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Cyborg (novel)
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Cyborg is the title of a science fiction/secret agent novel by Martin Caidin which was first published in 1972. The novel also included elements of speculative fiction, and was adapted as the television series The Six Million Dollar Man and also inspired its spin-off, The Bionic Woman.
Plot summary
Cyborg is the story of an astronaut-turned-test pilot, Steve Austin, who experiences a catastrophic crash during a flight, leaving him with all but one limb destroyed, blind in one eye, and with other major injuries.
At the same time, a secret branch of the American government, the Office of Strategic Operations (OSO) has taken an interest in the work of Dr. Rudy Wells in the field of bionics - the replacement of human body parts with mechanical prosthetics that (in the context of this novel) are more powerful than the original limbs.
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Encyclopedia
Cyborg is the title of a science fiction/secret agent novel by Martin Caidin which was first published in 1972. The novel also included elements of speculative fiction, and was adapted as the television series The Six Million Dollar Man and also inspired its spin-off, The Bionic Woman.
Plot summary
Cyborg is the story of an astronaut-turned-test pilot, Steve Austin, who experiences a catastrophic crash during a flight, leaving him with all but one limb destroyed, blind in one eye, and with other major injuries.
At the same time, a secret branch of the American government, the Office of Strategic Operations (OSO) has taken an interest in the work of Dr. Rudy Wells in the field of bionics - the replacement of human body parts with mechanical prosthetics that (in the context of this novel) are more powerful than the original limbs. Wells also happens to be a close friend of Austin's, so when OSO chief Oscar Goldman "invites" (or rather, orders) Wells to rebuild Austin with bionics limbs, Wells agrees.
(Note: in Caidin's writings, he uses the form "bionics" in all references treating it as a singular, since "-ics" is the Greek suffix meaning science, study or practice, as in "physics"; this was changed for the subsequent television series to the more singular-sounding form "bionic", i.e. "bionic limbs" rather than Caidin's "bionics limbs".)
Steve Austin is outfitted with two new legs capable of propelling him at great speed, and a bionics left arm that while closely resembling a human arm, is in fact a deadly bludgeon and battering ram. His left eye is replaced with a false, removable eye that is used (in this first novel) to house a miniature camera. Other physical alterations include the installation of a steel skull plate to replace bone smashed by the crash, a poison dart gun in one of the fingers of the bionics arm, and a radio transmitter built into a rib. This mixture of man and machine is known as a cyborg, from which the novel gets its title.
The first half of the novel details Austin's operation and both his reaction to his original injuries -- he attempts to commit suicide -- and his initially resentful reaction to being rebuilt with bionics. The operation comes with a hefty price tag, and Austin is committed to working for the OSO as a reluctant agent. He is teamed with a female operative and sent to the Middle East as a new weapon against terrorism.
Steve Austin series
Caidin's book was written as the first of a series, and over the next few years he would write three more books that were, for the most part, independent of the continuity of the television series (upon which additional novels were written by other authors):
For a list of episode novelizations, see the article on The Six Million Dollar Man.
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
In 1973, Cyborg was adapted as a 90-minute made-for-TV movie entitled The Six Million Dollar Man. The film begins with a computerized text scroll explaining the term "cyborg" and since the word "CYBORG" is the first word seen on screen, some sources say the full title of the telefilm was Cyborg: The Six Million Dollar Man.
The film starred Lee Majors as Austin and Martin Balsam as Rudy Wells. For reasons unknown, it was decided to change the name of the OSO chief to Oliver Spencer (played by Darren McGavin). Real-life footage of a test plane crash was incorporated into the film to depict Austin's accident.
The first half of the film follows Cyborg fairly closely, including Austin's initial suicide attempt and Wells' reluctance to operate on his friend. The second half of the telefilm differs from the novel, with Austin dropped into a remote part of Saudi Arabia on a solo mission and ordered to rescue a prisoner from a group of terrorists, a mission later revealed to be a test of Austin's abilities.
