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Man Plus #1
Man Plus
Ill luck made Roger Torraway the subject of the Man Plus Programme, but it was deliberate biological engineering which turned him into a monster -- a machine perfectly adapted to survive on Mars. For according to computer predictions, Mars is humankind's only alternative to extinction. But beneath his monstrous exterior, Torraway still carries a man's capacity for suffering.
215 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1976
About the author
Frederik Pohl
1,137 books1,086 followersFrederik George Pohl, Jr. was an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over seventy years. From about 1959 until 1969, Pohl edited Galaxy magazine and its sister magazine IF winning the Hugo for IF three years in a row. His writing also won him three Hugos and multiple Nebula Awards. He became a Nebula Grand Master in 1993.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 405 reviews
November 2, 2016
Just as Frederik Pohl’s 1977 novel Gateway was about greed, Man Plus, his 1976 offering, is about ambition, and may be seen as an almost Kafkaesque allegory.
Pohl brings an approachability to his very competent hard science fiction; a pleasing meld of technically believable sci-fi with humanistic and psychological elements. He tells a good story – especially with an interesting, and ongoing (though ultimately not very satisfying) theatrical irony theme crafted with a mysterious narration technique.
With the frequent references to over-population it is vaguely reminiscent of Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar. Overpopulation and Malthusian restrictions were also a theme in Gateway, perhaps a recurring element in Pohl’s fiction.
This is a scientifically sound book, too, both astronomically as well as biologically, at least within the artistic license afforded a sci-fi writer. With a destinational setting of Mars, Pohl competes with science fiction royalty in thin air, but of course, the far side benchmark is still the great Ray Bradbury who shrugged aside any scientific considerations and may have written a line like “they got in the rocket and went to Mars”.
Pohl succeeds with full and complex characterizations that make this a far better read than it would have been if put together by a less skilled writer. Unfortunately this joins China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station in the category of great books that have an almost disastrously disappointing ending.
Even with this consideration, this is still a very good book
Pohl brings an approachability to his very competent hard science fiction; a pleasing meld of technically believable sci-fi with humanistic and psychological elements. He tells a good story – especially with an interesting, and ongoing (though ultimately not very satisfying) theatrical irony theme crafted with a mysterious narration technique.
With the frequent references to over-population it is vaguely reminiscent of Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar. Overpopulation and Malthusian restrictions were also a theme in Gateway, perhaps a recurring element in Pohl’s fiction.
This is a scientifically sound book, too, both astronomically as well as biologically, at least within the artistic license afforded a sci-fi writer. With a destinational setting of Mars, Pohl competes with science fiction royalty in thin air, but of course, the far side benchmark is still the great Ray Bradbury who shrugged aside any scientific considerations and may have written a line like “they got in the rocket and went to Mars”.
Pohl succeeds with full and complex characterizations that make this a far better read than it would have been if put together by a less skilled writer. Unfortunately this joins China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station in the category of great books that have an almost disastrously disappointing ending.
Even with this consideration, this is still a very good book
April 26, 2012
At NASA, people often quoted what were claimed to be the Three Things Astronauts Fear Most. In descending order, these were:
1. Not getting selected for the mission;
2. Screwing up;
3. Dying.
In this 70s SF story, an astronaut, apparently with the normal set of priorities, has been fortunate enough to find himself selected for a daring bioengineering experiment; they are going to turn him into a creature capable of surviving, without a suit or other equipment, on the surface of Mars. Given that the average temperature on Mars is about -55 °C, and the atmosphere is thin and composed mostly of carbon dioxide, this means some rather large changes.
The astronaut's wife is not equally thrilled, particularly when she discovers that they've removed her husband's penis. She wants to know if they'll be able to put it back again afterwards.
"What?" asks the bioengineer, evidently surprised by the question. "Uh... well... sure!"
1. Not getting selected for the mission;
2. Screwing up;
3. Dying.
In this 70s SF story, an astronaut, apparently with the normal set of priorities, has been fortunate enough to find himself selected for a daring bioengineering experiment; they are going to turn him into a creature capable of surviving, without a suit or other equipment, on the surface of Mars. Given that the average temperature on Mars is about -55 °C, and the atmosphere is thin and composed mostly of carbon dioxide, this means some rather large changes.
The astronaut's wife is not equally thrilled, particularly when she discovers that they've removed her husband's penis. She wants to know if they'll be able to put it back again afterwards.
"What?" asks the bioengineer, evidently surprised by the question. "Uh... well... sure!"
September 20, 2021
When I first read this decades ago I was fascinated by the prospect of surgically enhanced humans who are adapted for a specific environment. It would be like adding gills and webbed feet to allow us to live underwater. Upon re-reading this book, I relived the same fascination. This was a well-written, very realistic, and captivating story about human potential to modify himself. Another pleasant walk down memory lane.
June 24, 2019
The Man Plus programme was designed to establish a colony on Mars, and since man cannot survive unprotected on Mars he must be adapted in the middle of a cold war.
A third person viewpoint.
We expected a great deal from Roger Torraway, although he was not much different from any of the other astronauts: a little overtrained, a lot underemployed, a good deal discontented with what was happening in their jobs, but very much unwilling to trade them for any others as long as there was still a chance to be great again. They were all like that, even the one that was a monster.
What does Roger Torraway actually do?
“No sweat. What do you do, anyway, if you don’t mind my asking? I mean, besides V.I.P.ing it around.”
Torraway had an answer all ready for that. “Administration,” he said. He always said that, when people asked what he did. Sometimes the people who asked had proper security clearance, not only with the government but with the private radar in his own mind that told him to trust one person and not another. Then he said, “I make monsters.” If what they said next indicated that they too were in the know, he might go a sentence or two farther.
There was no secret about the Exomedicine Project. Everyone knew that what they did in Tonka was prepare astronauts to live on Mars. What was secret was how they did it: the monster. If Torraway had said too much he would have jeopardized both his freedom and his job. And Roger liked his job. It supported his pretty wife in her pottery shop. It gave him the feeling of doing something that people would remember, and it took him to interesting places. Back when he was an active astronaut he had been to even more interesting places, but they were out in space and kind of lonely. He liked better the places he went to in private jets, with flattering diplomats and impressionable cocktail-party women to greet him when he got there. Of course, there was the monster to think about, but he didn’t really worry about that. Much.
Relationship troubles - from an unknown viewpoint
He stood there for a moment, watching Brad retreating back, and wondering how Brad knew about something he had told only to his wife.
We could have told him—as in fact we could have told him many, many things, including why the polls showed what they showed. But no one really needed to tell him. He could have told himself—if he had allowed himself to know.
Who is in charge?
Don Kayman was a complex man who never let go of a problem. It was why we wanted him on the project as areologist, but it extended to the religious part of his life too.
Bad news
The world situation was proceeding as predicted. New York City was of course in turmoil, the Near East was building up pressures past the safety valves, and New People’s Asia was pouring out furious manifestos denouncing the squid kill in the Pacific. The planet was rapidly reaching critical mass. Our projections were that the future of the race was questionable on Earth past another two years. We could not allow that. The Mars landing had to succeed.
When things go very wrong
“ROGER, HONEY! YOU—”
Torraway jumped straight up and landed a meter away. The scream inside his head had been deafening. Had it been real? He had no way to tell; the voices from Brad or Don Kayman and the simulated voice of his wife sounded equally familiar inside his head. He was not even sure whose voice it had been—Dorrie’s? But he had been thinking about Sulie Carpenter, and the voice had been so queerly stressed that it could have been either or neither of them.
