Who?

Who? by Algis Budrys is an American science fiction novels set during the Cold War. In the historical development leading up to the book's plot - a future history at the time of writing, which can now be considered a kind of retroactive alternate history - the Cold War culminated in the Eastern and Western blocks fusing into two unified super-states during the 1970's and remaining locked in an endless permanent confrontation into the forseeable future. Actual events seem to have diverged from this scenario with the Sino-Soviet rift and confrontation of the the late 1950's and early 1960's,... not long after the book's publication. An explosion resulting from an experiment gone awry rocks an Allied research facility near the border with the Soviet Bloc. A Soviet team abducts Dr. Lucas Martino, a leading Allied physicist in charge of a secret, high-priority project called K-88. Several months later, under American pressure, the Communist officials finally hand over an individual, claiming that he is Dr. Martino. The man has undergone extensive surgery for his injuries. He has a mechanical arm advanced beyond any produced in the West.
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