Thursday, September 19, 2013

Cyborg

1972
Cyborg
by Martin Caidin
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As a child, anyone who re-enacted any sort of action in slo-mo, had to do so while making "CH-CH-CH-CH-CH" sound effects, emulating the Six Million Dollar Man. Before Star Wars toys took over the playrooms of young boys in the late seventies, Steve Austin dolls were the prized possession of any cool kid.

But before Lee Majors popularized the idea of a man who could jump fences and run in slow-motion, Martin Caidin had speculated about the use of bionics to rebuild- and strengthen- a human. The novel Cyborg spawned the TV movie and following television show. Caidin writes a technically correct and detailed story and description of the first bionic man. The story of Steve Austin's crash, physical and mental transformation, and rebirth is told in a technical and often dry manner. The details of his surgeries takes up the bulk of the book, examining in a fairly realistic way how a man might cope with being a triple amputee and being a government science experiment- all issues that the TV show basically encapsulated into a six second intro.
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My copy was full of grammatical, spelling and printing errors. The characterization of all but the main characters is shallow, and the two action sequences at the end of the book are a small payoff for anyone who opened this book hoping for a great adventure story.
Overall this book should receive more credit for its groundbreaking work on cybernetic theories, and I wouldn't be surprised if we see much of Caidin's guesswork on bionic limbs finally come to fruition in the near future (if perhaps 50 years too late).
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Two notes of interest- The first is that much of the book takes place in my recently adopted home of Colorado Springs, as the secret bionic lab is located deep in the bowels of NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain. Who knew, right?
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The other is Caidin's nod to crossover fiction, as noted in the Cyborg Wikipedia entry: In the 1990s, Caidin wrote the novel Buck Rogers: A Life in the Future based upon the Buck Rogers comic strip of the 1930s. In this book, Caidin pays tribute to Cyborg by having Buck Rogers receive bionics transplants following his 500-year coma, including several direct references to Steve Austin himself. Again, who knew?
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Although I can't really recommend the book on it's own merits, I would love to hear about your memories of the TV show, or its subsequent spin-offs and reboots.

Artwork/photo credit:
http://volveralpasado.bligoo.cl/el-hombre-nuclear-the-six-million-dollar-man#.UjvIrIznaU
Mark Thiessen/National Geographic