And now there was no sound at all, or none except for the irregular clicks, squeaks and scrapes that came up from the rock as the Martian crust responded to the rapidly dropping temperature. He was not aware of the cold as cold; his internal heaters kept the feeling part of him at constant temperature and would go on doing so easily all through the night. But he knew that it was at least fifty below now.
Another blast: “ROG—THINK YOU OUGHT—”
Even with the warning of the time before, the raucous shout was painful. This time he caught a quick fugitive glimpse of Dorrie’s simulated image, standing queerly on nothing at all a dozen meters in the air.
Training took over. Roger turned toward the distant dome, or where he thought it had been, cupped his wings behind him and said clearly: “Don! Brad! I’ve got some kind of a malfunction. I’m getting a signal but I can’t read it.”
He waited. There was no response, nothing inside his head except his own thoughts and a confused grumbling that he recognized as static.
“ROGER!”
It was Dorrie again, ten times life-size, towering over him, and on her face a grimace of wrath and fear. She seemed to be reaching down
toward him, and then she bent curiously sidewise, like a television image flickering off the tube, and was gone.
Roger felt a peculiar pain, tried to dismiss it as fear, felt it again and realized it was cold. There was something seriously wrong. “Mayday!” he shouted. “Don! I’m in trouble—help me!” The dark distant hills seemed to be rippling slowly. He looked up. The stars were turning liquid and dripping from the sky.
Who is the "we". Many times the point of view moves to the unknown "we". By the end of the book you will easily find who "we" is, and be pleasantly surprised with the end.
Enjoy!
A third person viewpoint.
We expected a great deal from Roger Torraway, although he was not much different from any of the other astronauts: a little overtrained, a lot underemployed, a good deal discontented with what was happening in their jobs, but very much unwilling to trade them for any others as long as there was still a chance to be great again. They were all like that, even the one that was a monster.
What does Roger Torraway actually do?
“No sweat. What do you do, anyway, if you don’t mind my asking? I mean, besides V.I.P.ing it around.”
Torraway had an answer all ready for that. “Administration,” he said. He always said that, when people asked what he did. Sometimes the people who asked had proper security clearance, not only with the government but with the private radar in his own mind that told him to trust one person and not another. Then he said, “I make monsters.” If what they said next indicated that they too were in the know, he might go a sentence or two farther.
There was no secret about the Exomedicine Project. Everyone knew that what they did in Tonka was prepare astronauts to live on Mars. What was secret was how they did it: the monster. If Torraway had said too much he would have jeopardized both his freedom and his job. And Roger liked his job. It supported his pretty wife in her pottery shop. It gave him the feeling of doing something that people would remember, and it took him to interesting places. Back when he was an active astronaut he had been to even more interesting places, but they were out in space and kind of lonely. He liked better the places he went to in private jets, with flattering diplomats and impressionable cocktail-party women to greet him when he got there. Of course, there was the monster to think about, but he didn’t really worry about that. Much.
Relationship troubles - from an unknown viewpoint
He stood there for a moment, watching Brad retreating back, and wondering how Brad knew about something he had told only to his wife.
We could have told him—as in fact we could have told him many, many things, including why the polls showed what they showed. But no one really needed to tell him. He could have told himself—if he had allowed himself to know.
Who is in charge?
Don Kayman was a complex man who never let go of a problem. It was why we wanted him on the project as areologist, but it extended to the religious part of his life too.
Bad news
The world situation was proceeding as predicted. New York City was of course in turmoil, the Near East was building up pressures past the safety valves, and New People’s Asia was pouring out furious manifestos denouncing the squid kill in the Pacific. The planet was rapidly reaching critical mass. Our projections were that the future of the race was questionable on Earth past another two years. We could not allow that. The Mars landing had to succeed.
When things go very wrong
“ROGER, HONEY! YOU—”
Torraway jumped straight up and landed a meter away. The scream inside his head had been deafening. Had it been real? He had no way to tell; the voices from Brad or Don Kayman and the simulated voice of his wife sounded equally familiar inside his head. He was not even sure whose voice it had been—Dorrie’s? But he had been thinking about Sulie Carpenter, and the voice had been so queerly stressed that it could have been either or neither of them.
And now there was no sound at all, or none except for the irregular clicks, squeaks and scrapes that came up from the rock as the Martian crust responded to the rapidly dropping temperature. He was not aware of the cold as cold; his internal heaters kept the feeling part of him at constant temperature and would go on doing so easily all through the night. But he knew that it was at least fifty below now.
Another blast: “ROG—THINK YOU OUGHT—”
Even with the warning of the time before, the raucous shout was painful. This time he caught a quick fugitive glimpse of Dorrie’s simulated image, standing queerly on nothing at all a dozen meters in the air.
Training took over. Roger turned toward the distant dome, or where he thought it had been, cupped his wings behind him and said clearly: “Don! Brad! I’ve got some kind of a malfunction. I’m getting a signal but I can’t read it.”
He waited. There was no response, nothing inside his head except his own thoughts and a confused grumbling that he recognized as static.
“ROGER!”
It was Dorrie again, ten times life-size, towering over him, and on her face a grimace of wrath and fear. She seemed to be reaching down
toward him, and then she bent curiously sidewise, like a television image flickering off the tube, and was gone.
Roger felt a peculiar pain, tried to dismiss it as fear, felt it again and realized it was cold. There was something seriously wrong. “Mayday!” he shouted. “Don! I’m in trouble—help me!” The dark distant hills seemed to be rippling slowly. He looked up. The stars were turning liquid and dripping from the sky.
Who is the "we". Many times the point of view moves to the unknown "we". By the end of the book you will easily find who "we" is, and be pleasantly surprised with the end.
Enjoy!
July 6, 2023
Check out my full, spoiler free, video review HERE.
Great characters, great story, great ideas, all in a 200 page package. Highly recommended book.
Great characters, great story, great ideas, all in a 200 page package. Highly recommended book.
August 23, 2025
En un incierto futuro en el que el mundo está lleno de dictaduras y regimenes comunistas, Estados Unidos intenta vencer en la carrera espacial enviando a un ser humano a Marte, pero para ello tiene que convertir a los astronautas elegidos en ciborgs para poder sobrevivir en el planeta rojo.
Frederick Pohl me vuelve a sorprender con una novela que a pesar de ser escrita hace 50 años sigue muy vigente en los temas que toca. En Homo Plus vemos la transformación, tanto física como psicológica, del protagonista para convertirse en algo más que un Homo Sapiens. Y aunque las descripciones de los cambios físicos son bastante llamativas, lo que me ha sorprendido es la transformación psicológica y los temas que toca. También el giro final que visto desde hoy en día puede ser algo normal pero en aquella época es de alabar.
Si no habéis leído nada de Pohl podéis probar con este, pero os recomiendo su saga de Pórtico, una de mis favoritas de ciencia ficción.
Frederick Pohl me vuelve a sorprender con una novela que a pesar de ser escrita hace 50 años sigue muy vigente en los temas que toca. En Homo Plus vemos la transformación, tanto física como psicológica, del protagonista para convertirse en algo más que un Homo Sapiens. Y aunque las descripciones de los cambios físicos son bastante llamativas, lo que me ha sorprendido es la transformación psicológica y los temas que toca. También el giro final que visto desde hoy en día puede ser algo normal pero en aquella época es de alabar.
