Man Plus was published by Random House in 1976 and won the Nebula Award for Best Novel. The premise is that Earth is headed for ecological and political catastrophe, and humanity’s only hope is to colonize Mars — but Mars cannot support human life. The solution: surgically modify a human being until he can survive on Mars unaided. Roger Torraway is the astronaut selected for the procedure.
The novel follows Torraway’s transformation in clinical, unflinching detail. His eyes are replaced by compound lenses that can see in the Martian spectrum. His skin is replaced by photosynthetic membranes that convert sunlight to energy. His lungs are modified to extract oxygen from the thin Martian atmosphere. His emotional responses are damped to prevent psychological breakdown. Each surgery takes him further from humanity: his wife can barely look at him; his colleagues treat him as a specimen; he experiences the world through senses that no longer correspond to human perception.
Pohl’s achievement is to make Torraway’s transformation simultaneously a technical achievement, a horror story, and a philosophical inquiry. What is left of a person when you have removed his senses, his appearance, and his emotional capacity? Is the thing that arrives on Mars still Roger Torraway? The novel’s enigmatic final twist — revealing that the narrator has been an unexpected intelligence all along — adds another layer to the question of who is watching and who is being watched.
Collecting Man Plus
First edition (Random House, New York, 1976): Cloth binding, dust jacket. Nebula Award winner.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $40–$120
- Without jacket: $10–$25