Cyborg (novel)
A test pilot becomes a reluctant cyborg agent.
Cyborg is a 1972 science fiction and secret agent novel by Martin Caidin that incorporates speculative fiction elements. It was adapted into the television movie The Six Million Dollar Man, which spawned two sequels, a weekly series of the same name starring Lee Majors, and the spin-off The Bionic Woman.
Quick Facts
- Author
- Martin Caidin
- Country
- United States
- Language
- English
- Series
- Cyborg
- Genre
- Science fiction novel
- Publisher
- Arbor House
- Released
- April 1972
- Format
- Print (hardback & paperback)
Facts from the source article.
Plot summary
The novel follows astronaut and test pilot Steve Austin, who is nearly killed in a catastrophic flight crash, leaving him with all but one limb destroyed, blind in one eye, and other major injuries. The secret Office of Strategic Operations (OSO) takes interest in Dr. Rudy Wells's bionics work—mechanical prosthetics stronger than natural limbs. Wells, a friend of Austin, is ordered by OSO chief Oscar Goldman to rebuild Austin. Austin receives bionic legs for great speed, a bionic left arm with battering-ram strength and a poison dart gun in one finger, a removable left eye housing a miniature camera, a steel skull plate, and a radio transmitter in a rib. This man-machine hybrid is called a cyborg. The first half covers Austin's suicide attempt and resentment toward his rebuilding; the price of the operation is his commitment as an OSO agent. The second half sees him teamed with a female operative on a Middle East mission, where he relies on his augmentation and ultimately accepts his role.
Adaptations
In 1973, Cyborg was adapted as a 90-minute made-for-television movie titled The Six Million Dollar Man. The movie opens with a computerized text scroll defining "cyborg," and because "CYBORG" is the first word on screen, some sources—including ABC promotions and the DiscoVision home video release—give the full title as Cyborg: The Six Million Dollar Man. Lee Majors played Austin, Martin Balsam played Rudy Wells, and Darren McGavin played Oliver Spencer (the OSO officer, renamed from Oscar Goldman), who has a limp and constant pain; the OSO chief is still named McKay, now a middle-aged woman. Real-life footage of the Northrop M2-F2 test-plane crash depicts Austin's accident. The first half follows the novel closely, including Austin's suicide attempt and Wells's reluctance. The second half differs: Austin is dropped into remote Saudi Arabia on a solo mission to rescue a prisoner, later revealed as a test. The movie was a ratings success. A second movie, Wine, Women and War, not based on Caidin's works, reinstated Oscar Goldman (played by Richard Anderson) and renamed the agency the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI); Alan Oppenheimer replaced Balsam as Wells. A third TV movie, The Solid Gold Kidnapping, preceded the weekly series The Six Million Dollar Man, which ran from 1974 to 1978 for five seasons. The pilot was re-edited with new footage as a flashback episode syndicated as "The Moon and the Desert." Martin Caidin served as an uncredited consultant for the series and appeared in a final-season episode; author Jay Barbree wrote a novel based on the series.
Other references
In the 1990s, Caidin wrote Buck Rogers: A Life in the Future, in which Buck Rogers receives bionic transplants after a 500-year coma, with direct references to Steve Austin. Caidin had earlier discussed bionics in his 1968 novel The God Machine, and revisited the concept in his 1982 novel Manfac, which includes dialog derisively referring to The Six Million Dollar Man series.
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