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Man Plus Paperback – July 1, 1994

by Frederik Pohl (Author)

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Volunteering to be the next transformed cyborg of the Man Plus Project for the colonization of Mars, Roger Torroway is unaware that the Project is being secretly manipulated by an unknown group of shadowy planners. Reprint.

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Baen Books
Publication date

July 1, 1994
Dimensions

4.25 x 0.75 x 7 inches
ISBN-10

067187618X
ISBN-13

978-0671876180
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Baen Books; Reprint edition (July 1, 1994)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 067187618X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0671876180
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.54 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.25 x 0.75 x 7 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #10,868,620 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #308,172 in Science Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
109 ratings

About the author

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Frederik Pohl

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Frederik George Pohl, Jr. (/ˈpoʊl/; November 26, 1919 – September 2, 2013) was an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning more than seventy-five years—from his first published work, the 1937 poem "Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna", to the 2011 novel All the Lives He Led and articles and essays published in 2012.

From about 1959 until 1969, Pohl edited Galaxy and its sister magazine If; the latter won three successive annual Hugo Awards as the year's best professional magazine. His 1977 novel Gateway won four "year's best novel" awards: the Hugo voted by convention participants, the Locus voted by magazine subscribers, the Nebula voted by American science fiction writers, and the juried academic John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He won the Campbell Memorial Award again for the 1984 collection of novellas Years of the City, one of two repeat winners during the first forty years. For his 1979 novel Jem, Pohl won a U.S. National Book Award in the one-year category Science Fiction. It was a finalist for three other years' best novel awards. He won four Hugo and three Nebula Awards.

The Science Fiction Writers of America named Pohl its 12th recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award in 1993 and he was inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1998, its third class of two dead and two living writers.[a]

Pohl won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2010, for his blog, "The Way the Future Blogs".

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by AllyUnion [Attribution, GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0), CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

5 star		47%
4 star		36%
3 star		11%
2 star		3%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Amazingly relevant

Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2022

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This book was written what? over 45 years ago but the story
seems to foretell what is happening today. Issues with over population,
resources growing ever more scarce, threats of war,
environmental issues and the like.
It is almost as if Frederick Pohl could see the future.
To be frank, I consider Frederick Pohl THE best sci-fi writer there is.
Books like his Gateway series (or the Heechee Saga) , of which two computer games
were based on as well as all his other works are well written and
excellent reads that are hard to put down. This book will not disappoint.

Enjoyable, Interesting, & Dated

Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2014

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"Man Plus" by Frederik Pohl is an fictional novel about a government project to develop a Mars adapted cyborg. It's a fairly old work (1976) which makes it dated, but it holds up well as it's all about robot bodies and networked computers.

The book is predominately concerned with the transformation Roger Torraway undergoes, the people around him, and the ability to influence perception. It's particularly concerned with the sexual and romantic aspects of such a transformation. It's lite on details of what exactly is going on in the operation other than it's less than a brain in a jar but more than a penanggalan in a robot body that results in a both comedic and alienating moth man like appearance. There's a mystery for the reader that grows as the novel continue that isn't solved till the end. But, I suspect most will catch on by the halfway point and figure it out by the reveal.

It's a pretty quick and enjoyable read. Though it tends to be 70s at times (or older in the case of the female characters), I do like how it focuses more on the transformation and adapting than "well here's your awesome body go have fun."

One person found this helpful

Michael G Kurilla

Engineering mechanical human evolution

Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2018

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Frederik Pohl's Man Plus is a 70's classic concerning a project to colonize Mars as a result of ever worsening global conditions. As part of the program, a human is modified, converted into a cyborg, in order to better function long term on Mars while some undefined terraforming is to occur. Many details on the process as well as the numerous problems that arise are described. Pohl touches on many psychosocial issues related to this transformation as well as outlining a general loosening of social taboos throughout society. While the heavy handed nature of the US president may seem a bit overly dramatic, the time period for the tale does somewhat reflect the geopolitical consensus.

Pohl also provides for a cryptic first person narration that is a bit of a surprise at the very end. As a sci-fi classic, the detail embedded in the cyborg adaptation is thoroughly engaging.

4 people found this helpful

Discerning Reader

Great book in the 1970s a fair book by today's technology.

Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2016

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I really loved Man Plus back when I first read it in the late 1970s. It was written in 1976. So I went back and re-read it recently.

Well, the book has not aged all that well. The story is still very interesting. It involves making man suitable to live on Mars, as a cyborg. The cyborg is still heavily dependent on outside technology, but the concept is interesting.

