History Cyborg / Literature

* ''Cyborg'' and its sequels, by Creator/MartinCaidin, star Colonel Steve Austin, a US Air Force test pilot who was horribly injured in a crash and received prosthetic replacements for his lost limbs (both legs and his right arm) along with [[ElectronicEyes an artificial eye that contained a camera]] and a steel plate to replace part of his skull that was shattered in the crash.

Examples of {{Cyborg}} in literature:

* ''Literature/BehindBlueEyes'' by Anna Mocikat: The Guardian Angels are a SuperSoldier death squad enhanced with numerous implants designed to make them the world's deadliest killers. It also brainwashes them into obedience while leaving the majority of their personalities intact.
* ''Cyborg'' and its sequels, by Creator/MartinCaidin, starred Colonel Steve Austin, a US Air Force test pilot who was horribly injured in a crash and received prosthetic replacements for his lost limbs (both legs and his right arm) along with [[ElectronicEyes an artificial eye that contained a camera]] and a steel plate to replace part of his skull that was shattered in the crash.

* ''Literature/SpareParts'' is about a girl selling her young healthy human body so she can be implanted in a "cyberform".
* ''Literature/{{Segregationist}}'', a short story by Creator/IsaacAsimov, involves a doctor replacing the heart of his patient. He tries to persuade the patient that an organic prosthetic is the way to go, only for the patient to decide that he doesn't trust it and wants to go with a mechanical heart. We discover at the end that the doctor is [[spoiler:actually a robot]], one of the few who has not chosen to [[spoiler:become more human by surgery]] while the [[spoiler:humans have all been becoming more and more robotic]]. The implication is that eventually, they'll all slowly [[spoiler:morph into one cyborg species]].
* ''Literature/TalesOfTheContinuingTime'':
** The Peaceforcer Elites are cyborged {{super soldier}}s. Gi'Suei'Obodi'Sedon, a purely organic Super Soldier, considers the Elites to be horribly maimed (not to mention, not all that elite).
** Trent Castanaveras is also modified, in that he had the Tytan NN-II, a "nerve net that's designed to sit in high memory and model what's happening in your brain. It has nearly half a million processors, and makes a discrete connection somewhere inside your brain for every one of them. Once it is installed between your skull and the outer surface of your brain, it doesn't come out."
* ''Franchise/StarWars'' [[Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse Expanded Universe]]: The franchise really likes the ArtificialLimbs trope.
** It's not usually explicitly mentioned whether or not they make people stronger, and the [[FantasticRacism prejudice against cyborgs]] is lessened when they have convincing synthetic flesh covering them, but [[Literature/XWingSeries Ton Phanan]] feels that his [[CyberneticsEatYourSoul Cybernetics Ate His Future]]. Interestingly, though he's mentioned as having synthflesh on his limbs, which are once seen to be twitching eerily when malfunctioning, there's none on his face.
** ''Literature/ShadowsOfTheEmpire'': Guri is a ''Terminator''-like one, a human built around a robot core rather than the other way around. Her outer layers are cloned human material, but her "brain" and inner mechanisms are robotic.

