How can a man cost six million dollars??

Ah!
My very first fandom-related book which was a Christmas present from my brother. It was bought circa 1976 for the grand price of SG$3.90 and was a treasured possession which I have managed to keep till now, amidst numerous house shifts. It is still intact, with only the spine being somewhat gone so it looks like a little patchwork with Scotch tape is in order. ;)

The Six Million Dollar Man.....what a mouthful for the title of a TV series!
It was my brother who was watching it keenly from the start and I remember thinking..."How can a man cost six million dollars?"
Curiousity got the better of me and after I caught a couple of episodes, I became a firm fan.
Lee Majors was Col Steve Austin, an astronaut involved in a horrific accident which almost completely destroyed him.
He was implanted with bionic parts like an eye which could see really far, an arm which was strong like anything, and legs which made him run super fast!
As a 10-year-old impressionable kid, those powers were way cool!
And to top it off, he became a secret agent for the OSI (Office of Strategic Intelligence)....who does not love secret agents???

The TV intro was (along with many others from that era) truly unique and till now, I can recite the whole spiel by Richard Anderson (aka Oscar Goldman, Steve's boss).
Like so:

"Steve Austin..astronaut.
A man barely alive.
Gentlemen, we can rebuild him.
We have the technology.
We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man.
Steve Austin will BE that man.
Better than he was before.
Better, stronger, faster"

Here's the link for this iconic intro:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HofoK_QQxGc

What was intriguing about this show was the way the producers got across the idea of Steve being able to run fast by using slow-motion!
This was quite a revolutionary special effect as I think it was the first time something like that had been done on TV.
To quote from the book:
"Some of the camera tricks we tried came out looking like a Charlie Chaplin movie...
Because some of the tricks looked ridiculous when we filmed them at regular speed, we then decided to distract the audience from what our hero was doing by shooting the 'bionic' scenes mostly in slow motion, and backing them up with weird music composed by out conductor, Oliver Nelson."
In other words...slow=fast...and it worked!

To read more about this, here's the Wiki link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Six_Million_Dollar_Man

And of course, there had to be a love interest for the bionic man, right?

Lindsay Wagner would be THAT woman...but with a bionic ear instead of eye.
Jaime Sommers was introduced and became a hit with the viewers too. :)

I followed both series closely till they ended and as you can see from the way I've preserved the book, this was one part of my earliest fandom experiences. :)