Si no habéis leído nada de Pohl podéis probar con este, pero os recomiendo su saga de Pórtico, una de mis favoritas de ciencia ficción.
June 5, 2020
This is formally a SF novel, which in truth is part satire part Kafkaesque. It was published in 1976 and won Nebula and was nominated for Hugo and Locus. I read is as a part of monthly reading for June 2020 at Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels group.
On a surface it is a rather straightforward SF story: the Cold War may turn hot and to boost popularity of ‘free world’ the US president starts a program for the colonization of Mars. It is surmised that bringing equipment to Mars for men to survive is more expensive than changing a man to fit Martian environment. So, the project Man Plus is born, to create a cyborg to survive there.
Roger Torraway is an astronaut and the third in line to replace the ‘man plus’, living live of PR for The newspersons thought for a while that the astronauts themselves also came from an assembly line somewhere. They were available in a range of twenty centimeters in height and about a dozen years in age, and came in a choice of four shades of skin color, from milk chocolate to Viking. Their hobbies were chess, swimming, hunting, flying, skydiving, fishing and golf. They mingled easily with senators and ambassadors. When they retired from the space program, they found jobs with aerospace companies or with lost causes needing a new publicity image. These jobs paid very well. Astronauts were valuable products. They were not only prized by the publicity media and the Man in the Street. We valued them very highly too.
Roger has a wife, Dorrie, whom he loves dearly. And the love is blind, for the wife is sleeping with another man from the project, Alexander Bradley, who is (oh, irony!) the expert in the perceptual systems of the eye.
Due to several accidents, Roger from the third replacement suddenly becomes the Man Plus, as the project speeds up because of possible nuclear apocalypse. He loses his human form, becoming too much like a Japanese horror film to be taken seriously Just like Pohl’s another award-winning book, Gateway there is a lot of psychology and sexual issues, especially after the protagonist loses his external bits as unnecessary for the project.
Another important note that from time to time an omni knowing narrator ‘we’ appears in the text, revealed only at the end.
If one reads the book as just a SF about cyborgs it is a bland and sometimes sexist reading. However, one can try to find deeper meanings, like with the blind love and the way a frog eye functions, a question of is the world is really what we experience thru our senses or not, set decades before the Martix.
On a surface it is a rather straightforward SF story: the Cold War may turn hot and to boost popularity of ‘free world’ the US president starts a program for the colonization of Mars. It is surmised that bringing equipment to Mars for men to survive is more expensive than changing a man to fit Martian environment. So, the project Man Plus is born, to create a cyborg to survive there.
Roger Torraway is an astronaut and the third in line to replace the ‘man plus’, living live of PR for The newspersons thought for a while that the astronauts themselves also came from an assembly line somewhere. They were available in a range of twenty centimeters in height and about a dozen years in age, and came in a choice of four shades of skin color, from milk chocolate to Viking. Their hobbies were chess, swimming, hunting, flying, skydiving, fishing and golf. They mingled easily with senators and ambassadors. When they retired from the space program, they found jobs with aerospace companies or with lost causes needing a new publicity image. These jobs paid very well. Astronauts were valuable products. They were not only prized by the publicity media and the Man in the Street. We valued them very highly too.
Roger has a wife, Dorrie, whom he loves dearly. And the love is blind, for the wife is sleeping with another man from the project, Alexander Bradley, who is (oh, irony!) the expert in the perceptual systems of the eye.
Due to several accidents, Roger from the third replacement suddenly becomes the Man Plus, as the project speeds up because of possible nuclear apocalypse. He loses his human form, becoming too much like a Japanese horror film to be taken seriously Just like Pohl’s another award-winning book, Gateway there is a lot of psychology and sexual issues, especially after the protagonist loses his external bits as unnecessary for the project.
Another important note that from time to time an omni knowing narrator ‘we’ appears in the text, revealed only at the end.
If one reads the book as just a SF about cyborgs it is a bland and sometimes sexist reading. However, one can try to find deeper meanings, like with the blind love and the way a frog eye functions, a question of is the world is really what we experience thru our senses or not, set decades before the Martix.
June 11, 2015
Jedan stari, izvrstan i kultni SF.
Nemam što drugo reći osim da je obvezno štivo ozbiljnog SF-ljupca.
edit: ma hajde, ipak ću nešto dodati. Kako ja vidim glavni dio djela je pitanje koliko bi se mi promijenili ukoliko bi nas netko stalno poboljšavao fizički - sve smo jači, sve otporniji, moćniji, beskonačniji. Istovremeno nemamo baš nikakvu dopunsku psihološku podršku svim tim novitetima.
Što bi se na koncu dogodilo, bi li nas konzumirao nadmoćni bogosindrom ili bi zadržali ljudskost, bi li se prebacili u sasvim drugi nivo egizstenicije sa sasvim drukčijim prioritetima?
Bi li se slomili, poludjeli?
Pročitajte Pohlove odgovore...
(posebno mi je drago što posjedujem sada prilično raritetno zagrebačko izdanje)
Nemam što drugo reći osim da je obvezno štivo ozbiljnog SF-ljupca.
edit: ma hajde, ipak ću nešto dodati. Kako ja vidim glavni dio djela je pitanje koliko bi se mi promijenili ukoliko bi nas netko stalno poboljšavao fizički - sve smo jači, sve otporniji, moćniji, beskonačniji. Istovremeno nemamo baš nikakvu dopunsku psihološku podršku svim tim novitetima.
Što bi se na koncu dogodilo, bi li nas konzumirao nadmoćni bogosindrom ili bi zadržali ljudskost, bi li se prebacili u sasvim drugi nivo egizstenicije sa sasvim drukčijim prioritetima?
Bi li se slomili, poludjeli?
Pročitajte Pohlove odgovore...
(posebno mi je drago što posjedujem sada prilično raritetno zagrebačko izdanje)
November 8, 2023
Много любим писател .Класическата фантастика няма равна на себе си в жанра всички настоящи писатели имат тази основа и градят върху нея .
Фредерик Пол е чудесен книгите му вървят леко , забавно и с доста приключения.
Човекът Плюс трябва да спаси човечеството , трябва да се лиши от своето тяло и да се засели на Марс , всичко това на фона на колосална криза на Земята
Фредерик Пол е чудесен книгите му вървят леко , забавно и с доста приключения.
Човекът Плюс трябва да спаси човечеството , трябва да се лиши от своето тяло и да се засели на Марс , всичко това на фона на колосална криза на Земята
October 22, 2012
Meh. As far as SF masterpieces go, this one was pretty bad. I read it as the literary equivalent of a 50's B movie and found a modicum of enjoyment this way, but it was not a particularly interesting or fascinating read.
Man Plus concerns itself with manly astronauts yearning to conquer space, and the women orbiting their lives. If this book had been published in 1956 I would have rolled my eyes and moved on, but for a 1976 book, it's pretty darn backwards. Women are literally there to be lusted over and humped. There's one woman who doesn't fit that mold, and she's such a shrill caricature of a hardcore feminist that it's hard not to frown on Mr. Pohl's misogynistic shenanigans. Dorrie, the wife of the protagonist, possesses three distinguishing characteristics: 1) every man including the President wants to screw her brains out; 2) she cheats on her husband; 3) she sells ceramics.
