Martin Caidin

Martin Caidin was an American author, pilot, and aerospace specialist who wrote more than eighty nonfiction books on aviation and space before turning to fiction grounded in the same technical expertise. He founded the American Astronautical Society in 1953 and ran a consultancy advising film and television productions on aerospace accuracy. His novel Marooned (1964, revised 1969), about the real-time rescue of an astronaut stranded in orbit, was adapted into the 1969 film of the same name starring Gregory Peck. His four-book Cyborg series (1972-1975), following a test pilot rebuilt with bionic implants, inspired the television series The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. Caidin also wrote the Holocaust-themed The Long Night (1956) and later contributed Indiana Jones and Buck Rogers tie-in novels. Across dozens of books, his fiction consistently combined realistic near-future technology with high-stakes rescue and combat scenarios drawn from his own aviation background.