Positives:
Interesting premise
Neat ideas, considering it was 1976.
Some positive female role models, like Sulie Carpenter (see negatives too)

Negatives:
Very dated technology. Huge computers that take enormous amounts of physical space. Making a computer small enough to be in a backpack is an achievement in this book.
Sexist views on women. Even the most competent woman in the story, an astronaut/nurse/doctor/psychologist, Sulie Carpenter, is treated as a second class kind of character. The wives of the astronauts are like so stereotypical of 1950s era stuff. Hard to read in light of today.

Overall, a great book in the 1970s, a fair book today.

No spoilers, but the perspective of the narrator is revealed at the end. It was really cool back in the 1970s, but today has been coped by so many bad books (like KSR Aurora) that this big reveal is no longer the shock it once was.

4 people found this helpful

Man Must Colonize Mars

Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2013

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That much is certain. We don't really know the real reason until the end, where there is a surprise I certainly didn't see coming and an added mystery. That adds to the satisfaction of this fine novel but wasn't really necessary. The interest rests in the character, who is losing most of what makes him 'human' and being adapted to live on Mars. The descriptions are very realistic. Maybe some readers would be bored by such details and testing but I found them fascinating. But perhaps the most compelling aspect is how he reacts to becoming a cyborg and how those react around him. It is a deeply psychological journey.

All of this is lengthy prelude to the trip to Mars. If I had a complaint, it would be the time we get to visit Mars. It covers the last 20% of the novel or so. I would have enjoyed more exploration of the red planet and of a few relationships.

I found this to be a very satisfying, thought-provoking and entertaining novel.

3 people found this helpful

Man Plus gets an A Plus

Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2018

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What a beautiful, obscure find! 42 years ago, with a pessimistic doomsday seventies tone of voice, Frederik Pohl gave us this fascinating cyborg in the making novel, sparing us nothing in the process and giving us no reader discretion advised warnings.

So, what do we have in Man Plus? A man who literally and painfully both for him and the reader becomes less than a man, before he becomes more than a man.

A love story in the making, bizarre and poignant.

Roger, the cyborg playing Segovia guitar pieces.

A poor entourage that almost shaves one star from the novel, with the exception of a priest. You can safely skip all the parts of the book where USA presidents, CIA people and the like appear.

An apotheosis on Mars.

A very unexpected twist in the end. You got us there Pohl.

Man Plus gets an A Plus. Highly recommended.

3 people found this helpful

Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2020

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Great condition! I read this back in high school, circa 1980. Wanted to read it again, with all this 'Go to Mars' talk going on. I am with Elon. 'I want to die on Mars. Just not on impact!'

One person found this helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Legal Vampire

first rate little book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 24, 2013

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The other favourable reviewers here already described the plot of this first rate little book very well so to avoid duplication I just add this.

Even if 40 year old science fiction is not what you would normally think of reading, this book could be worth trying.

It is the story of how an astronaut, a man called Roger Torroway,'s body is rebuilt to be able to survive on Mars. This may sound like yet another immitation of the 'Frankenstein's Monster' myth, of a thinking machine created by human science that risks getting out of control of its creators. In a way it is, although by the end of the book we discover that the real Frankenstein's Monster is not Roger Torroway but something else, which is not actually malevolent but is deviously concerned for itself and not its human creators.

The story ends with some questions and plot strands resolved, some unresolved and an unexpected new mystery. However, the story seems somehow meant to end like this and I do not think the author had answers in his mind at the time.

The author did co-write a sequel many years later called Mars Plus that at time of writing no one has reviewed on Amazon.co.uk. Four people reviewed it on the American Amazon.com but all but one find it disappointing and say that the sequel does not spend much time on the questions raised or characters left at the end of Man Plus. The only favourable review seems to refer to another of the author's books and to have been posted there accidentally.

It is therefore probably best that we accept that the story ends here, with Roger Torroway, his mostly robotic body able to experience the Martian surface unconfined by a space suit, looking up through the thinner Martian atmosphere with enhanced senses at familiar and unfamiliar stars, knowing it may be best that he is never reunited with his beloved wife Dorrie back on Earth, to whom he now appears a metallic monster.

This is the first science fiction novel I have read for more than 20 years. I tried it because I liked a short story by the same author Frederick Pohl in a compilation of otherwise very varying interest by different authors The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories (Mammoth Books) . [Should you wish to know, Pohl's story in that book is called 'Waiting for the Olympians' and set in an alternative history in which the Roman Empire survived to the present day and now has a space exploration programe. Christianity never got going as a religion because a merciful Roman Governor pardoned Jesus and deprived him of martyrdom.]