The SF itself is interesting but ultimately too clunky to offer much payoff. The best parts concern Roger's horror as he adjusts to his new Martian body. There are moments where the novel verges on The Fly or--very distantly, mind you--on a science fiction Metamorphosis. But the novel is never realistic enough, the characters never interesting enough to take us into truly dark territory.
Man Plus concerns itself with manly astronauts yearning to conquer space, and the women orbiting their lives. If this book had been published in 1956 I would have rolled my eyes and moved on, but for a 1976 book, it's pretty darn backwards. Women are literally there to be lusted over and humped. There's one woman who doesn't fit that mold, and she's such a shrill caricature of a hardcore feminist that it's hard not to frown on Mr. Pohl's misogynistic shenanigans. Dorrie, the wife of the protagonist, possesses three distinguishing characteristics: 1) every man including the President wants to screw her brains out; 2) she cheats on her husband; 3) she sells ceramics.
The SF itself is interesting but ultimately too clunky to offer much payoff. The best parts concern Roger's horror as he adjusts to his new Martian body. There are moments where the novel verges on The Fly or--very distantly, mind you--on a science fiction Metamorphosis. But the novel is never realistic enough, the characters never interesting enough to take us into truly dark territory.
January 29, 2023
I think I preferred Gateway by the same author, but still this was a fascinating sci-fi adventure. Imagine Matt Damon in The Martian, but having been transformed into an actual martian. Well, that doesn't really do it justice. The premise is that mankind has destroyed the earth (as usual) and needs to get off the blue planet and make the red planet ready for us. We have great AI (more on that later), but we are not at all conditioned to life on Mars. Oh, but if we transform completely a human body into a Mars-capable one, we could remove lungs, eyes, skin, heart, well just about everything but the brain and - voilà! - we could all live on Mars! The story is told in a fun tongue-in-cheek style that was a pleasure to read. As for that AI, well, I won't spoil the ending for you...
A great worthy sci-fi classic!
A great worthy sci-fi classic!
February 16, 2021
Man Plus is one of Pohl's best novels; it was published in his remarkable prolific decade of the 1970s, and won the Nebula Award for best novel of 1975. It's a relatively short book considering the number of topics he tackles, such as overpopulation, the possibility of the Cold War escalating into nuclear Armageddon, and the future of space exploration, not to mention being a fundamental early foray of the field into the theme of post-humanism. There's also some thought-provoking speculation about the Kafkaesque nature of reality, sexuality, and political dynamics. There's something a twist at the end that reviewers of the time either seemed to hate or embrace; I rather liked it once I pondered it for a while. It's still a worthwhile read.
July 27, 2014
In an effort to finish more Grand Masters and Masterworks, and relating to other Mars books read this year, I dove into this pool of Pohl. The water is lukewarm at best.
This story is about establishing a long-term presence on Mars, by altering a Man to fit the environment instead of vice-versa. The added cyborg equipment leads to the title, Man Plus. There is some suspense and a few plot twists, but really this is a novel of relationships. Man to his body, and to his soul (a Catholic Priest is along on the mission). Man to his wife, his best friend, and his wife cheating on him with his best friend. Towards the end, Man to society itself.
Climate change, politics and the mutual destruction of two countries (and the planet) also come into play. The Teddy Roosevelt-like president pokes into the story at odd times, at first a caricature, but later truly concerned for the astronaut and his mission.
Flowery words aside, I liked the story. The science is a little off, and it felt dated at times, but in general I liked it. A sequel was co-written many years afterward, and it is perhaps telling that I have no interest in reading further into this universe. 3¼ stars.
This story is about establishing a long-term presence on Mars, by altering a Man to fit the environment instead of vice-versa. The added cyborg equipment leads to the title, Man Plus. There is some suspense and a few plot twists, but really this is a novel of relationships. Man to his body, and to his soul (a Catholic Priest is along on the mission). Man to his wife, his best friend, and his wife cheating on him with his best friend. Towards the end, Man to society itself.
Climate change, politics and the mutual destruction of two countries (and the planet) also come into play. The Teddy Roosevelt-like president pokes into the story at odd times, at first a caricature, but later truly concerned for the astronaut and his mission.
Flowery words aside, I liked the story. The science is a little off, and it felt dated at times, but in general I liked it. A sequel was co-written many years afterward, and it is perhaps telling that I have no interest in reading further into this universe. 3¼ stars.
July 9, 2024
Just as Intriguing now as when it came out.
This nebula winning (hugo nominated) character heavy scifi follows a man named roger, who watches the govt turn a fellow astronaut from normal man into a genetically engineered monster. The kind that m thrive in Mars hostile environment. But things go wrong as he finds himself next in line for the same transformation.
This book lightly begins discussions around ethics of this transformation as well social commentary on what it means to be human, what we value and is it really important, how we can define our own happiness and our own trauma…. And so much more.
It was a bit dry and heavy on the inner details of rogers life but it was short enough it changed just as it became boring. Probably not for everyone but…
The book has a twist ending… that worked for me and makes me want to pick up second (and last) in the series (mars plus)….
This nebula winning (hugo nominated) character heavy scifi follows a man named roger, who watches the govt turn a fellow astronaut from normal man into a genetically engineered monster. The kind that m thrive in Mars hostile environment. But things go wrong as he finds himself next in line for the same transformation.
This book lightly begins discussions around ethics of this transformation as well social commentary on what it means to be human, what we value and is it really important, how we can define our own happiness and our own trauma…. And so much more.
It was a bit dry and heavy on the inner details of rogers life but it was short enough it changed just as it became boring. Probably not for everyone but…
The book has a twist ending… that worked for me and makes me want to pick up second (and last) in the series (mars plus)….
January 27, 2016
Fantastic early SiFi book. Excellent story on just what we as people and the government will do to affect the public perception. Very recommended
November 6, 2013
-¿El Transhumanismo antes del Transhumanismo?.-
Género. Ciencia-Ficción.
Lo que nos cuenta. Roger Torraway es un astronauta agradable, de éxito, conocido, con una esposa encantadora y bella, que vive en un centro de Oklahoma aislado del resto del mundo, lleno de guerras, carestías y protestas que no auguran nada bueno para la Humanidad. Roger es destinado a un proyecto más secreto de lo habitual en los viajes espaciales, el Proyecto Homo Plus, que tratará de llevar a Marte a representantes del Mundo Libre, pero para ello habrá que trabajar sobre la biología de los que viajarán hasta el planeta rojo manipulando su estructura para convertirlos en ciborgs adaptados a la vida en el nuevo entorno. El primero de ellos, al menos el que todavía está vivo, es el Comandante Will Harnett.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
Género. Ciencia-Ficción.
Lo que nos cuenta. Roger Torraway es un astronauta agradable, de éxito, conocido, con una esposa encantadora y bella, que vive en un centro de Oklahoma aislado del resto del mundo, lleno de guerras, carestías y protestas que no auguran nada bueno para la Humanidad. Roger es destinado a un proyecto más secreto de lo habitual en los viajes espaciales, el Proyecto Homo Plus, que tratará de llevar a Marte a representantes del Mundo Libre, pero para ello habrá que trabajar sobre la biología de los que viajarán hasta el planeta rojo manipulando su estructura para convertirlos en ciborgs adaptados a la vida en el nuevo entorno. El primero de ellos, al menos el que todavía está vivo, es el Comandante Will Harnett.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
July 8, 2026
Written fifty years ago in 1976, Frederik Pohl’s Man Plus is set in the year 2026. Earth’s population has reached eight billion, and the world stands on the brink of nuclear war (all those sounds familiar :) )
With humanity facing possible extinction, one desperate solution emerges: colonizing Mars. But instead of sending ordinary people in protective suits or habitats, the novel goes in different direction - transforming a human being into a being capable of surviving on the Martian surface unaided.
