I am looking for the title of a book a friend of mine was reading in high school in the early 1980s. I recall there being something about a boy or young man captured by aliens. That person was able to exploit something(?) and take advantage of the aliens' own technology to escape and work to thwart their plans. In the process, he became somehow more than human or maybe just enhanced in some way.
Anyone have any ideas?
It might be Gordon R Dickson's novella In the Bone , in which a human space explorer meets and is beaten by a more-advanced alien. After the alien strips him of all his technology, he suffers a psychotic break but eventually is able to "rebuild" himself and defeat the alien.
He was six months after that learning to be a complete human being again and finding out how to control the pyramid. If it had not been for the highly sophisticated safety devices built into the alien machine, he would never have lived to complete that bit of self-education. But finally he mastered the controls and got the pyramid into orbit, where he collected the rest of his official self and shifted back through the alternate universe to Earth.
He messaged ahead before he landed; and everybody who could be there was on hand to meet him as he landed the pyramid. Some of the hands that had slapped his back on leaving were raised to slap him again when at last he stepped forth among them. But, not very surprisingly, when his gaunt figure in a spare coverall now too big for it, with shoulder-length hair and burning eyes, stepped into their midst, not one hand finished its gesture. No one in his right senses slaps an unchained wolf on the back; and no one, after one look, wished to risk slapping the man who seemed to have taken the place of Harry.
Of course, he was still the same man they had sent out – of course he was. But at the same time he was also the man who had returned from a world numbered 1242 and from a duel to the death there with a representative of a race a hundred times more advanced than his own. And in the process he had been pared down to something very basic in his human blood and bone, something dating back to before the first crude wheel or chipped flint knife.
And what was that? Go down into the valley of the shades and demand your answer of a dead alien with his head crushed in, who once treated the utmost powers of modern human science as a man treats the annoyance of a buzzing mosquito.
Or, if that once-mighty traveler in spacegoing pyramids is disinclined to talk, turn and inquire of other ghosts you will find there – those of the aurochs, the great cave bear, and the woolly mammoth.
They, too, can testify to the effectiveness of naked men.
I thought of the short story Danger--Human, also by Gordon R Dickson, first published in 1957. I found it in the anthology, The Human Edge - though it's available in other anthologies, including one of the same name. It is available here as a sample chapter from another anthology of this author's works
Aliens came to earth, and grabbed a man (young-ish, I think) who was camping. They decided grabbing a specimen was the best way to learn more about humankind, and they wanted a pretty average individual. The reason they wanted to learn more was a legend about humans, that was pretty much the only thing they knew about the race - that humans are dangerous, don't touch. Beyond that curiosity, they were written as pretty peaceful, just looking for the danger before it came looking for them.
In the process of trying to figure out the danger, they take the man (sedated) pretty much apart physically, and put him back together, finding nothing, and try something like truth serum - still under sedation, to minimize risks - and still find nothing. So they wake him up to get his cooperation in figuring this out. They tell him his new body won't wear out or die, that there are layers and layers of security keeping him in, and that his best chance is working with them.
Obviously, he escapes - eventually, after years and years. He takes advantage of everything they said about the security keeping him in, everything he could observe and learn, and pretty much uses ingenuity to get himself out and free. This also lets the aliens figure out the human superpower
the inability to take no for an answer, basically, that despite everything they had done to make his escape impossible, he could just decide not to accept that and keep working out how to get around every limitation. Apparently the narrow focus and determination was not common, or else the others were just more willing to accept rules-as-rules instead of looking for loopholes? something like that.
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Plus an immunity to one of their defensive weapons, but somehow that was not considered a superpower but rather lumped in under the "not accepting something was impossible" trait (maybe they'd never even looked for defenses? Didn't know it was possible?)
The ending has one of the aliens lamenting that in trying to figure out this danger, they have set it off - the man has a lot of knowledge about them from their attempt at studying him, and he has the benefits of many of their tools - including those he stole while escaping, like a spaceship and star maps, and those they unwittingly gave like health and long life from the rebuilt body, an insight into their security technologies and any information he'd overheard over the years. And he was pretty securely provoked into using these things against them, and getting the rest of his people (and world) involved.
So, captured by aliens, check. Enhanced - to never age or die specifically, and possibly in other physical ways, also check. Exploited loopholes and took advantage of their technology, check. Escaped to thwart their plans, check yet again. Might not be the answer - in the bone looks like it's a fair match as well - but it seemed close enough to offer.