* Creator/AlastairReynolds's works:
** The ''Literature/RevelationSpaceSeries'' has the Ultranauts, which are the crews of the slower-than-light interstellar freighters, who use extreme cybernetic replacements to counter the effects of age and help with ship maintenance. [[CyborgHelmsman Captain John Brannigan]] is the most extreme; when his [[BodyHorror pre-Melding Plague]] appearance is shown, all that is left is one leg, one arm, and his face ([[GasMaskMooks mostly]]). ''Literature/DiamondDogs'' has the main character being slowly, ''voluntarily'' being turned from a human into a cybernetic dog-like creature with a skull full of computer bits. Unfortunately, the doctor who did this took himself apart so he wouldn't have to undo his 'greatest work'.
** ''Literature/TerminalWorld'' has a man whose lungs were crippled in a war; he's linked up to a [[SteamPunk furnace which powers a pump]] that replaces most of his chest.
* ''Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz'': Possibly the earliest example of a full-body-replacement cyborg in modern literature is the Tin Woodsman -- once a perfectly ordinary human being, he had progressively more parts of his body replaced with tin prosthetics as they were chopped off by a cursed axe -- until essentially all that was left was a mind in a tin shell. [[note]]The tinsmith kept his old head in a closet, where, due to the no-death nature of Oz, it remained sentient, desiring nothing to do with the Tin Man when he returned to retrieve it.[[/note]]
* In ''Literature/SoonIWillBeInvincible'', by Austin Grossman, the heroine Fatale agrees to have her legs and right arm replaced after an accident. The scientists have to modify most of the rest of her body in order to make those parts work. After the experiment she weighs hundreds of pounds because of all of her cybernetic parts. The corporation that funded her reconstruction promptly vanishes, leaving her to pay for the regiment of antibiotics necessary to prevent infection caused by her new parts.

