[5] The story is about a cyborg, Roger Torraway, who is designed to operate in the harsh Martian environment so that humans can colonize Mars.

To facilitate this, the US government begins a cyborg program to create a being capable of surviving the harsh Martian environment: Man Plus.

After the death of the first candidate, due to the project supervisors forgetting to enhance his brain's ability to process sensory input to cope with the new stimuli he is receiving, Roger Torraway becomes the heart of the program.

New York Times reviewer Gerald Jonas received the novel unfavorably, saying "Pohl seems to have lost his touch entirely.

"[6] Spider Robinson found Man Plus to be "tight, suspenseful, at times gruesomely fascinating," but faulted it for "one dumptruck-sized hole" in its plotting.