“We can rebuild him,” begins the old television series The Six Million Dollar Man. “We have the technology.”
With those words, U.S. intelligence chief Oscar Goldman launched Steve Austin’s career (the fictitious astronaut’s, not the stone-cold wrestling personality’s) as a red-jumpsuit-clad cyborg action hero. The bionic body parts that saved Austin’s life after the violent end of a test flight also made him “better … stronger … faster” than other Cold War operatives — and....