I re-read this mainly on the strength of having re-read and enjoyed Rogue Moon earlier this year. This novel, set deep in an imagined extension of the Cold War, centres on the identity of a Western scientist captured by the Soviets after an explosion at the research centre where he was working. Lucas Martino has been terribly injured in the explosion and after several months in a Soviet hospital is returned with his face entirely replaced by a metal mask and one arm a prosthetic. The question the Western agencies have to resolve is — is this really the same man, or is he a clever substitute sent back by the Soviets to infiltrate the Western research effort?

The novel was all written long before our present use of DNA identification, which would presumably resolve this question quickly today; but in its own terms it is an intriguing premise, and simply as a character study of Martino it is well worth reading even now. ( )

Lucas Martino es un científico que trabaja para los aliados en el proyecto K-88, (nunca sabremos durante toda la obra a que se refiere este proyecto). Como consecuencia de una terrible explosión, Martino resulta casi muerto, pero los rusos se adelantan a los aliados y lo rescatan. Sometidos a grandes presiones por los aliados, los soviéticos deciden devolverle a Martino reconstruido con un brazo y la cabeza metálica. Ahora la duda que se plantean los aliados es si este es o no el verdadero Lucas Martino.

Cold War Identity Crisis

If you are looking for a mash up of Cold War espionage, sci-fi, and alternative history that is as gray as you might imagine the old Soviet Union, you’ll find Algis Budrys’s Who? tailor made for you. Or, if you would like a sense of the fear and paranoia that prevailed during the standoff of assured mutual destruction between the United States and the Soviet Union from the 1940s up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, you, too, may enjoy this novel. Algis Budrys, who wrote several novels, as well as short stories and essays, as well as edited Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, incorporated aspects of his own life into the character of scientist Lucas Martino, among them feelings of alienation and Lucas’ upbringing on a farm. Budrys’s father, you see, had been a diplomat for Lithuania before being exiled to the U.S. after the Soviet takeover.

The setting is sometime in the future, the latter 20th century, when the world has consolidated into two camps, the Allied Nations Government and the Soviet Union. Emulating Cold War history, the two camps engage in a constant silent war of trying to supersede the other in military advantage through advanced weaponry. Lucas Martino is a brilliant scientist at work on an experimental electronic device, K-88, the specifics of which we never learn. Through Soviet skullduggery, Martino’s lab is situated near the border with Soviet satellites. A test run of the device goes horribly wrong, exploding and injuring Martino beyond recognition. The Soviets reach him first and spirit him across the border. There, Soviet doctors save his life and reconstruct him, fitting him with a steel head and arm, among other things. Once well enough, he undergoes interrogation by crack Soviet agent Anastas Azarin. Ultimately, because of political exigency, the Soviets return him to the ANG.

For the ANG’s part, they find they can’t trust that Martino is Martino because for all practical purposes the man has no physical identity. Agent Shawn Rogers receives the task of trying to determine if the man is indeed Martino, with the goal of trusting him once again with the development of K-88. Rogers employs various methods but settles on constant surveillance as the best and only way to learn the truth of the man’s identify. Eventually, Martino settles on the farm where he spent his boyhood, observed constantly, until after years pass the ANG decides it has no other choice but to entrust him once again with the project. However, when Rogers offers him the assignment, Martino declines, and further offers up that he is not Lucas Martino.

In fact, as readers learn following in alternating chapters the upbringing, education, and early life of Martino, the man in the mask is Lucas Martino. However, because of the accident and his isolation, Martino has undergone a life-changing existential experience to the point where in the end he emerges as a different man, one, who while in the body of Martino, truly is a different person.

Who? is a novel that may have seen its day, as modern readers may find it a bit too dark and torpid. Still, many readers yet may find it rewarding for its exploration of identity crisis and portrayal of Cold War anxieties. ( )

Cold War Identity Crisis

If you are looking for a mash up of Cold War espionage, sci-fi, and alternative history that is as gray as you might imagine the old Soviet Union, you’ll find Algis Budrys’s Who? tailor made for you. Or, if you would like a sense of the fear and paranoia that prevailed during the standoff of assured mutual destruction between the United States and the Soviet Union from the 1940s up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, you, too, may enjoy this novel. Algis Budrys, who wrote several novels, as well as short stories and essays, as well as edited Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, incorporated aspects of his own life into the character of scientist Lucas Martino, among them feelings of alienation and Lucas’ upbringing on a farm. Budrys’s father, you see, had been a diplomat for Lithuania before being exiled to the U.S. after the Soviet takeover.

The setting is sometime in the future, the latter 20th century, when the world has consolidated into two camps, the Allied Nations Government and the Soviet Union. Emulating Cold War history, the two camps engage in a constant silent war of trying to supersede the other in military advantage through advanced weaponry. Lucas Martino is a brilliant scientist at work on an experimental electronic device, K-88, the specifics of which we never learn. Through Soviet skullduggery, Martino’s lab is situated near the border with Soviet satellites. A test run of the device goes horribly wrong, exploding and injuring Martino beyond recognition. The Soviets reach him first and spirit him across the border. There, Soviet doctors save his life and reconstruct him, fitting him with a steel head and arm, among other things. Once well enough, he undergoes interrogation by crack Soviet agent Anastas Azarin. Ultimately, because of political exigency, the Soviets return him to the ANG.

For the ANG’s part, they find they can’t trust that Martino is Martino because for all practical purposes the man has no physical identity. Agent Shawn Rogers receives the task of trying to determine if the man is indeed Martino, with the goal of trusting him once again with the development of K-88. Rogers employs various methods but settles on constant surveillance as the best and only way to learn the truth of the man’s identify. Eventually, Martino settles on the farm where he spent his boyhood, observed constantly, until after years pass the ANG decides it has no other choice but to entrust him once again with the project. However, when Rogers offers him the assignment, Martino declines, and further offers up that he is not Lucas Martino.

In fact, as readers learn following in alternating chapters the upbringing, education, and early life of Martino, the man in the mask is Lucas Martino. However, because of the accident and his isolation, Martino has undergone a life-changing existential experience to the point where in the end he emerges as a different man, one, who while in the body of Martino, truly is a different person.

Who? is a novel that may have seen its day, as modern readers may find it a bit too dark and torpid. Still, many readers yet may find it rewarding for its exploration of identity crisis and portrayal of Cold War anxieties. ( )

Algis Budrys is a good writer, a real craftsman. I can see why he had many successful books in the Golden age of SF. While other SF authors were writing about space travel or the far future, Algis would write about the current time period here on Earth and still make it SF.

This 1958 effort is one for which he is well known. While the writing is very good I was disappointing in the ending. I felt I had followed the story faithfully to only find no real conclusion. ( )