CAIDIN, Martin

(1927-)

   US writer, pilot and aerospace specialist, who has written over 80 nonfiction books, some for the juvenile market, mostly on aviation and space exploration, beginning with Jets, Rockets and Guided Missiles (1950; rev vt Rockets and Missiles 1954) with David C. Cooke and continuing with texts like War for the Moon (1959; vt Race for the Moon 1960 UK) and I am Eagle (1962) with G.S. Titov, the Soviet astronaut. MC's own firm, Martin Caidin Associates, was designed to provide information and other services to radio and tv in the areas of his special knowledge; he founded the American Astronautical Society in 1953. He began publishing sf with The Long Night (1956), in which a US city is fire-bombed, and gained considerable success with Marooned (1964), later filmed as MAROONED (1969) with Gregory Peck. Like much of his fiction, Marooned deals with realistically depicted NEAR FUTURE crises in space, in this case the need to rescue astronauts trapped in orbit; it has been credited with inspiring the 1975 US-USSR Apollo-Soyuz joint mission. Four Came Back (1968) deals with human difficulties (and a mysterious plague) aboard a space platform. A series of CYBORG adventures - Cyborg (1972), Operation Nuke (1973), High Crystal * (1974) and Cyborg IV (1975)-served as inspiration and basis for the successful tv series The SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and its spin-off The BIONIC WOMAN ; a later story, ManFac (1981) also presents an enforced intimacy between human and machine in unambiguously positive terms. MC's stories combine considerable storytelling drive with expertly integrated technical information, and tend to be rather more convincing, therefore, than the tv and film derivations they have inspired.

   JC

   Other works: No Man's World (1967); The Last Fathom (1967); The God Machine (1968); The Mendelov Conspiracy (1969; vt Encounter Three 1978); Anytime, Anywhere (1969); The Cape (1971); Almost Midnight (1971); Maryjane Tonight at Angels Twelve (1972); Destination Mars (1972); When War Comes (1972); Three Corners to Nowhere (1975); Whip (1976); Aquarius Mission (1978); Jericho 52 (1979); Star Bright (1980); Killer Station (1985); The Messiah Stone (1986) and its sequel, Dark Messiah (1990); Zoboa (1986); Exit Earth (1987); Prison Ship (1989); Beamriders! (1989; vt Beamriders 1990 UK); and two Indiana Jones ties: Indiana Jones and the Sky Pirates * (1994) and Indiana Jones and the White Witch * (1994)

   See also: COMPUTERS; CYBERNETICS; UFOS; UNDER THE SEA.