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Martin Caidin (1927-1997) was a prolific author and screenwriter specializing in Aviation, Aviation, History, and Historical and Speculative fiction. The author or coauthor of more than 50 books and over 1000 magazine articles, he was also well known as the most prominent chronicler of the "Warbird" enthusiasts who restore and fly classic military aircraft.

Unarguably JustForFun/OneOfUs, one of his hobbies before his death was assisting local groups (he lived in the greater Orlando, Florida area) of fans put on science fiction conventions by roping his friends among the sci fi community into attending as guests without them requiring huge paychecks to do it.

For the purposes of TV tropes, Martin Caidin is most recognizable for authoring the novels ''Cyborg'' (which both popularized the word and served as the basis for ''Series/TheSixMillionDollarMan'' and its derivatives) and ''Marooned'', which was made into [[{{Film/Marooned}} a 1969 movie]] starring Creator/GregoryPeck, Richard Crenna, David Janssen, James Franciscus, and Creator/GeneHackman. He also served as the English language coauthor/text polisher for ''Samurai'', the memoirs of AcePilot Saburo Sakai.

!!His works provide examples of:

* AcePilot: There are examples of this in both of Caidin's [=WW2=] novels:
** In ''The Last Dogfight'', both Major Mitchell Ross USAAF and his Japanese opponent, Lt. Shigura Tanimoto, qualify as aces in both senses of the word: both have many more than the requisite five kills, and both are true masters of their airplanes and of aerial combat.
** In ''Whip'', Captain Whip Russell takes the trope up a notch by becoming an ace in a ''bomber'' -- a modified B-25 Mitchell.
* AncientAstronauts: Mercilessly played with in ''High Crystal'', the third ''Cyborg'' novel. Early on, the possibility is raised that the eponymous crystal is of extraterrestrial origin, and the Caya used it to accomplish their "impossible" engineering feats. Steve Austin turns out to be a determined skeptic on the subject and raises several devastating objections to the entire idea. Then they get to their goal in South America and find that the crystal really does seem to be beyond any known human technology, ancient or modern, and the temple holding it was apparently built some eighteen thousand years ago.[[note]]According to modern archaeology, the oldest known evidence of cities in the Americas dates back less than four thousand years.[[/note]] Its actual origin is never explained.
* ApparentlyHumanMerfolk: In ''Aquarius Mission'', the Ikeans are a race of humans who are adapted to live underwater. Who or what did the adapting isn't clear, although it almost certainly isn't a result of natural evolution.
* ArtificialLimbs: The protagonist of ''Cyborg'' gets a number of artificial body parts, including an arm and both legs.
* CelebrityParadox: In a ''[[Series/TheSixMillionDollarMan Six Million Dollar Man]]'' tie-in novel written by Caidin, Steve Austin asks a friend if she ever read the book ''Marooned'', which a friend of his wrote. She replies that she didn't, but she saw the movie.
* CyberneticsEatYourSoul: Steve Austin fears this is going to happen to him in ''Cyborg''. It almost happens literally in ''Cyborg IV'', when he's sent back into space as the pilot of an experimental combat spacecraft. The spacecraft is operated via a direct BrainComputerInterface, which is so powerful that when it's at full strength Austin no longer exists as an independent entity. He and the spacecraft are one. Since it's an experimental prototype being used only as an emergency measure, no one knows what will happen when the interface is turned off.
* {{Cyborg}}: ''Cyborg'' is built around this trope, and did much to bring the words "cyborg" and "bionic" into the popular consciousness.
* DoesNotKnowHisOwnStrength: In ''Cyborg'', Steve Austin accidentally broke a man's wrist with his new bionic hand. Ironically, it was right after that man figured out that Austin's bionic hand had developed a feedback that ''would'' allow him to judge how much pressure he was exerting -- once he got used to it.
* ElectronicEyes: ''Cyborg'' has a proto-version of the trope. Steve Austin's lost eye is replaced with a camera, but it's a mechanical camera that records onto microfilm, which has to be physically removed and processed at the end of a mission, and Austin can't actually see with it. Electronic cameras did exist when the novel was written, but were still at the stage where they were too large and heavy for a single person to carry, let alone fit into an eye socket.
* EverythingTryingToKillYou: In ''High Crystal'', the terrain that Steve Austin's expedition must cross to get from their makeshift airstrip to Temple Mountain is extremely difficult going: thick undergrowth, steep hillsides and a swift river to cross, and harboring a number of lethally dangerous animals and insects. The airstrip itself is at a dangerously high altitude and swept by unpredictable winds, so even the ''air'' is trying to kill them.
