The doctor is most definitely in

kw: book reviews, science fiction, space fiction, medicine, space aliens

James White aspired to study medicine, but circumstances prevented it. Instead, he wrote about it, from 1957 until his death in 1999. The first novel of his Sector General series was initially published as five short and not-so-short stories, then glued (edited) together and published as Hospital Station in 1962. A few years ago Hospital Station and two other books in the series were published in an omnibus volume. I'll review the three in separate posts.

Hospital Station opens with a certain O'Mara trying to babysit a gigantic alien infant. He gradually learns how to care for it, including rigging up a series of large weights he can drop on it so as to "pet" it and fulfill its need for loving contact. He feeds it with a paint sprayer…

O'Mara has a problem. He is built like a Mafia enforcer, and in spite of great intelligence, tends to get the rough construction jobs. In a roundabout way, he becomes a psychologist, which sets off his career and its most successful mentorship, grooming Conway into a useful physician and guiding his career.

The setting of the story is, at first, the construction site of a huge space station in a remote corner of the Galaxy, a station that will serve as a multi-species hospital. It takes the financial resources of more than eighty space-faring species to support it, and in this setting, Conway and his colleagues are faced with one unique medical puzzle after another. At one point, Conway treats a being who is considered a deity, not realizing that the alien has its personal physician resident within. It takes a while for the two doctors to "discover" one another and cooperate in curing the patient.

The image of a cooperative between alien species is a refreshing alternative to the usually xenophobic treatment of alien relations. The only prior work with such a positive outlook is the Lensman series by E.E. "Doc" Smith, upon which I cut my literary teeth. Where Smith has roughly an even mix of good and hostile aliens, White has few genuinely bad aliens. Even where a war occurs, it is the result more of a misunderstanding than of evil intent.

At the end of Hospital Station, Conway is a Senior Physician, well on his way to becoming an elite Diagnostician. In the meantime, he and O'Mara build an affectionate relationship founded on an equal mixture of charm and insult. It's a guy thing. Conway's favorite colleague, however, is an insectile alien named Prilicla, whose great value is its telempathy: it knows what those around it are feeling, even when they are semi-conscious and cannot respond in ordinary ways.

I was once told by a veterinarian that they ought to be paid more than doctors, saying, "An ordinary doctor has only one species to cope with!" The Sector General universe, as envisioned by James White, is veterinary medicine writ large.