* ''Literature/TheShipWho'': In this far-future setting by Creator/AnneMcCaffrey, human children who are too deformed to live normal lives are turned into "shellpeople": cyborgs whose bodies are confined in electronic shells that can then be used as the CPU of many kinds of large machines: a spacecraft, a city, a space station...
* ''Literature/{{Neuromancer}}'': [[StreetSamurai Molly Millions]] has retractable razors beneath her fingernails and can see the time by pressing her tongue against a tooth. Most impressively, though, her eyes sockets have been [[AwesomeButImpractical sealed with mirrors]] and her tear ducts rerouted to her mouth so that, when she cries, she spits.
* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': ''Literature/QSquared'' features an inversion of the usual form of this trope. An alternate universe version of Data consists of a positronic brain in a cloned human body.
* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'': Taylor, a former AlphaBitch turned [[TheQuisling Quisling]], is rebuilt with Yeerk technology in exchange for voluntary infestation. One of her arms is a prosthesis capable of deploying various types of deadly gases and possibly a RayGun.
* ''Literature/HarryPotter'': Mad-Eye Moody is essentially a "magical cyborg", given that he replaced a lost eye with a magical one that gives him enhanced abilities. He also has a prosthetic leg, but this isn't described as giving him any extra abilities and is more often than not a hindrance.
* ''Literature/QuantumGravity'': Lila Amanda Black, the protagonist, begins as a fairly standard (if fusion-powered) cyborg of the WeCanRebuildHim variety. It all eventually gets subverted and the experimental prototype first-of-your-kind thing gets pulled to tiny little bits. Subverted in the first book, as the cybernetic parts are actually more physically powerful than her body can withstand. Her SuperMode simply involves turning off the governor units that prevent this and flooding her body with painkillers. The first time this is shown in the book, she manages to ''break her own spine''. [[spoiler:Fortunately for her, she's back at base when this happens, and spends a while in a regeneration tank instead of a body bag.]]
* ''Literature/TheCobraTrilogy'' by Creator/TimothyZahn feature as their protagonists members of the elite Cobra guerrilla commandos, who receive surgically-implanted skeletal laminations (to make their bones effectively unbreakable), servomotors (to give them superhuman strength), hidden weapons (two small antipersonnel lasers in their fingers, one anti-armor laser in the calf and foot of one leg, an "arc thrower" that shoots an electric current down the ionized trail of one of the finger lasers to fry electronics, sonic projectors, and an emergency self-destruct mechanism), optical and auditory enhancements, a tiny supercomputer to control it all (as well as giving them pre-programmed combat reflexes), and a tiny fusion power plant to power all that. Quite an impressive load-out, especially considering they can still pass for normal civilians, which is necessary because they work in sabotage and subversion in cities captured by their enemies. After the war is over, they find it difficult to re-assimilate into regular civilian life, and most go on to move to a group of new colony planets where they prove themselves equally adept at surviving the ridiculously dangerous local fauna. It should be noted that the Trofts (the enemies in the war) actually believe the Cobras to be unkillable. They're just that good. That said, there are major side effects, including early-onset arthritis.
* ''Literature/MachineMan'' has Dr. Charles Neumann spend time as an exceptionally powerful one [[spoiler:along with the Security Guard Carl, before ending up just BrainUploading.]]
* ''Literature/EmpireFromTheAshes'': the Fourth Imperium used "biotechnic" enhancement to give it's military personnel SuperStrength, SuperSpeed, SuperSenses, and a lot of other things. The main character gets improved versions of the implants.
* ''Literature/CreaturesOfLightAndDarkness'': Blends of man and machine are common on the human worlds. They include the Pleasure-Comps -- oracles which are human from the waist down -- and one of the ultimate examples, the Steel General, who still wears a ring of his original flesh on his pinky.
* ''Literature/{{Otherland}}'': Mr. Sellars is a moderate version; he implanted computer hardware into his own body in order to allow him to connect to the [[TheMetaverse Net]] without his captors noticing; by the time of the main story he's practically half computer. Treated fairly realistically in that it doesn't make him any stronger; quite the opposite, in fact.
* ''Literature/NoonUniverse'': Tried and largely rejected. It turned out that few people have required psychic plasticity to accept the changes that happened to them, and those that do slowly turned [[CyberneticsEatYourSoul cold and indifferent observers]].
* ''Literature/ObservationOnTheSpot'': The people of Lusania turned to replacing each cell in their bodies by {{Nanomachines}} in attempt to reach immortality only to run into the "WhoWantsToLiveForever" wall at full speed. Most of the experimental subjects quickly became obsessed with death, [[DeathSeeker trying to kill themselves at all costs]] -- which, given the nature of their new bodies, [[MadeOfIndestructium became nigh impossible]], though most persevered. There was ''one'' survivor of the experiment, a philosopher who never had any illusions about the whole experiment to begin with.
* ''Literature/TimeMachineSeries'': In ''The Rings of Saturn'', cyborgs, in the future, are typically feared by mundane people because they make for dangerous competition in the job market. On the other hand, the cyborgs seem to frequently think themselves superior to humans, to the point of establishing crime organizations and pulling off acts of terrorism.
* ''Literature/{{Incarceron}}'' has many people living inside the gigantic, living prison, and a lot of them aren't pure human, but also part robot. This is because nothing is allowed to come into or escape the prison, and as the prison is running out of bodies to use to make new people with, it instead uses metal. An odd case where some of these people have no metal on the outside of their body, so they are impossible to distinguish from normal humans, as the metal is all inside their bodies.
* ''Literature/HostileTakeoverSwann'': Dominic Magnus has been extensively rebuilt, including a [[ArtificialLimbs replacement arm and leg]], as well as complete skin replacement and facial reconstruction.
* ''Literature/HeartOfSteel'': Alistair Mechanus is a cyborg MadScientist who rebuilt himself after a horrific car accident. Noteworthy in that his upgrades were largely DIY, including his own heart (he had [[RobotBuddy help]]).
* ''Literature/{{Kosmotehnoluhi}}'': In the footnotes, the author explains that by definition, even an old woman with a prosthetic jaw can be considered a cyborg, albeit common usage usually implies more advanced models. In the story, cyborgs are basically cloned human bodies with integrated processor and other implants. They are considered expendable biological machines, produced by DEX Company corporation in several models: DEX (general purpose/military), "Mary" (domestic servants), "Bond" (espionage/secret service) and "Irien" (sex toy). In human society, cyborgs are assumed to be non-sentient, incapable of developing any level of self-awareness [[spoiler:they actually ARE capable, but this ability are deliberately suppressed by DEX Company, because laws absolutely forbade enslavement of self-aware beings]].
* ''Literature/{{DFZ}}'': Cyberware is extremely common in the DFZ. Nik has a ''lot'' of cyberware, though it's not as obvious as most.
* ''Literature/{{Limbo|1952}}'' by Bernard Wolfe is about a post-WWIII world where people willingly amputate their limbs for nuclear-powered prosthetics.