The story follows Roger Torraway’s transformation into “Man Plus,” a cyborg engineered for the red planet.
What makes Man Plus even more striking today is its final twist, which gives the story an eerie prophetic quality.
With humanity facing possible extinction, one desperate solution emerges: colonizing Mars. But instead of sending ordinary people in protective suits or habitats, the novel goes in different direction - transforming a human being into a being capable of surviving on the Martian surface unaided.
The story follows Roger Torraway’s transformation into “Man Plus,” a cyborg engineered for the red planet.
What makes Man Plus even more striking today is its final twist, which gives the story an eerie prophetic quality.
March 11, 2013
Originally published on my blog here in June 2009.
Man Plus won the Nebula award the year before his next novel, Gateway, swept the board of science fiction awards. It could be argued that Gateway is the perfect science fiction novel, because in it Pohl does many of the things which the genre is famous for superlatively: big ideas, interesting (if off-stage) aliens, journeys of personal discovery in intriguing environments, extrapolation of current trends and ideas into the future (in a rather dystopian way); and does it with humour using a flawed central character - a cowardly hero all too easy to identify with. But it does stay well within the traditions of the genre, while the now less well known Man Plus is more adventurous, exploring emotional territory outside the usual comfort zone of genre fiction (of any genre, not just science fiction).
Man Plus is set in what would be the 1990s (during the tenure of the forty second US president, who was Bill Clinton in the real world). But this is a world in which the tensions of the Cold War continued to escalate, and it seems likely (either through all out war between China and other nations or through environmental problems) the earth will become uninhabitable in the short term. So the American space program undertakes a new project: Man Plus. The aim is to get man on Mars, and making it possible for the human race to continue there by re-engineering the colonists, starting with one man.
The central character, Roger Torraway, is not just an experienced astronaut butt one of the best known heroes of the space program, after the rescue of some stranded cosmonauts. He is one of the scientists involved in the Man Plus project, but when the man who is being transformed into a cyborg who can live unprotected on the surface of Mars through a long series of operations has a heart attack and dies, he is the alternate choice who becomes the primary candidate. From this point, the novel is about his emotional reaction to the changes made by the surgeons and engineers to his body, to realising that he is going to part from his wife, and to the philosophical (and theological) dilemmas which the transformation suggests.
From the genre point of view, his transformations effectively make him an alien (indeed, one of the most iconic type of aliens in science fiction: a Martian). Writing about understanding the alien has always been one of the most philosophical aspects of the genre, tied up as it is with questions about the nature of intelligence and humanity. Pohl even finds time for a little James Blish-like discussion of some not immediately obvious theological implications of the transformation process, courtesy of one of the scientists involved who is also a Catholic priest.
One major similarity with Gateway is that Pohl's attitude is not "be amazed by the science", but "how would this really feel?". This is something which marks him out from many of his contemporary science fiction authors, and what led Edmund Cooper, one of his colleagues, to say "In his grasp of scientific and technological possibilities, Pohl ranks with Asimov and Clarke, but he has greater originality than either" (as quoted on the back cover of this edition). Like many genre fans, my earliest science fiction reading was Asimov and Clarke (along with Heinlein), and they remain authors I go back too, despite their flaws as writers. Pohl is a more grown-up reading experience, requiring more engagement from the reader, but offering deeper rewards.
Torraway's elite background and the strangeness of the changes make him a difficult character for the reader to empathise with. (Gateway's central character, Robinette Broadhead, is much more sympathetic - indisputably a man of the people.) Pohl works hard to humanise Torraway though a subplot about an affair his wife is having, but this is one of the least successful aspects of the novel. Parts of Man Plus are disturbing, and others are definitely not for the squeamish. Yet Pohl is able to use his story to explore emotional terrtitory outside the usual boundaries of genre fiction, and this is one of the reasons why it is an important novel. It would be possible to argue that Gateway is the perfect science fiction novel, but it stays well within the bounds of the genre, not challenging what science fiction can do in the way that Pohl does here: more ambitious, but in the end less successful.
Man Plus won the Nebula award the year before his next novel, Gateway, swept the board of science fiction awards. It could be argued that Gateway is the perfect science fiction novel, because in it Pohl does many of the things which the genre is famous for superlatively: big ideas, interesting (if off-stage) aliens, journeys of personal discovery in intriguing environments, extrapolation of current trends and ideas into the future (in a rather dystopian way); and does it with humour using a flawed central character - a cowardly hero all too easy to identify with. But it does stay well within the traditions of the genre, while the now less well known Man Plus is more adventurous, exploring emotional territory outside the usual comfort zone of genre fiction (of any genre, not just science fiction).
Man Plus is set in what would be the 1990s (during the tenure of the forty second US president, who was Bill Clinton in the real world). But this is a world in which the tensions of the Cold War continued to escalate, and it seems likely (either through all out war between China and other nations or through environmental problems) the earth will become uninhabitable in the short term. So the American space program undertakes a new project: Man Plus. The aim is to get man on Mars, and making it possible for the human race to continue there by re-engineering the colonists, starting with one man.
The central character, Roger Torraway, is not just an experienced astronaut butt one of the best known heroes of the space program, after the rescue of some stranded cosmonauts. He is one of the scientists involved in the Man Plus project, but when the man who is being transformed into a cyborg who can live unprotected on the surface of Mars through a long series of operations has a heart attack and dies, he is the alternate choice who becomes the primary candidate. From this point, the novel is about his emotional reaction to the changes made by the surgeons and engineers to his body, to realising that he is going to part from his wife, and to the philosophical (and theological) dilemmas which the transformation suggests.
From the genre point of view, his transformations effectively make him an alien (indeed, one of the most iconic type of aliens in science fiction: a Martian). Writing about understanding the alien has always been one of the most philosophical aspects of the genre, tied up as it is with questions about the nature of intelligence and humanity. Pohl even finds time for a little James Blish-like discussion of some not immediately obvious theological implications of the transformation process, courtesy of one of the scientists involved who is also a Catholic priest.
One major similarity with Gateway is that Pohl's attitude is not "be amazed by the science", but "how would this really feel?". This is something which marks him out from many of his contemporary science fiction authors, and what led Edmund Cooper, one of his colleagues, to say "In his grasp of scientific and technological possibilities, Pohl ranks with Asimov and Clarke, but he has greater originality than either" (as quoted on the back cover of this edition). Like many genre fans, my earliest science fiction reading was Asimov and Clarke (along with Heinlein), and they remain authors I go back too, despite their flaws as writers. Pohl is a more grown-up reading experience, requiring more engagement from the reader, but offering deeper rewards.