The film was a ratings hit. A second film, Wine, Women and War was commissioned, but this was not based upon a Caidin work. For this second film, Oscar Goldman was reinstated (with Richard Anderson playing the role), but the agency was renamed the Office of Strategic Intelligence (OSI). Alan Oppenheimer replaced Martin Balsam as Dr. Wells. A third TV movie, Solid Gold Kidnapping followed, after which The Six Million Dollar Man was launched as a weekly TV series in 1974, running until 1978. The original pilot film was re-edited with new footage to make it a "flashback episode" and syndicated as the two-part "The Moon and the Desert". Author Martin Caidin, according to The Bionic Book by Herbie Pilato, served as an uncredited consultant on the series throughout its run and ultimately made a cameo appearance in one of its final-season episodes; in addition, author Jay Barbree, who collaborated with Caidin on a number of non-fiction book projects and also wrote a novel based upon the series.
In 1976, a spin-off, The Bionic Woman was launched, running also until 1978. In 1987, 1989 and 1994 three made-for-TV films reunited the casts of both series. Due to his licensing agreement with Universal Studios, Caidin received credit on all these productions, even though The Bionic Woman did not originate in his books. The Bionic Woman was remade in 2007 as Bionic Woman, although few elements from the 1976-78 series were retained; elements from Cyborg, however, were incorporated, such the imagined Jaime Sommers possessing a bionic eye - a feature invented by Caidin for Austin - and organizational similarlities between the OSO of Caidin's novel and the telefilm, and the Berkut Group organization featured in the remake. Only nine episodes of the remake were produced.
Changes for television
A number of changes to Austin's bionic abilities and his demeanor were made as Caidin's dark-in-tone original novel and its concepts were adapted.
In order to increase the science fictional aspects, Austin's bionics were made more powerful, and he had abilities his literary counterpart lacked. Most notably, the first telefilm revealed that Austin's replacement bionic eye had a telescopic feature (later expanded to include nightvision), whereas Caidin originally had Austin's eye be little more than a mini-camera (and the character was still blind in it). Although his bionic eye is shown pre-implantation and Austin is later shown using both of his eyes for normal vision, the telefilm otherwise omits any demonstration of the eye's special abilities. (The comic book adaptation of The Six Million Dollar Man added even more functions to the eye; in the first issue Austin shoots a laser out of the eye, while in a later issue its telescopic function is so advanced he is able to see a man standing on a streetcorner from dozens of miles away.)
Austin was made to be less cold-blooded in the TV series. In the novel (and those that followed), Caidin depicts Austin as somewhat of a cold-blooded killer who actually commits an act of murder during his first mission (he kills a truck driver in order to prevent the man from identifying Austin to the enemy). The TV version, however, is shown stating outright that he has no desire to kill people (although he still does, on occasion), and tools such as the poison dart gun in the bionic arm were dropped. Also, since actor Majors was right-handed, it was decided that Austin's bionic arm would be his right, not his left as depicted in the novels. In Caidin's novel, the bionics arm was essentially a bludgeon and battering ram (Austin is frequently described crushing skulls with it during fight sequences); in the televised version the arm is more sophisticated and Austin is shown bending bars and throwing objects great distances with it.
In the novel, Austin is described as having a military background. In the telefilm adaptation, he is explicitly described as a civilian test pilot (although also a former astronaut). For the television series, Austin's background was changed to match that of the books, and he was given the rank of US Air Force Colonel.
Despite the minor and major changes made to the character for television, when authors such as Mike Jahn and Evan Richards were commissioned to write novelizations based upon Six Million Dollar Man episodes, they chose to follow Caidin's original model of the character, which on at least one occasion (the adaptation of "Love Song for Tanya" contained within Jahn's book, International Incidents) led to the ending of an episode being changed (in the episode, the villain is apprehended by Austin and arrested; in the book, Austin simply fires his poison dart gun at him and kills him).
Other references
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.
Cyborg was not Caidin's first dalliance with bionics, as the concept is also discussed in his 1968 novel, The God Machine. Caidin also revisited the concept in his 1982 novel Manfac, ISBN 0671654098, ISBN 978-0671654092, which even included dialog that derisively referred to the Six Million Dollar Man series.
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