* ''Literature/TheOutside'': Priests have circuitry implanted in their brains that allows them to directly communicate with the Gods, while angels have had more than half their neurons burned away and replaced by machinery, giving them a much higher bandwidth connection.
%%* ''Literature/{{Deathstalker}}'' has the Hadenmen, who fought a war against the Empire and were defeated; they were revived to take part in the Rebellion.%%And they're examples how?
* ''Literature/TheMouseWatch'': The MadScientist rat Dr. Thornpaw lost one eye, one arm and both legs to horrific AnimalTesting by human scientists. He replaced them with mechanical parts that he crafted himself.
* In ''Literature/{{Bounders}}'', high-ranking Alkalinians have their six natural limbs removed and replaced with a single robot arm.
* In ''Literature/{{Distress}}'', the reporter Andrew Worth has technology in his body that includes cameras in his eyes and a computer in his gut that can connect to external computers via a port in his navel.
* ''Literature/{{Gearbreakers}}'': The [[HumongousMecha Windup]] pilots are cybernetically enhanced to connect to their mechas. Many have ElectronicEyes as well.
* ''Literature/LaszloHadronAndTheWargodsTomb'': Numerous characters have cybernetic enhancements:
** Isis has neural and retinal implants to assist in hacking computer systems.
** Emara Larroe, the Durendal's chief engineer, has cybernetic arms.
** Lord Admiral Rigel's entire body is cybernetic.
* ''Literature/SpaceAcademy'': Vance is enhanced in several unnoticeable ways. These include having translation software in his brain, computerized memory, and machines in his body that protect him from the side effects of space travel. This is apparently quite normal in the future but not required.
* ''Literature/FracturedStars'': Young people who seem like promising soldiers are put through a variety of hormonal and surgical enhancements and assigned to work in the military for a certain number of years. Most cyborgs die in the line of duty, but a minority live long enough to retire. Most choose to live in enclaves with other cyborgs, as they can no longer relate to anyone else.
* In ''Literature/{{Incandescence}}'', Rakesh and Parantham have modifications that include infrared censors in their fingertips and a BrainComputerInterface. [[BrainUploading When they're using physical bodies, that is.]]
* Inspecteur Limier from ‘’Literature/SkyWithoutStars’’ is a cyborg InspectorJavert.

* ''Literature/{{Limbo}}'' by Bernard Wolfe is about a post-WWIII world where people willingly amputate their limbs for nuclear-powered prosthetics.

** ''Literature/RevelationSpaceSeries'' has the Ultranauts, which are the crews of the slower-than-light interstellar freighters, who use extreme cybernetic replacements to counter the effects of age and help with ship maintenance. [[CyborgHelmsman Captain John Brannigan]] is the most extreme; when his [[BodyHorror pre-Melding Plague]] appearance is shown, all that is left is one leg, one arm, and his face ([[GasMaskMooks mostly]]). ''Diamond Dogs'' has the main character being slowly, ''voluntarily'' being turned from a human into a cybernetic dog-like creature with a skull full of computer bits. Unfortunately the doctor who did this took himself apart so he wouldn't have to undo his 'greatest work'.

%%* ''Literature/{{Cyborg}}'' by Creator/MartinCaidin.

* ''Literature/SpaceAcademyDropouts'': Vance is enhanced in several unnoticeable ways. These include having translation software in his brain, computerized memory, and machines in his body that protect him from the side effects of space travel. This is apparently quite normal in the future but not required.

* ''Literature/TheShipWho'': The Brainships are cybernetics carried about as far as possible, with human brains implanted into and in complete control of entire space ships and space stations. It's implied that the human body is still there, but only as a life-support system for the brain.

[[folder:Literature]]