Man Plus

Frederik Pohl Man Plus (1976)
I've read most of the stuff he co-wrote with Kornbluth including short stories, and at least a couple of his own short stories, but Man Plus is somehow my first full length undiluted Pohl. It's nothing life-changing - and I have to wonder what else was up for a Nebula award that year - but is nevertheless a reasonably solid read. Our main guy is named Roger Torraway, an astronaut undergoing surgery and cybernetic augmentation so as to allow him to live on Mars, and we need to live on Mars because Earth is fucked. It's hard science-fiction without being too much of a dick about it, and Pohl writes well - so well that it's fairly easy to see why he was such a great match for Kornbluth, and Man Plus makes good use of just the sort of ludicrously ambitious ideas which put the lead in Cyril's figurative pencil; and Man Plus has the added advantage of being free from the sort of incoherent jabbering to which Kornbluth succumbed from time to time. Classic may be an overstatement, but it's nevertheless very satisfying.