IG-88 is a Star Wars character.
IG-88 is the designation of the droid bounty hunter hired by Darth Vader to capture Han Solo. He features in only one scene in the movie, but, in true George Lucas style, his story is told in great detail in the Star Wars book, “Tales of the Bounty Hunters”. Written by Kevin J. Anderson and entitled “Therefore I Am” IG-88’s is the first short story in this book, which features the adventures of all five bounty hunters: Dengar, Bossk, Zuckuss and his droid 4-LOM, last but not least, the legendary Boba Fett.
IG-88 begins life as one of four identical assassin droids built for Imperial Supervisor Gurdun at Holowan Laboratories, “The friendly technology people,” as they are described. He awakes to a lab in chaos. In some weird Star Wars-y mistake has left IG-88 sentient, he destroys his creators before uploading his personality, and sentience, to the four identical droids he was created with, they are imaginatively labelled, IG-88A, IG-88B, IG-88C and …wait for it… IG-88Arnold, er D. The four sentient droids, operating as a collective, leave their birth planet and head for Mechis-3, the centre of droid production in the Star Wars universe.
Once control is gained, the rogue droids continue to send out new droids but with one small change: all the new droids are sentient, and await only a command from IG-88 to destroy all the “biologicals” in the universe and take over! ...ooh the originality. The plan progresses with IG-88B leaving to become a bounty hunter and distract Imperial attention from Mechis-3. While out bounty-hunting, IG-88B is commissioned to hunt Han Solo, while onboard Vader’s ship he downloads Vader’s files and finds out about the second Death Star.
To cut a long story short, four of the IG-88s are destroyed, by Boba Fett in the main, and the last remaining IG-88, containing the memories of the collective transplants his sentience into the computer core of the second Death Star. After months of waiting for work on the Death Star to be completed he decides it is time to activate the droid army secreted across the galaxy, just as he prepares to send the signal, a small annoyance in the form of a few rebel ships distracts IG-88… For those who have seen Star Wars the outcome is clear: the Death Star is destroyed on a million to one chance by the rebels and IG-88’s plan to take over the universe is buggered. The End.
The Star Wars novels are written by many different authors and span many different elements of the Star Wars universe. Many suffer indifferently good writing and are probably not particularly good for non-Star Wars buffs. However they are all good, fun books to read, not too challenging and nicely fill a dull half hour.