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"Man Plus" is a 100,000 word novel by Frederik Pohl, about an astronaut who is surgically altered to make him better adapted to live on Mars. It was first published in 1976.

Plot

In the near future, the world is in a state of political chaos, and the United States is surrounded on all sides by enemies. The president, aided by computer projections, has decided that America must colonize Mars, but to do so they need to create a man capable of living in the hostile Martian environment. The first volunteer undergoes many operations, and then dies during testing. The second volunteer is Colonel Roger Torraway. He undergoes the same operations, and lives because the problem with the previous volunteer has been solved. He has his skin altered, his eyes removed, and has all of his senses hooked up to a computer. He has wings installed (not to fly, but simply to have more surface area on his skin to pick up enough energy from the sun), his testicles removed (they are not necessary for the mission), and various other unspeakable horrors. He becomes a hideous looking freak, but well adapted to the Martian climate.

While undergoing these procedures, he begins to realize that his wife, whom he loves very much, is having an affair with Dr. Bradley, one of the scientists in charge of designing and maintaining his computer systems. Indeed, it was while Dr. Bradley was off on one of his trysts that the equipment went wrong and killed the first volunteer. Roger grows depressed, but because he is so important to the mission and the mission so important to the future of America, the scientists, under considerable pressure from the President, try to keep him happy. They bring in a lab technician, Sulie, who is made up to look like his wife, to distract him; and both Dr. Bradley and Roger’s wife are put under surveillance.

Roger embarks for Mars, along with Dr. Bradley (to monitor his systems and also, presumably, to put Roger’s mind at ease), an areologist, and a pilot. Sulie heads for Mars on a different ship. The mission is a success; they begin their terraforming operations, and other nations offer to help. Near the end, however, the President and his advisors realize that the computer projections they have been relying on, which showed the world was on the brink of annihilation, were flawed; that someone had broken into the computer network and skewed the numbers, and they are left wondering why.

Only in the last chapter do we learn that a superbeing has evolved out of the computer network; that this computer being is narrating the story; that it has manipulated the projections to insure the success of the Mars/ManPlus mission; and that it did so because it was worried that the death of all humans would mean the death of computer life as well (the computers didn’t care about humans per se; they just didn’t think they could live without them). But in the last page, they point out that they themselves had made a mistake, which had nearly cost Roger his life on Mars. But, they ask, if they, the computers, were manipulating the humans into carrying out the ManPlus mission, then who manipulated the computers to make this nearly fatal mistake, and why?

ISBNs

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• ISBN 978-1857989465 (Gollancz 2000 paperback)

External Links

• Man Plus at Gollancz

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