3 people found this helpful

Lark

What a twist! What a finish!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 22, 2012

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In the final chapter, which is about three or four pages long, there is a twist which sets this entire book in context and made me think about rereading it immediately with this in mind. This is an achievement for sure, there's no question that this book is a classic even if this piece of narrative brilliance wasnt included but it really does make it worth reading to the sentence and will no doubt make for interesting discussion with any friends who've read it too.

The book itself is narrated in the third person, the characters central to the story are all introduced early on but the main protagonist does not begin in the role of the cyborg destined for Mars colonisation. I found this was a really great narrative trick although the pace and style of writing is good besides and the author does not have to rely upon tricks to keep a reader engaged with the story.

I dont know a lot about cybernetics, space exploration or the hard science aspects of the novel but this content is convincing and not fantastic or too wonderous, there are just enough details ommitted to make the crazy surgerical feats involved in making the protagonist "man plus" to make it seem feasible. One aspect of reading novels like this which depict a world of tommorrow that we are closer to being in than the author was at the time of writing is discovering what innovations and developments they anticipated correctly and what they did not, for instance everyone does have the means to communicate via video calls but there are no mobile phones, these are phones like the home appliances, and folding screen covers provide privacy rather than minimising pictures as is possible with a laptop appliance in reality. While the author has anticipated flying cars, automated transport, some innovations in garage car storage they imagine a world in which everyone smokes, even in hospitals, and as I've said no one has mobile communications (car phones exist but are more like CB radios).

There is more character development than world building but both are done really well, the world of the future anticipates things such as China's rise in prominance, there is a kind of internet functioning in that computers are networked but the characterisation is what I found the greatest. This is a very humane and humanising tale, the psychological aspects of it are great, one candidate perishes as a result of psychological pressure, or at least it is implied and a mainstay of the story is how Roger, the man plus subject, adapts to his transformation. It is a brilliant tale from this perspective and I would recommend it to anyone as a result, not just fans of science fiction.

Its not unreasonable to mention Frankenstein perhaps but this isnt a tale of mad science and alienation in quite the same way, the pace and style of writing is pretty different too. Recommended.

4 people found this helpful

D. M. York

A modern day Frankenstein

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 14, 2005

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Man plus comes as the forebear to many novels about the colonisation of alien worlds. Although this book is far more political in its content than many others. It would have been very easy to immerse the story in the buildup of political tension occuring in the unimpossible future of Earth, just as it could have been very easy to allow Mars swallow the story entirely and in fact turn it into a fictional account of adapting to the environment of another world (try Ben Bova for such reading). However Man Plus looks at the personal and individual costs of beginning a colonisation.
As a volunteer for the Man Plus programme Roger must be stripped of his humanity, the flesh that identifies him and even his very perceptions of reality as he is remade to be a new life form. Through this the novel allows glimpses of both Roger's inner torment as well political debates that the team that must manufacture him face.
In some ways I wish that there had been more of Mars in this novel, as it is relegated to just two short chapters. Though the big point about this novel isn't about how man will live on Mars, it is about what he must face before he can live there. A very intelligent piece of science fiction.

5 people found this helpful

J. Neal

Haunting.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 1, 2004

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Having read my first Frederik Pohl; "Jem" earlier this year, I was keen to read more, and Man Plus doesn't disappoint. It's a precursor to many more recent Martian novels and unlike the Barsoomian nonsense of Edgar Rice Burroughs which I read as a boy, or the politically intense Kim Stanley Robinson, Man Plus explores the individual cost and emotional journey of a single Martian colonist. It really is a unique and clever approach, with Mars itself being relegated to a supporting role in the story. Pohl handles the alien [as a concept] very well and there's an overarching strangeness and a sense of isolation to this novel that could only be conjured by a writer with a soul, for which, I can only admire him.

12 people found this helpful

T. Boy74

but I did in this case and I'm so glad I decided to buy it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 14, 2016

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They say never judge a book by its cover, but I did in this case and I'm so glad I decided to buy it. Easily one of the best novels, science fiction or otherwise that I have ever read. Really could not put this book down. Pohl's narrative is outstanding here. Very cinematic. I love the inclusion of the 'Carmarthenshire Freedom Fighters'! Kept me on my toes till the very last page. Definitely a 'Masterwork' for me.

One person found this helpful

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