Torraway's elite background and the strangeness of the changes make him a difficult character for the reader to empathise with. (Gateway's central character, Robinette Broadhead, is much more sympathetic - indisputably a man of the people.) Pohl works hard to humanise Torraway though a subplot about an affair his wife is having, but this is one of the least successful aspects of the novel. Parts of Man Plus are disturbing, and others are definitely not for the squeamish. Yet Pohl is able to use his story to explore emotional terrtitory outside the usual boundaries of genre fiction, and this is one of the reasons why it is an important novel. It would be possible to argue that Gateway is the perfect science fiction novel, but it stays well within the bounds of the genre, not challenging what science fiction can do in the way that Pohl does here: more ambitious, but in the end less successful.
June 9, 2017
Timing is everything. Not long ago, I posted a book review about Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human, and was talking about 1970s-era consideration of what human beings are, and here we have Man Plus as a handy juxtaposition. And it comes to quite a different conclusion, thus ending my attempt to put too neat a chronological classification on this debate. Look at the two broad categories would be an interesting topic for discussion, and I may make a note of it in my list of themes for future science fiction/fantasy bookclub meetings.
Note: The rest of this review has been withheld due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
Note: The rest of this review has been withheld due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
June 25, 2010
3.0 stars. Classic SF story by Pohl. Just re-read this story for the second time and it does feel a little dated. However, it is still an excellent read and, like much of Pohl's science ficiton, deals with emotional and psychological issues of its characters. In this case, the increasing sense of "disconnect" between the main character and the rest of humanity as a result of being modified to go to Mars.
Winner - Nebula Award Best Novel
Nominee -Hugo Award Best Novel
Nominee - Campbell Award
Nominee -Locus Award Best Science Ficiton Novel
Winner - Nebula Award Best Novel
Nominee -Hugo Award Best Novel
Nominee - Campbell Award
Nominee -Locus Award Best Science Ficiton Novel
January 27, 2025
Finally, a novel willing to speak about how much genitals really weigh you down on these Mars missions. Refreshing.
January 22, 2018
Read for the 12 Awards in 12 Months Challenge and the SF Masterworks Reading Challenge and Science Fiction Masterworks Reading Club here on Goodreads.
This novel won the 1976 Nebula Award.
Some books stand up to the vicissitudes of time better than others. I'm a big believer in taking vintage SF on its face, and reading it as alternate history in some cases as opposed to a vision of the future, but in this particular case, that was really challenging for me, and I don't recommend it to anyone younger than I am because I don't think they would get it.
I'm old enough to remember the Cold War. I'm old enough to remember growing up in the 80s (I was 10 in 1985; you do the math) and I remember how it felt to be convinced that any day, any day now, we were going to incinerate ourselves in a nuclear holocaust. You have to accept this mindset to accept this novel, because otherwise it makes no sense.
I also found it challenging to accept, since we're on the verge of finally making a manned mission to Mars, accepting all the anachronisms around getting there in this novel. It was written in the 1970s when computers were clunky. I can't imagine doing what they're doing with the stuff they were trying to do it with. And yet . . .
And yet, what Pohl was trying to do with this novel was astoundingly ambitious, and might even be prescient, if you don't linger overmuch on technology that is capable of almost completely replacing the human body with cybernetics, but is incapable of running all those systems without a computer terminal the size of a backpack that must communicate with a mainframe.
Roger Torroway is an astronaut who has been assigned to the Man Plus project. The object? To make a man capable of living on Mars, unaided by a biodome. The novel concerns itself with the dehumanizing effects of the technology, and speculates that a human who has almost entirely been replaced by machines may not be exactly human anymore.
I don't agree, and I don't think most modern readers would, but that was a valid concern in the 70s and even 80s and writers spent a lot of time on it. It was believed that machine parts might be better than human parts (see The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman,) but of course, now it's become apparent that the human system is so complex that this is doubtful at best.
But assuming it's so, much of the novel also centers around relationships. Here the novel becomes even harder for the modern reader to read. The sexism is extremely distracting. Torroway's very liberated wife has a pottery shop all her own; how cute! And the doctors and astronauts are all men, except the psychologist of course. And the men call her "sweetheart." Also they're smoking everywhere, including in a hospital environment in rooms with the patient. I'm telling you, if 1970s SF is any indication, women's liberation happened in the 70s because it was a necessity. There's some casual racism as well. Not as much, but a little.
By this time, Pohl had been writing sci-fi for many years, and was in his 70s, so I guess he was trying. But he clearly held certain views of toxic masculinity and it's hard to read now. For instance, a character who was a chronic womanizer would cheat with someone's wife because he had managed to avoid all athletic competitions in his youth and was therefore inclined to be a moral coward.
Okay; now that I've given you all its flaws, let me talk about its merits, and why it does indeed deserve to be in the SF Masterworks. I don't think anyone had ever examined the issue of technological dehumanization quite as thoroughly before this book. And what he has to say about letting computers do all our thinking diminishing our ability to make our own decisions and trust our own senses is poignant in this age of social media spreading mass hysteria, and science becoming so complex that many people, incapable of understanding it, rejecting its validity entirely.
I'm convinced that James Cameron and/or Bill Wisher, who wrote the script for The Terminator, must have read this book, because in many ways it's an anti-Terminator plot (nope, not telling you more, that would be a spoiler!)
Also, I've read it before. I remember that its ideas spawned a short story I wrote for an assignment on adaptation when I was about eleven (I took it to an underwater environment). Also as I recall, I got an A.
Also, the ending is a neat surprise that puts the whole thing in an entirely different context than when you started reading it.
Do I recommend it? Well, sure, if you're like me and you can mostly ignore the anachronisms; and if you can accept that during the Cold War, the extermination of the species through nuclear war seemed a far greater threat than climate change. Certainly it's a formative book, and those who enjoy vintage sci-fi will enjoy it. But younger and modern readers might find all that too much work, and perhaps should give it a pass.
This novel won the 1976 Nebula Award.
Some books stand up to the vicissitudes of time better than others. I'm a big believer in taking vintage SF on its face, and reading it as alternate history in some cases as opposed to a vision of the future, but in this particular case, that was really challenging for me, and I don't recommend it to anyone younger than I am because I don't think they would get it.
I'm old enough to remember the Cold War. I'm old enough to remember growing up in the 80s (I was 10 in 1985; you do the math) and I remember how it felt to be convinced that any day, any day now, we were going to incinerate ourselves in a nuclear holocaust. You have to accept this mindset to accept this novel, because otherwise it makes no sense.
I also found it challenging to accept, since we're on the verge of finally making a manned mission to Mars, accepting all the anachronisms around getting there in this novel. It was written in the 1970s when computers were clunky. I can't imagine doing what they're doing with the stuff they were trying to do it with. And yet . . .
And yet, what Pohl was trying to do with this novel was astoundingly ambitious, and might even be prescient, if you don't linger overmuch on technology that is capable of almost completely replacing the human body with cybernetics, but is incapable of running all those systems without a computer terminal the size of a backpack that must communicate with a mainframe.
Roger Torroway is an astronaut who has been assigned to the Man Plus project. The object? To make a man capable of living on Mars, unaided by a biodome. The novel concerns itself with the dehumanizing effects of the technology, and speculates that a human who has almost entirely been replaced by machines may not be exactly human anymore.
I don't agree, and I don't think most modern readers would, but that was a valid concern in the 70s and even 80s and writers spent a lot of time on it. It was believed that machine parts might be better than human parts (see The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman,) but of course, now it's become apparent that the human system is so complex that this is doubtful at best.
