Cyborg is the story of astronaut and test pilot Steve Austin, who experiences a catastrophic crash during a flight, leaving him with all but one limb destroyed, blind in one eye, and with other major injuries.

Steve Austin is outfitted with two new legs capable of propelling him at great speed, and a bionic left arm with almost human dexterity and the strength of a battering ram.

Other physical alterations include the installation of a steel skull plate to replace bone smashed by the crash, and a radio transmitter built into a rib.

(The OSO chief is still named McKay as in the novel, though now a middle-aged woman) Real-life footage of the Northrop M2-F2 test-plane crash was incorporated into the movie to depict Austin's accident.

A third TV movie, The Solid Gold Kidnapping, followed, after which The Six Million Dollar Man was begun as a weekly television series during 1974, running until 1978 for a total of five seasons.

Author Martin Caidin, according to The Bionic Book by Herbie Pilato, served as an uncredited consultant for the series throughout its run, and ultimately made a brief appearance in one of its final-season episodes; in addition, author Jay Barbree, who collaborated with Caidin on a number of nonfiction book projects, also wrote a novel based upon the series.

Due to his licensing agreement with Universal Studios, Caidin received credit on all these productions, though The Bionic Woman did not originate from his books.

In 2011–2012, Dynamite Comics published a new adaptation of Cyborg titled The Bionic Man, initially based on an unproduced screenplay by Kevin Smith.

In this book, Caidin pays tribute to Cyborg by having Buck Rogers receive bionic transplants after his 500-year coma, including several direct references to Steve Austin himself.

Caidin also revisited the concept in his 1982 novel Manfac,[3] which even included dialog[citation needed] that derisively referred to the Six Million Dollar Man series.