Teaser

With Earth in the grip of the Cold War, everyone is looking for a way out. For Roger Torraway, that way out is Mars. Yet Mars is inhospitable to the human form, and if the dream of colonisation is to become a reality, Roger must sacrifice everything that makes him human . . .

Review

Credit where it’s due, there are some great ideas at pay in Man Plus. Frederik Pohl was one of the last survivors of science fiction’s Golden Age, and Man Plus was nominated for just about every award under the sun. That’s an incredible testament to the popularity of both author and book. Yet upon finishing my first read, all I’m left with is disappointment and confusion.

Man Plus is, like every other book, a product of its time. The time in question is the Cold War, a presence that looms threateningly over the entire book. In one of the better scenes, we see the US President going all out to prevent a diplomatic incident turning into a full-blown conflict. Had there been more of this, had this been a work of alternative history rather than of Martian colonisation, I dare say I’d have enjoyed it a whole lot more than I did. That’s because, while the idea of transforming the human body for spaceflight is an interesting one, I can’t help but feel Pohl utterly bungles the execution.

This book was written in the seventies, which naturally means despite ostensibly being about a trip to Mars, everyone is far more concerned with sex. It turns out that becoming a Martian means removing your genitals. Problematic stuff if you want a happy marriage More problematic still is the fact that I simply do not care one jot about any of the relationships. The characterisation is paper-thin, which wouldn’t be a problem if the focus was elsewhere, but with the spotlight on the unhappy couple, the flaws are glaring.

Maybe it’s the fact that my sleep schedule has been out of whack this month, but I could barely focus on this book. It’s short, but I wish it had been shorter. There’s a good short story in here fighting to break free, but it’s lost in a sea of hard-to-parse sentences and a meandering plot. Oh yes, and then there’s the ending. We all know a good story has a sting in the tail, and Man Plus has one too. Unfortunately, there’s no foreshadowing of it. It just comes out of nowhere. Again, I really like the idea of the twist ending, but it needed more grounding. Maybe instead of a short story, this book should have been two unrelated ones.

As a final indignity to Pohl’s legend, this Reader’s Union edition has the most bizarre typo I’ve ever seen. Pohl’s name is spelled correctly on the cover, but on the spine they’ve decided he needs a ‘c’ in Frederik. It’s hard for me to take their claims of showcasing the best of the genre when the jacket design can make so glaring an error. That is by no means a knock against Pohl’s work, but it’s a distraction nonetheless. Especially as I sit here looking at it on my shelf with gritted teeth.

Man Plus might be a lauded work of science fiction, but I’m the sort of reader who rarely agrees with the big name awards. Or maybe, I concede, I just have terrible taste in literature. I guess we’ll never know for sure.

Book Stats

• This edition published by Reader’s Union
• Published in 1976
• 215 pages