Caidin, Martin
Entry updated 17 January 2023. Tagged: Author.
(1927-1997) US pilot, aerospace specialist and author who wrote over 80 nonfiction books, some for the juvenile market, mostly on aviation and space exploration. These began with Jets, Rockets and Guided Missiles (1950; rev vt Rockets and Missiles 1954) with David C Cooke and continued with such texts as War for the Moon (1959; vt Race for the Moon 1960) and I Am Eagle (1962) with G S Titov, the Soviet astronaut. Caidin's own firm, Martin Caidin Associates, was designed to provide information and other services to radio and television in the areas of his special knowledge; he founded the American Astronautical Society in 1953.
Caidin began publishing sf with The Long Night (1956), a Holocaust and Post-Holocaust tale which recounts in detail the proactive response of the citizens of one of the 100 cities destroyed in a sudden attack which has ended the Cold War. He gained considerable success with Marooned (1964; rev 1969), later filmed as Marooned (1969) directed by John Sturges and starring Gregory Peck. Like much of his fiction, Marooned deals with realistically depicted Near-Future crises in space, in this case the need to rescue an astronaut trapped in orbit; its depiction of international co-operation has been credited with inspiring the 1975 US-USSR Apollo-Soyuz joint mission. The film features three astronauts rather than one (with the added drama of heroic Suicide when oxygen supplies run low), and Caidin revised the novel accordingly: the 1969 version is thus a kind of Tie.
Four Came Back (1968) deals with human difficulties (and a mysterious plague) aboard a space platform. The first volume of his Cyborg sequence – the full series comprises Cyborg (1972), Operation Nuke (1973), High Crystal (1974) and Cyborg IV (1975) – served as inspiration and basis for the successful television series The Six Million Dollar Man (1973-1978) and its spin-off The Bionic Woman (1976-1978); a later story, ManFac (1981) also presents an enforced intimacy between human and machine in unambiguously positive terms; the sense that humans should and shall command this interface marks him as a writer of the twentieth century. Caidin also produced the original story for the unsuccessful series pilot Exo-Man (1977), featuring Powered Armour as a variation on the cyborg theme.
Caidin's stories combined considerable storytelling drive with expertly integrated technical information, and tend to be rather more convincing, therefore, than the television and film derivations they have inspired. [JC]
see also: Computers; Cybernetics; UFOs; Under the Sea.
Martin Caidin
born New York: 14 September 1927
died Tallahassee, Florida: 24 March 1997
works
series
Cyborg
- Cyborg (New York: Arbor House, 1972) [Cyborg: hb/Robert Antler]
- Operation Nuke (New York: Arbor House, 1973) [Cyborg: hb/Robert Antler]
- High Crystal (New York: Arbor House, 1974) [Cyborg: hb/Robert Antler]
- Cyborg IV (New York: Arbor House, 1975) [Cyborg: hb/Robert Antler]
Messiah Stone
- The Messiah Stone (New York: Baen Books, 1986) [Messiah Stone: pb/David Mattingly]
- Dark Messiah (New York: Baen Books, 1990) [Messiah Stone: hb/Ken Kelly]
Indiana Jones
- Indiana Jones and the Sky Pirates (New York: Bantam Books, 1993) [tie: Indiana Jones: pb/Drew Struzan]
- Indiana Jones and the White Witch (New York: Bantam Books, 1993) [tie: Indiana Jones: pb/Drew Struzan]
individual titles
- The Long Night (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1956) [hb/]
- Marooned (New York: E P Dutton, 1964) [hb/]
- Marooned (New York: Bantam Books, 1969) [rev of the above as film tie: pb/]
- No Man's World (New York: E P Dutton, 1967) [hb/Fred L Wolff]
- The Last Fathom (New York: Meredith Press, 1967) [hb/Bob Abbett]
- Four Came Back (New York: McKay, 1968) [hb/]
- The God Machine (New York: E P Dutton, 1968) [hb/Robert Korn]
- The Mendelov Conspiracy (New York: Meredith Press, 1969) [hb/Carl Smith]
- Encounter Three (New York: Pinnacle Books, 1978) [vt of the above: pb/Paul Stinson]
- Anytime, Anywhere (New York: E P Dutton, 1969) [hb/]
- The Cape (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1971) [hb/Al Nagy]
- Almost Midnight (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1971) [hb/]
- Maryjane Tonight at Angels Twelve (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1972) [hb/]
- Three Corners to Nowhere (New York: Bantam Books, 1975) [pb/]
- Whip (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976) [hb/]
- Aquarius Mission (New York: Bantam Books, 1978) [pb/Lou Feck]
- Jericho 52 (New York: Dell Publishing, 1979) [pb/]
- The Final Countdown (New York: Bantam Books, 1980) [tie to the film The Final Countdown: pb/]
- Star Bright (New York: Bantam Books, 1980) [pb/Blossom]
- Manfac (New York: Dell Books, 1981) [1979 edition announced but not released: pb/]
- Killer Station (New York: Baen Books, 1985) [pb/David Mattingly]
- Zoboa (New York: Baen Books, 1986) [pb/David Mattingly]
- Exit Earth (New York: Baen Books, 1987) [pb/David Mattingly]
- Prison Ship (New York: Baen Books, 1989) [pb/David Mattingly]
- Beamriders! (New York: Baen Books, 1989) [pb/David Mattingly]
- Beamriders (London: Pan Books, 1990) [vt of the above: pb/Chris Moore]
- Buck Rogers: A Life in the Future (Wisconsin: TSR, 1995) [tie: Buck Rogers: hb/Larry Elmore]
nonfiction
- Jets, Rockets and Guided Missiles (New York: Robert M McBride, 1950) with David C Cooke [nonfiction: hb/]
- Rockets and Missiles (New York: Robert M McBride, 1954) with David C Cooke [nonfiction: rev vt of the above: hb/]
- Worlds in Space (New York: Henry Holt, 1954) [nonfiction: hb/]
- War for the Moon (New York: E P Dutton, 1959) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Race for the Moon (London: William Kimber, 1960) [vt of the above: hb/]
- I Am Eagle (Indianapolis, Indiana: Bobbs Merrill, 1962) with G S Titov [nonfiction: hb/]
- Destination Mars: In Art, Myth, and Science (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1972) with Jay Barbree and Susan Wright [nonfiction: Mars: illus/various: hb/photograph from NASA]
- Ghosts of the Air: True Stories of Aerial Hauntings; Revealed Bizarre Accounts of the Supernatural from the Pilots Who Lived to Tell Them (New York: Bantam Books, 1991) [nonfiction: pb/]
- Destination Mars in Art, Myth and Science (New York: Penguin Studio, 1997) with Jay Barbree and Susan Wright [nonfiction: Mars: not the same as the 1972 title see above: hb/]
links
previous versions of this entry