* EyeScream: In ''Cyborg'', Steve Austin's replacement eye is a camera which takes photographs onto microfilm, and has to be physically removed in order to obtain the microfilm and develop the photographs. During a mission in which Austin's survival is uncertain, he gives a female agent rather squicky instructions on how to remove the eye without having access to the bionics lab.
* MobileSuitHuman: In ''Man-Fac'' the main character suffered crippling burns, and built a "Man-Facsimile" to allow him to get around. Although his body had been somewhat shriveled and shrunken by his injuries, the facsimile still needed to be of a very ''large'' man, seven feet tall or thereabouts, to fit him inside along with the mechanical muscles.
* {{Mayincatec}}: In ''High Crystal'', Steve Austin leads an expedition into the high mountains of Central America to find a mysterious crystal which is thought to have been created by an ancient civilization called the Caya, a forerunner of the Maya.
* MoreDakka: ''Whip'' features a squadron of B-25 bombers modified to carry twelve fixed 50-caliber machine guns in the nose, all firing straight ahead. This was enough firepower to sink a Japanese freighter or destroyer without using any bombs at all. TruthInTelevision: some real-life B-25s were modified this way, and they proved to be ''devastating'' in strafing attacks on Japanese ships and large ground targets such as bridges and airfields.
* NumberedSequel: ''Cyborg'' had three sequels. #s 2 and 3 in the series had ordinary names[[note]]''Operation Nuke'' and ''High Crystal'' respectively[[/note]], but #4 was called ''Cyborg IV''.
* RecycledInSpace: ''Aquarius Mission'' inverts this trope: the mission of the submarine ''Sea Trench'' into an unexplored part of the ocean, in a book published at a time when the deep sea was sometimes called "inner space" and "the last frontier," has a strong whiff of ''Star Trek'' about it.
* {{Retcanon}}: ''Marooned'' featured a Project Mercury mission. Later editions matched up with the movie and featured a Apollo-style spacecraft.
* SinkTheLifeboats: In the finale of ''Whip'', Whip Russell takes his squadron of B-25 gunships in low and slow to strafe survivors of an aerial attack on a Japanese troop convoy. TruthInTelevision: the battle in the book is based on the real-life [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bismarck_Sea Battle of the Bismarck Sea]], in which Allied fighters and bombers did strafe survivors to make sure that as few as possible were rescued. Today this would certainly be considered a war crime, but the Pacific War was not noted for strict adherence to "the rules of war" by either side.
* SlapSlapKiss: Two of the main characters in ''Aquarius Mission'' eventually find themselves attracted to each other after being at loggerheads since the moment they met. Also a major case of OppositesAttract: he's the commander of the US Navy submarine ''Sea Trench'' and thoroughly military, while she is the chief scientist of the expedition and so anti-military that she's disgusted to find out the ''Sea Trench'' is even ''carrying'' weapons.
* SquadNickname: In ''Whip'', Whip Russell's bomber squadron is officially named the 335th Medium Bombardment Squadron. Unofficially, it's known as the "Death's Head Brigade".
* SufficientlyAdvancedBambooTechnology: In ''High Crystal'', Steve Austin tries to find a mysterious crystal. It's a power source left on Earth by space aliens.
* TapOnTheHead: Averted in the ''Cyborg'' novels. Considerably more violent than the TV series they inspired, due to Steve Austin's bionic arm being described as a bludgeon, and strong hits to the head or chops to the neck are instantly fatal to the recipient.
* TempleOfDoom: In ''High Crystal'', the eponymous crystal is found in an ancient temple which is protected by numerous traps. Subverted in that the temple also contains numerous warnings about the traps - the builders only meant to trap and kill people who didn't heed the warnings.
* ThatsNoMoon: In ''High Crystal'', the TempleOfDoom which houses the crystal is literally the size of a mountain - in fact, everyone thought it ''was'' a mountain until Austin's expedition gets a closeup look and finds that the "mountain" is made of blocks of cut stone.
* UnderwaterCity: In ''Aquarius Mission'', a large submarine sent to investigate some weird things in the Aleutian Trench off Alaska stumbles on a submerged city at the bottom of the trench, inhabited by merfolk and their specially bred beasts of burden.
* WeCanRebuildHim: In the "Cyborg" series, Steve Austin is an astronaut and US Air Force test pilot rebuilt with cybernetic parts after a horrific crash in an experimental aircraft.
* WorthyOpponent: In ''The Last Dogfight'', Mitch Ross and Shigura Tanimoto see each other this way.
* ZerothLawRebellion: In ''The God Machine'', the US races to develop the first true AI... as it turns out, with secret directives to find a winning solution to the "game" of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar. By an unfortunate accident, the one programmer with the authority and experience to ''distrust'' his newborn creation is laid up just as the computer gets to observe an epileptic seizure and learns that there really is a way to cause rational collective behavior in an irrational individualistic species... remove irrationality, democracy and free will.
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