The Martian Inca, a 1977 novel by Ian Watson

The Martian Inca, a science fiction novel by Ian Watson (1977, UK)

Pictured: 1978 American paperback (New York: Ace Books, 1978), 299 p., $1.95. Cover art by Steve Hickman. Here's the promotional piece from the back cover of the book:

The Mars probe has crashed. A triumph of Soviet technology, the first two-way interplanetary probe performed brilliantly until the final stage of its return. Then something went wrong: rather than following its programmed course to a soft landing in its country of origin, the probe crashed in the Peruvian Andes. Now a weird infection beyond the understanding of medical science has wiped out an entire village -- except for one man, who, alone and undiscovered by the medics, survives. He has awakened to find himself become his own ancestor, and a god. Suddenly the flames of an Indian revolution are spreading in South America; he is the Martian Inca.

According to the library catalogue of the University of Liverpool, the institution's copy of the 1978 Ace paperback edition was bequeathed by author John Brunner, whom Watson admired and once referred to as "the Rachel Carson of science fiction."

A harsh review of The Martian Inca by Stanislaw Lem was published in Science Fiction Studies in 1980.