looking for possible title - space travel and genetic engineering

[limugurl]

When I was in HS in the early 1980s I checked out a book from the library ... I remember bits of it but not the title or author

- space travel - piloting is very dangerous, few people able to do it
- protagonist's planet has some sort of plague and is possibly the only survivor and is able to keep consciousness throughout piloting
- on earth - genetic engineering has created mer-people and they are contemplating taking the final change to only live underwater

and that is about all I recall. I am hoping someone out there knows what book this was!

Thanks.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

The last part of this reminds me strongly of Charles Sheffield's Sight of Proteus. This is a detective book set in the future where people have the ability to chge shape via machines - but it has to be policed. It's a bleak world with scarce resources and over population and among other laws, no form change is allowed to increase the life expectancy of people (contributes to overpopulation) but there is a black market form change which does end up being permitted because its a mer form which allows colonization of the oceans.

Cheers, Greg.