Man Plus by Frederik Pohl
1978 Nebula Award Winner (Review contains major spoilers)
This was one of the first books that I read in the e-book format on an iPad, and that was probably seven years ago. At the time I was still dead-set on obtaining physical copies of every book so I didn’t think it really “counted” for this challenge. Well recently I’ve been getting into the Audiobook format by way of working on this challenge, and this is the second such book I’ve enjoyed in that way, so I think it counts well enough to review.
The setting is Earth in the not very distant future, where unrest is growing between nations competing for almost depleted resources, and the President of the USA's advisors tell him that all the computer modelling shows that humans need a unifying goal and achievement or face extinction in an apocalyptic global war. To that end they start the project to colonise Mars, one of the major steps is cybernetically enhancing a human to be able to survive on the surface of Mars as easily as they survive on the surface of Earth.
The first half of the story follows one Roger Torroway, the astronaught that is selected and how he transitions from human to cyborg. The second half details how the Mars mission goes once launched from Earth, which also has the desired effect of reducing tensions around the world as nations start looking outward rather than across at each other. In a delightful twist, at the end the narrators of the tale turn out not to be some internal government organisation like the FBI as it seemed merely keeping tabs on things, but sentient computers that were worried humans would accidental destroy the networks that they lived in. So the sentient computers engineered all the data presented to the humans to manipulate them to unknowingly send powerful computers out into space (with the astronaughts), and thus these new sentient beings escaped Earth and the race would not become extinct if war did break out on Earth. In a slightly unusual move, the humans of the story never became aware of these sentient computers, and in the end the sentient computers found hints that the data they were using was manipulated by players unknown in a similar way to how they manipluated the humans.
I found this story a bit disjointed on the whole, the two halves were very distinct, and could possibly have been used as seperate and stand-alone stories. I found the first half, where Roger is promoted to top test subject, and the effect on him and his relationships with people changed as more and more of his body was removed and changed beyond recognition, to be very interesting. It would be incredibly hard for anyone to lose their humanity by pieces, and this struck me as some pretty intense body horror, but without any revelling in gratuitous gruesomeness. There was a definite purpose for everything that was done, it's difficult to say noble, but certainly not mean or capricious. The characters were all believable and flawed. Roger went from a powerless test subject to the most powerful (literal and figuritive) person on Earth in a natural progression. And you couldn't help but feel what he lost, even his flawed and unfaithful wife is quite sympathetic and not particularly villanised. All throughout I wanted to keep reading and discover what happened nexy, just as all the scientists building Roger waited with baited breath to see the results of their latest alteration.
The second half, landing on and exploring Mars I found quite dull. I'm not sure what humanity's knowledge of Mars was back when this book was written, but I'm sure it was better than described. I found the plant-life particularly immersion breaking and there just wasn't anything compelling about Roger being on Mars, it was great that he worked as intended despite once accidentally running out of power. The last chapter, where the computers reveal they had engineered the whole Mars program could just as well been put at the end of the launch from Earth and I don't think the story would have lost anything.
The writing style was vivid enough without being verbose, there was no retreat into technobabble, all the proposed technologies were reasonable. The only thing to date it a bit is the physical size of the computers, I have no doubt that the author felt he was pushing the limit of his reader's belief by saying they could get a supercomputer to fit into a backpack almost too big for a human to lift. I can't fault a 1970's writer for that.
All in all this was an enjoyable and worthwhile read despite the slow second half. I'd quite recommend it to anyone with an interest in (realistic) sci-fi cyborgs or where humanity ends and machines begin. 4/5
This was one of the first books that I read in the e-book format on an iPad, and that was probably seven years ago. At the time I was still dead-set on obtaining physical copies of every book so I didn’t think it really “counted” for this challenge. Well recently I’ve been getting into the Audiobook format by way of working on this challenge, and this is the second such book I’ve enjoyed in that way, so I think it counts well enough to review.
The setting is Earth in the not very distant future, where unrest is growing between nations competing for almost depleted resources, and the President of the USA's advisors tell him that all the computer modelling shows that humans need a unifying goal and achievement or face extinction in an apocalyptic global war. To that end they start the project to colonise Mars, one of the major steps is cybernetically enhancing a human to be able to survive on the surface of Mars as easily as they survive on the surface of Earth.
The first half of the story follows one Roger Torroway, the astronaught that is selected and how he transitions from human to cyborg. The second half details how the Mars mission goes once launched from Earth, which also has the desired effect of reducing tensions around the world as nations start looking outward rather than across at each other. In a delightful twist, at the end the narrators of the tale turn out not to be some internal government organisation like the FBI as it seemed merely keeping tabs on things, but sentient computers that were worried humans would accidental destroy the networks that they lived in. So the sentient computers engineered all the data presented to the humans to manipulate them to unknowingly send powerful computers out into space (with the astronaughts), and thus these new sentient beings escaped Earth and the race would not become extinct if war did break out on Earth. In a slightly unusual move, the humans of the story never became aware of these sentient computers, and in the end the sentient computers found hints that the data they were using was manipulated by players unknown in a similar way to how they manipluated the humans.
I found this story a bit disjointed on the whole, the two halves were very distinct, and could possibly have been used as seperate and stand-alone stories. I found the first half, where Roger is promoted to top test subject, and the effect on him and his relationships with people changed as more and more of his body was removed and changed beyond recognition, to be very interesting. It would be incredibly hard for anyone to lose their humanity by pieces, and this struck me as some pretty intense body horror, but without any revelling in gratuitous gruesomeness. There was a definite purpose for everything that was done, it's difficult to say noble, but certainly not mean or capricious. The characters were all believable and flawed. Roger went from a powerless test subject to the most powerful (literal and figuritive) person on Earth in a natural progression. And you couldn't help but feel what he lost, even his flawed and unfaithful wife is quite sympathetic and not particularly villanised. All throughout I wanted to keep reading and discover what happened nexy, just as all the scientists building Roger waited with baited breath to see the results of their latest alteration.
The second half, landing on and exploring Mars I found quite dull. I'm not sure what humanity's knowledge of Mars was back when this book was written, but I'm sure it was better than described. I found the plant-life particularly immersion breaking and there just wasn't anything compelling about Roger being on Mars, it was great that he worked as intended despite once accidentally running out of power. The last chapter, where the computers reveal they had engineered the whole Mars program could just as well been put at the end of the launch from Earth and I don't think the story would have lost anything.
The writing style was vivid enough without being verbose, there was no retreat into technobabble, all the proposed technologies were reasonable. The only thing to date it a bit is the physical size of the computers, I have no doubt that the author felt he was pushing the limit of his reader's belief by saying they could get a supercomputer to fit into a backpack almost too big for a human to lift. I can't fault a 1970's writer for that.
All in all this was an enjoyable and worthwhile read despite the slow second half. I'd quite recommend it to anyone with an interest in (realistic) sci-fi cyborgs or where humanity ends and machines begin. 4/5