry about where the state of American manufacturing and, even more, our science and mathematics education has us headed. What does it mean to depend on soldiers with computer chips made in China and the software written in India?

But, as you note, robots are vulnerable to both high tech and low tech responses to target new vulnerabilities. A robot might be targeted for hacking, meaning we will have wars not just of destruction, but of "persuasion," where you try to not destroy the enemy tank, but jam or take it over. On the low tech side, though, an incredibly useful technology against one of our SWORD systems (a machine gun armed land robot) is actually a 6 year old with a can of spray paint. You either have to be incredibly bloody minded and shoot an unarmed little kid or watch as they take out the sensors and effectively blind your sophisticated machine.

Not all robotic or automated systems necessarily are mobile, but AI systems can fall into the conduct of war. You note the possible creation of AI aides to assist commanders during combat by crunching variables and predicting the outcome of battles - how far can this go? Will we see computers selecting soldiers individually for missions and locations, with the possibility that soldiers might be predicted to become a casualty before they even reach the battlefield? Where does human efforts and intuition come into this scenario, and how long before humans are conceivably out of the loop?

One of the reasons we are turning to machines is how the time needed for decisions in war is getting shorter and shorter. This is what led, for example, to the defense against mortars and rockets in Iraq being turned over to the R2-D2-like CRAM automated gun system. Humans just couldn't fit into the shorter time loop needed to shoot down incoming rockets. This shortening of time in the decision cycle is not just for the trigger-pullers, but is working its way up the chain to the generals' level. Marine General James Cartwright, Chief of the US Strategic Command predicts that, "The decision cycle of the future is not going to be minutes. The decision cycle of the future is going to be microseconds."

And thus, many think there may be one last, fundamental change in the role of commanders at war., figuring out just what command roles to leave to humans, and which to hand over to machines.

The world is already awash with all sorts of computer systems that we use to sift through information, and decide matters on our behalf. Artificial Intelligence (AI) in your email likely filters out junk mail, while billions of dollars are traded on the stock market by AI systems that decide when to buy and sell based only on algorithms.
The same sort of "expert systems" are gradually being introduced into the military. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), for example, has created the Integrated Battle Command, a system that gives military officers what it calls "decision aids." These are AI that allows a commander to visualize and evaluate their plans, as well as predict the impact of a variety of effects. For example, the system helps a command team building a military operational plan to assess the various interactions that will take place in it, so that they can see how changing certain parameters might play out in direct and indirect ways so complex that a human would find them difficult to calculate. The next phase in the project is to build an AI that plans out an entire military campaign.

The military intelligence officer version of this is RAID (the Real-time Adversarial Intelligence and Decision-making), an AI that scans a database of previous enemy actions within an area of operations to help "provide the commander with an estimate of his opponent's strategic objectives." Similarly, "battle management" systems have been activated that provide advice not only on actions an enemy might take, but also potential counter-moves, even drawing up the deployment and logistical plans for units to redeploy, as well as creating the command orders that an officer would have to issue. The Israeli military is even fielding a "virtual battle management" AI, whose primary job is to support mission commanders, but can take over in extreme situations, such as when the number of incoming targets overwhelms the human.

The developers behind such programs argue that the advantage of using computers instead of humans is not only their greater speed and processing power, but also that they don't come with our human flaws; they do not have so-called "cognitive biases." Because searching though data and then processing it takes too much time, human commanders without such aids have to pick out which data they want to look at and which to ignore. Not only does this inevitably lead them to skip the rest of the information that they don't have the time to cover, but humans also tend to give more weight in their decisions to the information they see first, even if it is not representative of the whole. The result is what is called "satisficing." They tend to come out with a satisfactory answer, though not the optimal answer. One Air Force officer planning air strikes in the Middle East, for example, described to me how each morning he received a "three inch deep" folder of printouts with that night's intelligence data, which he could only skim quickly through before he had to start assigning missions. "A lot of data is falling on the floor."

The first issue is, of course, such artificial decision systems raise is that they are how robots invariably take over the world in movies like The Terminator or stories like Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream."

But machine intelligence may not be the perfect match for the realm of war for the very reason that it remains a human realm, even with machines fighting in it. It may seem just like a game of chess to some, but war doesn't have a finite set of possible actions and a quantifiable logic of 0 and 1s. Instead, as one writer put it, "In war, as in life, spontaneity still prevails over programming."

It also raises interesting questions of law. What happens when a human commander doesn't listen to the advice of their AI? If they get it right, we will likely pat them on the back and congratulate them for going with their instinct. But Air Force Major General Charles Dunlap describes how "there is a legal and moral duty," as outlined in the laws of war, to "take all feasible precautions" to prevent civilian casualties. This legal understanding, he explains, becomes much more complex with the unmanned systems and battle management AI that are growing more sophisticated, including allowing computer simulations and modeling before the actual fight. "What if a commander chooses a course of action outside the model that result in a higher number of civilian casualties?" By not listening to the AI, the commander ignored a duty to take feasible precautions and thus committed a potential war crime. On the other hand, to punish any officer for this would be placing more legal trust in the judgment of the computer than the human being actually at war.

