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I remember reading a book some 30 years ago (late 1980s) about an experiment to transform a man for space travel. He basically became a gargoyle with thick grey skin and small wings for gliding.

The plot was very similar to the Netflix original movie The Titan. Does anyone have a lead on this?

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    possibly the same as scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/73534/…
    – Otis
    Commented Apr 2, 2018 at 18:35
  • There are many similarities in the plot line of The Titan to the original book. But when I saw The Titan, no book credit was given. It appears the screenplay adapted the book story sufficiently enough to not give credit to Pohl. Commented Apr 3, 2018 at 23:07

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Possibly Man Plus (1976) by Frederik Pohl?

From Wikipedia:

In the not-too-distant future, a cold war threatens to turn hot. Colonization of Mars seems to be mankind's only hope of surviving certain Armageddon. To facilitate this, the American 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.

In order to survive in the thin Martian atmosphere, Roger Torraway's body must be replaced with an artificial one. At every step he becomes more and more disconnected from humanity, unable to feel things in his new body. It is only after arriving on Mars that his new body begins to make sense to him. It is perfectly adapted to this new world, and thus he becomes perfectly separated from his old world, and from humanity.

Some cover images show him as a gargoyle-like creature (the first one as red, but others disagree and I'm not sure if a color was implicit in the text):

two book covers showing a gargoyle-like creature in a rocky landscape, one red, one grey, both with big red eyes and wings on their backs

The wings aren't for gliding, but rather are solar panels.

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    I've read Man Plus many years ago and with the limited description, agree that it's the requested book.
    – fred_dot_u
    Commented Apr 1, 2018 at 15:07
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    That's the book I immediately thought of when I saw the trailer. Commented Apr 1, 2018 at 16:23
  • An ultimately silly plot, considering that lots of other people end up on Mars without any such enhancements, and they are more essential to survival than he is. But I did like the twist ending. Commented Apr 4, 2018 at 19:36

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