The Six Million Dollar Man

Martin Caidin gave his cyborg a camera for an eye that cannot see, a finger loaded with poison darts, and a bionic arm whose blows usually kill. That detail alone tells you Cyborg is a harder, colder book than the weekly show that grew out of it. Caidin was an aviation writer, and his 1972 novel treats the machinery with a mechanic's interest in flywheels, pulleys and the limits of a human frame bolted to artificial parts. What the page offers that television rarely did is the inside of Steve Austin's head. Readers point to the novel's attention to what it feels like to be rebuilt, and to Austin's bitterness at being turned into a government instrument. His strength costs him something, and he does not always like the man he has become. For anyone who knows the genial hero of the series, the original Austin is a darker figure worth meeting, and the book is the first in a series if he holds your interest.

A grim spy thriller turned into gentler family TV is the clearest way to describe the distance here. Only the 1973 pilot movie adapts Cyborg directly, and fairly closely. The weekly series takes the book as a general premise and runs on its own continuity, and none of Caidin's sequels were adapted. The research does not show whether the pilot changed the novel's ending, so no change there should be assumed. The bionics themselves were reworked. Caidin's artificial eye cannot see at all. It is a camera whose film has to be removed, where the television eye gives Austin enhanced, telescopic vision. The novel's limbs run on flywheel power and pulleys, and they carry spy gadgets the show left out, including a finger that fires poison darts and hidden compartments in the legs. The book's Austin is also far less powerful. He cannot run as fast or jump as far, and his strength is capped by what the rest of his body can withstand. The violence was toned down. In the novel a blow from the bionic arm usually kills. On screen Austin controls his strength and generally hits without killing. Readers describe the book's hero as a grittier, different man from the friendly TV agent, and say the novel spends far more time on his resentment and on the psychology of being bionic. Even the agency's name changed, from Caidin's OSO, the Office of Special Operations, to the show's OSI.