Do you own a robot?

Yes, we have a Roomba. It and my cat seem to have a love-hate relationship, as they chase each other around the room. This was actually the opening to a chapter that ended up on the cutting room floor. Neither has forgiven me yet for being left out of the book.

Given the number of references to various science fiction works, it's clear that you're a fan of the genre - any favorites that you'd like to pass along?

Most definitely! That was one of the best aspects of the research process, to go around interviewing greats like Orson Scott Card and Greg Bear about where they saw this all headed. That was an exceptionally fun chapter to write.

But there are way too many to say "favorites." So why don't I identify what I like the very least: Ewoks. As I mentioned above, they are the ruination of all that is good. The only positive I can take away from their appearance in Return of the Jedi is that the bits of the Death Star raining down into its atmosphere likely caused a nuclear winter on Endor, ending the scourge of those cuddly little rascals.

I love this chart so much! It's kind of sad how much of it makes sense to me instantly. Like when Leland writes "pretzel," I know exactly which elevator-fighting Terminator he's talking about. Leland says he was inspired to create the chart after he became obsessed with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and decided to make it all fit. He explains:

That scribbling at the bottom is from when I realized that time in Terminator must be cyclical, because that's the only way to explain how Derek and Jessie can be from different futures but be in the same timeline now. The slash in the middle of the line is Judgement Day. Some of that stuff at the bottom was showing my roommate how Derek would have had to skip a timeline using my linear "domino" model, and I couldn't think of a reason why that would happen.

As for the 12:00, 2:00. I was explaining how we could be seeing both futures in the show. The analogy I was using is that at 12:00 (the clock times are just to make everything relative, if that makes sense) Derek goes back in time, and causes changes to the timeline at 1:00. Then at 2:00, after Derek makes changes like killing Andy Goode, Jessie travels back in time. So even though Jessie came from the same time as Derek, she came later, in more than one way. Does that make sense?

The color coding: Black is pre-Judgement Day stuff I'm sure of, green is Future War stuff I'm sure of, and red is the blurry stuff I can't really prove, but makes sense to me.

My major is Game Design, and I don't recommend it, haha. I've always been a lot better at "fake" science than real science. I love movies like Primer where you have to keep a lot of timelines straight in your head though, so all of this came pretty naturally to me.

I totally want this to become an art project, with different people doing their own charts of Terminator continuity. We could have celebrity Terminator timeline charts - I would kill to see Arnie's.

1) The original (?) timeline: Sarah Connor conceives John Connor with some random guy. (All we hear about him is that "He dies, even before the war." Presumably it's not Kyle Reese, since time-travel always seems to create an alternate timeline.) John Connor's resistance is on the verge of defeating Skynet in 2029. (Reese says, "The defensive grid was smashed. We'd taken the mainframes. We'd won. Taking out Connor then would make no difference. Skynet had to wipe out his entire existence." Date of Judgment Day: August 29, 1997.

2) A T-800 and Kyle Reese both travel back in time from 2029. Kyle Reese fathers John Connor. Date of Judgment Day: still August 29, 1997.

3) A "scrubbed" T-800 and an "experimental prototype" T-1000 travel back from 2029 to 1995. Sarah Connor destroys Cyberdyne systems and apparently stops Skynet. (In a deleted scene from Terminator 2, we see that Sarah lived to an old age and John became a Senator.) But we learn in Terminator 3 that Judgment Day was only delayed, until July 24, 2004. According to T3, Sarah Connor dies of cancer in 1997. John Connor dies in 2032, at the hands of another T-800.

4) The T-800 which killed John Connor is "scrubbed" and sent back in time to protect him, and a T-X is sent back to kill him and his future lieutenants. What changes as a result of this time travel is unclear: the T-800 ensures John Connor and Kate Brewster survive Judgment Day, but they were presumably going to survive it anyway. John Connor now knows that this T-800 will kill him in 2032, meaning it probably won't. And the younger John Connor has now encountered a T-X. This timeline leads into Terminator Salvation.

5) Sarah Connor doesn't die of cancer in 1997. Instead, she's still alive in 1999, when a T-888 (Cromartie) comes back to kill John, and another one (Cameron) comes back to protect him. The Terminator known as Cameron jumps the Connors forward in time to 2007, and Cameron informs Sarah she would have died of cancer in 2005. Judgment Day: unknown, but later than 2010, because the Terminator known as Myron Stark is sent to kill the governor of California in 2010.

