Ill luck made Roger Torraway the subject of the Man Plus Programme, but it was deliberate biological engineering which turned him into a monster—a machine perfectly adapted to survive on Mars. For according to computer predictions, Mars is humankind's only alternative to extinction. But beneath his monstrous exterior, Torraway still carries a man's capacity for suffering.

Fifty years after the colonization of Mars forced its new residents to undergo genetic and cyborg alteration, the Martian computer net, upon which all Martian life depends, develops a dangerous mind of its own. Reprint.