Human Error

When the space station called the Wheel collides with the ship Griseda, the disaster is witnessed from Earth as Joe McCauley, Captain Frank West, and General Oglethorpe struggle to keep the crippled station from falling into San Francisco Bay. West's bitter judgment—human error, not machinery, is the true flaw in spaceflight—echoes around the world and becomes the spark for a new crusade. Determined to find a man who can never fail, Oglethorpe summons Dr. Paul Medick to lead Project Superman, a crash program meant to produce an "errorless" human being. Medick rejects the fantasy of perfection, arguing that learning itself depends on mistakes and correction. In a desert laboratory stocked with unlimited resources, he clashes with electronics expert Dr. Nat Holt, who believes discipline can forge superior men. As public outrage mounts and a second Wheel is ordered, Medick fights to keep the project from becoming a machine-like assault on human nature. He pushes for a serious study of error, even as he and Barker race to save the project and outmaneuver Oglethorpe with a bold political counterstroke. At its heart, this is a tense, thought-provoking science-fiction drama about ambition, responsibility, and the cost of trying to engineer perfection. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.