6) Derek Reese, brother of Kyle, travels back in time with a whole squad of resistance fighters. They seem to make a number of changes in the timeline, but most notably Derek kills Andy Goode, creator of an A.I. that might become Skynet. From the glimpses of Derek's version of 2029, Skynet may no longer be on the "verge of defeat" as it was in the original timeline. Judgment Day is now April 21, 2011.

7) Various other Terminators travel back in time, including Carter, who guards a warehouse full of coltan, Vick, who marries an L.A. city planner, and Myron Stark, who travels back to the 1920s by mistake. There's no telling what changes to the timeline these Terminators, in particular, make.

8) A T-1001 travels back in time to around 2005, and kills Catherine Weaver, the CEO of Zeira Corp, and her husband. It then impersonates Catherine Weaver. What changes does she make to the timeline? It's not entirely clear yet. She buys Andy Goode's A.I., "The Turk," preventing it from falling into the hands of the Connors. She saves a nuclear power plant that's crucial to Skynet's future operations, and later she destroys an entire factory that's creating prototype Hunter-Killers. She seems to be nurturing the "Turk" into becoming a more compassionate version of Skynet, but her real agenda remains unclear. Judgment Day: unknown.

9) Jesse Flores and Riley Dawson travel back from the future (possibly later than 2029.) The future Jesse comes from is much darker than the one Derek comes from, perhaps as a result of either Derek's actions, or Cameron's. We know that Jesse's future is - at least partly - one Derek helped to create, because Jesse doesn't know "Billy Wisher," aka Andy Goode, the guy whom Derek killed in 2007. In Jesse's timeline, John Connor's resistance is heavily dependent on scrubbed Terminators, to the point where there's "metal everywhere these days. Connor's got one in every major base." Sometimes the scrubbed Terminators go wrong and kill people. And the Terminators seem to be running Connor's war effort to a large extent, keeping secrets from Connor's human lieutenants. Skynet's human agents (like Charles Fisher) commonly torture humans, like Derek Reese. And there seems to be another "faction" of Terminators, which aren't on Skynet's side but also aren't on the humans'. Jesse won't say when her Judgment Day happens, but it's implied to be sooner than April 2011, because Jesse is certain it can't be prevented.

10) In Terminator Salvation, it's 2018, and somehow Skynet is already developing the T-800, which isn't supposed to exist until 2029. And in the trailer, John Connor says "This is not the future my mother warned me about. Something has changed") According to John Connor, Skynet's defeat is even less certain than ever in this new altered timeline: "I don't know if we can win this war." It's not clear what's changed the timeline from the T2 version, but hopefully the film will explain a bit. We meet Marcus Wright, an advanced model of Terminator who has a great degree of self-awareness and believes he's human until he sees his own metal body. Marcus has the memories (and appearance, presumably) of a man who was executed in 2003, and that's his last memory before he turns up in 2018. (Rumor has it Marcus' body is donated, after his death, to something called "Project Angel," which turns him into a quasi-Terminator.) It's implied that Marcus' arrival has something to do with changing the timeline. Judgment Day: still July 24, 2004, since this movie follows on from Terminator 3.

So we showed this list to Josh Friedman, producer and creator of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and here's what he had to say:

Jesus Christ. I want to drink whatever you're drinking. Obviously (or maybe not obviously but it should be said) TSCC never attempted to mesh with the movies, maybe in the spirit of T/1/2 but certainly not T/3/4. We've gone off the temporal reservation lately but to some degree that IS canon: almost all expressions of the franchise have massaged dates/ages to their convenience, some more than others. The most controversial idea you have in here is the first one: the "pre-Kyle" Johnfather. I believe the Terminator mythology supports that concept but many die hards just embrace the loop-ness of John sending back his dad to impregnate his mom. Of course, a pre-Kyle Johnfather calls into question genetic differences in the two Johns and whether or not Sarah's influence is the key to John v.2. If you go with the pre-Kyle Johnfather theory, the first John managed to become John Connor without her help.

Or did he?

I've mulled it over some more, and I still believe there has to be a timeline where someone other than Kyle Reese is John Connor's father. When The Terminator was a standalone movie, you could read it either way. Either there's a circular causality, where Kyle is "always" John Connor's father, or Kyle's time travel creates a new branch. But Terminator 2 pretty much establishes that time travel always creates new branches, because there's no fate but what we make. And the Connors, with their friendly T-800, are able to stop or at least delay Skynet. But of course, your mileage, even backwards and forwards through time, may vary.

Life lesson: It's okay to have unsafe sex with guys from the future.

Sight that you'll never unsee: Linda Hamilton's perpetually erect bangs.

Elevator pitch: The terminator is C3P0 crossed with Conan the Barbarian, making him about 300 percent gay.

Terminator Files