But assuming it's so, much of the novel also centers around relationships. Here the novel becomes even harder for the modern reader to read. The sexism is extremely distracting. Torroway's very liberated wife has a pottery shop all her own; how cute! And the doctors and astronauts are all men, except the psychologist of course. And the men call her "sweetheart." Also they're smoking everywhere, including in a hospital environment in rooms with the patient. I'm telling you, if 1970s SF is any indication, women's liberation happened in the 70s because it was a necessity. There's some casual racism as well. Not as much, but a little.
By this time, Pohl had been writing sci-fi for many years, and was in his 70s, so I guess he was trying. But he clearly held certain views of toxic masculinity and it's hard to read now. For instance, a character who was a chronic womanizer would cheat with someone's wife because he had managed to avoid all athletic competitions in his youth and was therefore inclined to be a moral coward.
Okay; now that I've given you all its flaws, let me talk about its merits, and why it does indeed deserve to be in the SF Masterworks. I don't think anyone had ever examined the issue of technological dehumanization quite as thoroughly before this book. And what he has to say about letting computers do all our thinking diminishing our ability to make our own decisions and trust our own senses is poignant in this age of social media spreading mass hysteria, and science becoming so complex that many people, incapable of understanding it, rejecting its validity entirely.
I'm convinced that James Cameron and/or Bill Wisher, who wrote the script for The Terminator, must have read this book, because in many ways it's an anti-Terminator plot (nope, not telling you more, that would be a spoiler!)
Also, I've read it before. I remember that its ideas spawned a short story I wrote for an assignment on adaptation when I was about eleven (I took it to an underwater environment). Also as I recall, I got an A.
Also, the ending is a neat surprise that puts the whole thing in an entirely different context than when you started reading it.
Do I recommend it? Well, sure, if you're like me and you can mostly ignore the anachronisms; and if you can accept that during the Cold War, the extermination of the species through nuclear war seemed a far greater threat than climate change. Certainly it's a formative book, and those who enjoy vintage sci-fi will enjoy it. But younger and modern readers might find all that too much work, and perhaps should give it a pass.
June 23, 2020
Read as a Monthly Read for Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels.
Initially the quality of the writing seemed great, at times light and witty and at times somber. After the main post of the plot was introduced I was really enthusiastic in reading more about the project and its implementation, but to my disappointment that part of the plot comes to a screeching halt, allowing for interpersonal interactions and character's ruminations come to the front. That part was the least exciting for me to read, the rivalries, the pettiness and the drama seemed excessive.
But the biggest disappointment for me was how the scientific community didn't see whatever was in front of its nose half the time. It was a very dated view and did not work for me in a sci-fi setting.
The last part of the book, dealing with the actual colonization had nothing going for it, which was a letdown. The plot twist in the end while fun, did not have the execution to it enough to excite me.
Writing & Literary devices: - 6
Plot & Pacing: - 6
Theme & Message: - 7
Characters: - 5
Dialogues: - 7
Entertainment: - 6
World Building: - 5
Initially the quality of the writing seemed great, at times light and witty and at times somber. After the main post of the plot was introduced I was really enthusiastic in reading more about the project and its implementation, but to my disappointment that part of the plot comes to a screeching halt, allowing for interpersonal interactions and character's ruminations come to the front. That part was the least exciting for me to read, the rivalries, the pettiness and the drama seemed excessive.
But the biggest disappointment for me was how the scientific community didn't see whatever was in front of its nose half the time. It was a very dated view and did not work for me in a sci-fi setting.
The last part of the book, dealing with the actual colonization had nothing going for it, which was a letdown. The plot twist in the end while fun, did not have the execution to it enough to excite me.
Writing & Literary devices: - 6
Plot & Pacing: - 6
Theme & Message: - 7
Characters: - 5
Dialogues: - 7
Entertainment: - 6
World Building: - 5
February 21, 2015
In 1953, Frederick Pohl teamed with C.M. Kornbluth and wrote The Space Merchants, one of the greatest American SF novels of the 20th century. And since 19th century precursors would be few and far between and it is too early to start making such calls about the 21st century, I guess I could go ahead and say that Pohl and Kornbluth wrote one of the greatest American SF novels of all time.
Perhaps because Space Merchants is my only other contact with Frederick Pohl, I find myself overly disappointed by this stingily imagined 1976 novel of the first U.S. manned mission to Mars. In some unspecified near future, the world is falling apart. Natural disasters plague much of the planet, small wars break out regularly, and all the small ones seem to be building up to the next big one which will mean worldwide nuclear devastation. Some predictive computer modeling done by U.S. scientists has suggested that placing a man on Mars will be the sort of accomplishment to unite the planet in a kumbaya moment of shared hope for the future. To carry this out, a crack team of scientists is busily converting a volunteer astronaut into a cyborg capable of surviving in the Martian atmosphere. When the first subject strokes out from an overload sensory input, one Roger Torraway finds himself the next in line. Let the extreme body modifications begin.
Repeated surgeries do not make for much in the way of action, and Pohl builds minimal suspense into the plot. Torroway has a beautiful wife who is having an affair with his best friend who is also head of the Man Plus team. This does not make for any particularly interesting situations, except for the instance when Brad, the friend, is down with the flu and so fails to tell the now barely human Roger that the current minor surgical procedure will remove his genitalia. It's an awkward moment for everyone involved.
Pohl does little to create a vision of his future world. Cars drive themselves and space flights are everyday events. The technology involved in Roger's transformation is sketched in, and the facility in which the Man Plus project takes place is a gleaming white cube but the action inside could be taking place in the 1970's set of General Hospital. None of the characters are particularly interesting and I found Sulie, the nurse/scientist destined to be Roger's soulmate, downright tedious. Taking time out for scenes involving Roger and his unfaithful wife makes the storytelling additionally clunky.
There is a narrative voice running throughout the novel that remains unrevealed until the very end. Although its origin is not detailed in a very sophisticated way, it does bring into Pohl's story an early version of an idea that continues to fuel much science fiction writing and scientific speculation.
Perhaps because Space Merchants is my only other contact with Frederick Pohl, I find myself overly disappointed by this stingily imagined 1976 novel of the first U.S. manned mission to Mars. In some unspecified near future, the world is falling apart. Natural disasters plague much of the planet, small wars break out regularly, and all the small ones seem to be building up to the next big one which will mean worldwide nuclear devastation. Some predictive computer modeling done by U.S. scientists has suggested that placing a man on Mars will be the sort of accomplishment to unite the planet in a kumbaya moment of shared hope for the future. To carry this out, a crack team of scientists is busily converting a volunteer astronaut into a cyborg capable of surviving in the Martian atmosphere. When the first subject strokes out from an overload sensory input, one Roger Torraway finds himself the next in line. Let the extreme body modifications begin.
Repeated surgeries do not make for much in the way of action, and Pohl builds minimal suspense into the plot. Torroway has a beautiful wife who is having an affair with his best friend who is also head of the Man Plus team. This does not make for any particularly interesting situations, except for the instance when Brad, the friend, is down with the flu and so fails to tell the now barely human Roger that the current minor surgical procedure will remove his genitalia. It's an awkward moment for everyone involved.
