Man Plus

(c) 1976

Winner of the Nebula Award



[minor spoilers]

Attention Hollywood! Somebody make a movie of this book!

What a great read. Compact, purposeful, masterful. Relentless and merciless. I couldn’t put the thing down, reading faster than I’ve done recently. I had to read on the sly. I stayed up late. I was hooked, and it was absolutely imperative for me to see how this story ended, even to the point of sacrificing my health and my relationships.

So to speak.

I’m exaggerating a bit, but only a little bit. Man Plus by Frederik Pohl is a great book, well-deserving of that there Nebula it won a couple decades ago. It’s a small masterpiece in storytelling. That’s no exaggeration. I find myself often hesitant to read Pohl because his prose and his ideas are so darn good it’s downright discouraging to a struggling novelist – how can I ever hold a candle to this?

We journey into the near future of ... well, today, thirty-some-odd years after Pohl is writing. The 42nd president of the United States, Fitz-James Deshatine, has to make sure a Martian colony is established to avoid global destruction. According to simulations and mathematical models they take as gospel, at least. Anyway, it’s best thought to do this by modifying a man to withstand and even thrive in the harsh Aresian environment in his own skin. That is, through surgery and medical treatment, to create a cyborg to ensure mankind’s presence on the fourth planet.

The background isn’t as relevant as this program, Man Plus. After his predecessor dies enduring these modifications, astronaut Roger Torraway has to step in to keep the program on track. In short order he becomes radically part-man and part-machine, with a vague promise he will be surgically returned to normal when he completes his mission. His eyes are removed and replaced with giant red optical lenses. His limbs are removed are replaced with powerful mechanical appendages. Bat-like wings are attached to his back to harness solar energy. (Though it’s not commented on in the book, he looks positively demonic to me.) Much of his body, deemed nonessential, is removed in the name of energy efficiency. Among such items are his genitals.

This leaves Roger several weeks to become accustomed to his new existence. It reminded me of the “brain-in-a-vat” philosophical exercise, and indeed Roger faces a whole slew of existential crises. Not least among these is the fact that he deduces his wife is being unfaithful to him – with his friend and colleague, the head scientist of the Man Plus project.

Now I know where you think this is going. I thought it was going there, too, and Pohl steers and veers the tale in that direction. Does Roger snap and wreak havoc and vengeance upon those who’ve betrayed him? Does he fall into insanity and don that sympathetic monster suit? Without revealing too much, because I really want you to read this, yes and no.

Roger does get to Mars, but Pohl only ratchets up the tension to nearly unsustainable levels during one truly nail-biting scene. And there is a great twist revealed in the final pages that has something to do with that odd “we” that’s narrating the tale.

Man Plus is a perfect meld of horror, tragedy, and hard science fiction. There’s humor, there’s speculation and mystery, there’s action and innuendo. The characters are more real than the people you work with day in and day out. But most of all, the plot is driven, a page-turner in the best sense of that cliché. A story where you hope everything will work out for the hero because you care about him, but there’s a sneaking all-too-real undercurrent that something very nasty instead is in store.

Grade: Easy A+.