Once upon a time the sneer at science fiction was that all its characters, human, Martian, or bug-eyed, appeared to come from Ohio. Later authors took note and lavished much labour on creating alienness. Now Frederik Pohl, in his first science fiction novel for six years, has as his central character a man surgically adapted to Mars, with computer-assisted senses, grafted mechanical limbs, artificial skin, and all the rest (worked out in loving detail)—but beneath it all there still throbs a brain brought up in Ohio. And the question is not, can it cope with Mars, but can it cope with the traumas caused by its own alterations—above all, with the assault on its feelings of masculinity?

The result is a spellbinding book, written by a brilliant writer at the height of his powers. The scenes in the tight-knit Midwestern community that holds the "Man Plus...