Pohl does little to create a vision of his future world. Cars drive themselves and space flights are everyday events. The technology involved in Roger's transformation is sketched in, and the facility in which the Man Plus project takes place is a gleaming white cube but the action inside could be taking place in the 1970's set of General Hospital. None of the characters are particularly interesting and I found Sulie, the nurse/scientist destined to be Roger's soulmate, downright tedious. Taking time out for scenes involving Roger and his unfaithful wife makes the storytelling additionally clunky.
There is a narrative voice running throughout the novel that remains unrevealed until the very end. Although its origin is not detailed in a very sophisticated way, it does bring into Pohl's story an early version of an idea that continues to fuel much science fiction writing and scientific speculation.
April 22, 2010
...Man Plus includes the dark sense of humour is included in everything I have read of Pohl so far. His portrayal of the US president in particular borders on the satirical at times. The satirical tone of some parts of the novel combined with the grotesque changes to Torraway's physique keep the reader right on the edge of how serious all this should be taken. Over the course of the novel he asks the readers to examine some quite difficult questions and keeps on asking them right up to the end of the novel. I suppose one could take this to be a fairly light read. I didn't find it so. In fact it took me quite a while after I finished it to formulate some coherent opinions on this book. The last few chapters in particular leave the reader with something to think about....
Full Random Comments review
Full Random Comments review
September 2, 2019
I'm not sure what I was expecting when this book started, but what I got wasn't it. In Man Plus the United States is attempting to not only send a man to Mars (which in the book has already been done before) but to have him survive long term without a spacesuit of any kind. To do so, the man in question will have to be modified in a few minor ways. You know, just having his skin replaced, most of his organs, castrated, wings added to collect solar energy, whatevs. The premise is given pretty early on, and although it's a 250 page book, the first 200 pages take place entirely on Earth.
If Man Plus were to be made into a movie, I think it would need be done via a David Cronenberg body horror homage. I really enjoyed Roger Torraway's alternating acceptance and revulsion at what was occurring to him. The added stakes for Roger are mainly his paranoia that his wife is sleeping with one of the scientists on the team. The big plot twists involve a new nurse at the facility and figuring out who the narrator of the book is (which I did not see coming, even though Pohl leaves plenty of clues along the way).
Compared to some of the other award winners of this era, I flew through this book. The book stays focused primarily on Roger, but the supporting cast is developed enough to stay interesting, including the President of the United States. Besides the main concept, Pohl also dabbles in some other big picture ideas like gender roles, artificial intelligence and overpopulation. The story builds to the eventual mission to Mars where some pretty suspenseful moments take place. This was a very simple story but very well done. I'll definitly keep my eyes out for the sequel.
If Man Plus were to be made into a movie, I think it would need be done via a David Cronenberg body horror homage. I really enjoyed Roger Torraway's alternating acceptance and revulsion at what was occurring to him. The added stakes for Roger are mainly his paranoia that his wife is sleeping with one of the scientists on the team. The big plot twists involve a new nurse at the facility and figuring out who the narrator of the book is (which I did not see coming, even though Pohl leaves plenty of clues along the way).
Compared to some of the other award winners of this era, I flew through this book. The book stays focused primarily on Roger, but the supporting cast is developed enough to stay interesting, including the President of the United States. Besides the main concept, Pohl also dabbles in some other big picture ideas like gender roles, artificial intelligence and overpopulation. The story builds to the eventual mission to Mars where some pretty suspenseful moments take place. This was a very simple story but very well done. I'll definitly keep my eyes out for the sequel.
July 11, 2013
Excellent premise and story, unfortunately tarnished by Yellow Peril, a straw feminist, American exceptionalism, compulsory heterosexuality (but a complete lack of knowledge of population bottleneck), and a woman whose lovesickness is more important than her qualifications as a top psychologist.
December 3, 2010
Some interesting ideas, some unnecessary sexism, and a "big reveal" at the end which is unrelated to the other issues brought up by the story.
July 21, 2026
I don't wanna beat my bitch-Dave Blunts, "I DONT WANNA BEAT HER" from YOU'RE NOT THAT SPECIAL
I don't wanna beat my bitch, yeah
Trust me I don't wanna beat my bitch
But what am I to do if she keep suckin niggas' dicks?
Pages 1-50: Wow this might be one of the best scifi books ever
Pages 51-200: Wow I want to kill this guy's wife with hammers
Pages 201-250: Wow Mars
I haven't hated a character like this since Shitsha from Land of the Lustrous. That was bearable because I was entirely aware that I was reading the manga wrong. Here, I'm really, really not sure that I am.
Half of this story is literally about cuckoldry, and the other is metaphorically about cuckoldry. The first allusion I could spot to the main character being a cuck comes on page three. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills, almost none of the reviews I've read have mentioned THE central theme of this book? I swear, Martian colonization is used as a metaphor for the main character accepting his life as a cuck. He is literally castrated while wishing his wife would stop fucking other dudes. It permeates everything in the book. And people just...ignore it? Chalk it up to 70s scifi degeneracy and move on?
That aside, it's at its best when its reading like a proto-Blindsight, exploring his expanded cyborg senses and abilities. That's genuinely cool and interesting. Unfortunately, so many peripheral elements are introduced in a short book, that it takes until the last quarter for it to feel like something's happening. Just when it seems like it's getting somewhere, it ends, but not without some weak sequelbait. What a sad course for such a great opening.
January 28, 2023
Man Plus follows the story of an astronaut who reluctantly submits to becoming a cyborg in order to expedite the goal of having an American living on Mars. Humanity is at the brink: War and the threat of nuclear armageddon, not to mention climate crisis, are set to cause extinction. Habitation on Mars is deemed an urgent necessity to ensure the survival of the species.
A greater part of the book is centred on the horror of having parts of your body literally chopped off, replaced by cybernetics, and having a bunch of algorithms mediating your senses to prevent you from stroke & death owing to sensory-overload. It’s pretty creepy stuff: project staff switching off your eyes, or having your perception of time screwed with. The existential unease, whilst never written as full-on horror, is compelling.
But that’s a distraction, right? The big game is getting feet in the dust, on the surface of Mars.
As much as I enjoyed the transformation section of the book, the story as a whole was a little out of balance. The finale – which again was compelling – rushed by too fast. Oh, and I had long since predicted the ending. It's not a book that will stay with me. Still, it isn’t faint praise to say I enjoyed the reading experience a good deal.
The book is at it’s strongest when raising the question of the discontinuity between reality and perception. It spurred a whole lot of thinking for me and I would have liked the story to go deeper into that subject. Overall a fun read with some intriguing elements. 3.5-stars.
A greater part of the book is centred on the horror of having parts of your body literally chopped off, replaced by cybernetics, and having a bunch of algorithms mediating your senses to prevent you from stroke & death owing to sensory-overload. It’s pretty creepy stuff: project staff switching off your eyes, or having your perception of time screwed with. The existential unease, whilst never written as full-on horror, is compelling.
But that’s a distraction, right? The big game is getting feet in the dust, on the surface of Mars.
As much as I enjoyed the transformation section of the book, the story as a whole was a little out of balance. The finale – which again was compelling – rushed by too fast. Oh, and I had long since predicted the ending. It's not a book that will stay with me. Still, it isn’t faint praise to say I enjoyed the reading experience a good deal.
The book is at it’s strongest when raising the question of the discontinuity between reality and perception. It spurred a whole lot of thinking for me and I would have liked the story to go deeper into that subject. Overall a fun read with some intriguing elements. 3.5-stars.
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