# Looking for the name/author of a SciFi story in Playboy **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 11, 2017, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-the-name-author-of-a-scifi-story-in-playboy/776848 "2017-01-11T00:24:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2017, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-the-name-author-of-a-scifi-story-in-playboy/776848/1 "2017-01-11T00:24:15Z")
Maybe late 80’s. A man is seriously injured, and the doctors rebuild him with advanced prosthetics (a la the Six Million Dollar Man), including the ability to interface with remote manipulators. The character quickly gets power-drunk with his abilities, and tries to force the doctors to make him 100% bionic, other than his brain. It does not end well for the protagonist. Or the doctors, who don’t learn from this lesson. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2017, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-the-name-author-of-a-scifi-story-in-playboy/776848/2 "2017-01-11T02:23:38Z")
Sound like Joe Haldeman’s “[More Then the Sum of His Parts](http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/more-than-the-sum-of-his-parts/).” Sometimes referred to as “Tom Swift and his Electric Penis.” 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2017, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-the-name-author-of-a-scifi-story-in-playboy/776848/3 "2017-01-11T02:27:23Z")
What’s the late 1980’s - 1986 to 1989? Here’s a webpage from the Internet Speculative Fiction Database with links to all the science fiction short stories that have ever appeared in _Playboy_: [http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?24780](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?24780) From 1986 to 1989, only 21 science fiction short stories (if I’ve counted right) appeared in _Playboy_. Do any of the titles look right? ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2017, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-the-name-author-of-a-scifi-story-in-playboy/776848/4 "2017-01-11T02:35:58Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Sound like Joe Haldeman’s “[More Then the Sum of His Parts](http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/more-than-the-sum-of-his-parts/).” Sometimes referred to as “Tom Swift and his Electric Penis.” 🙂 Yes, this is it. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2017, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-the-name-author-of-a-scifi-story-in-playboy/776848/5 "2017-01-11T02:39:07Z")
It’s one of the few times an academic came up with an interpretation of a work that the author had never considered, but which he had to agree: the story was really about Haldeman’s experience and feelings after he was badly wounded in Vietnam. ---
**Author:** ![psiekier](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psiekier/32/116_2.png) [@psiekier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psiekier)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2017, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-the-name-author-of-a-scifi-story-in-playboy/776848/6 "2017-01-11T03:54:47Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Sound like Joe Haldeman’s “[More Then the Sum of His Parts](http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/more-than-the-sum-of-his-parts/).” I _knew_ this sounded familiar! If you have _Dealing In Futures_ (one of Mr. Haldeman’s short story collections), this story begins on page 202. The genesis was an assignment he gave to his science fiction writing students at MIT. They each picked a random number that corresponded to a page in _The Science in Science Fiction_. They then had to combine the subject discussed on the page they’d selected with the first page of a story from the _Science Fiction Hall of Fame_. Haldeman made himself do all the assignments he had given the students; “More Than the Sum of His Parts” was his pastiche combining “cyborg” (the subject from the first book) with the first page of Daniel Keyes’s _Flowers For Algernon_. Although he doesn’t mention this story being published in _Playboy_, it wouldn’t surprise me. “Blood Sisters”, his “first Playboy story”, appeared in the July 1979 issue, and is also collected in _Futures_ as well. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2017, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-the-name-author-of-a-scifi-story-in-playboy/776848/7 "2017-01-11T10:25:10Z")
Here’s a list of all the places where “More Than the Sum of His Parts” has appeared: [http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?41143](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?41143)