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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
1st volume of the series: 5 short stories,
By Michele L. Worley (Kingdom of the Mouse, United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hospital Station (Mass Market Paperback)
The earlier volumes of the series were collections of stories written for magazines, but as the publishing world altered over time, the emphasis changed to full-length novels. A new reader can begin at any point, since White is careful to fill in the background, often via an explanation delivered to a new trainee, visitor, or Monitor Corps pilot. This book is part of the omnibus edition _Beginning Operations_."Medic" - One of the earliest entries in the series in terms of internal chronology; *the* earliest is the first story in the collection _Sector General_, describing how the hospital came to be founded, while this story relates how O'Mara, a member of the hospital's original construction crew, wound up looking after the hospital's first patient. In later years, O'Mara sealed the file on this story, but couldn't completely hush it up no matter how hard he tried. :) If you're curious about how O'Mara evolved into the gruff personality we know best, read _Mind Changer_. "Sector General" - Not to be confused with the short story collection of the same name, which is in the omnibus edition _Alien Emergencies_. Conway makes his first appearance as the viewpoint character, a position he occupied until the conclusion of _Star Healer_. He's only been at Sector General for 2 months, and as an ardent pacifist deeply resents the Monitor Corps, when in an emergency he gets his first dose of an Educator tape, and the resulting problems land him his first real meeting with Chief Psychologist O'Mara. Then his first ship rescue assignment confronts him with a fear-maddened entity, who (having killed Carmody, the gentle Padre of the psychology department) brings Conway face-to-face with a kill-or-be-killed situation. (See _The Genocidal Healer_ for further discussion of Carmody's role in the psychology department.) "Trouble with Emily" - Dr. Arratepec, distinguished member of a newly discovered telepathic species, has convinced its people and the Galactic Federation government to give all assistance to a classified project involving a brontosaur-like creature that its human handlers have nicknamed Emily. (Yes, it's a very bad pun.) Emily's species is facing extinction on a planet without intelligent life, although Emily itself is healthy. What is Arratepec up to, and how can Conway assist when Arratepec won't confide in him? (Incidentally, the I-have-no-time-for-women attitude disappeared rapidly when Conway met nurse, later Pathologist, Murchison.) "Visitor at Large" - Marks the first appearance of Prilicla as Conway's brand-new assistant. The visitor in question is a giant amoeba, who (as the youngest offspring of Sector General's most troublesome patient) is being allowed a deathbed visit. The patient has nothing organically wrong with it, but is quietly dissolving into water, apparently due to some psychological problem that the doctors simply can't treat. Then the hospital rapidly acquires a second problem, as the young visitor panics at the sight of all the aliens and takes flight into the depths of the hospital. "Outpatient" - Marked by Conway's promotion to Senior Physician and subsequent assumption of one or two permanent Educator tapes. (Diagnosticians aren't the only physicians to permanently carry tapes; they're distinguished by the *quantity* of permanent alter egos they carry.) The outpatient case is the sole survivor of an alien ambulance ship, of a previously unknown species (seen later in the series as the Ians). Conway's inexplicable course of treatment, which he refuses to justify until the end of the story, lands him in serious hot water in this one. Incidentally, when O'Mara remarks that despite Conway's promotion, he wouldn't trust him with his appendix, the fact emerges that O'Mara's appendix was saved by the surgeon who took it out, and now (pickled) serves as a hospital chess trophy. :) IRRELEVANT NOTE: The old Ballantine DelRey paperback edition's cover art consisted of a view of Emily during the more successful phase of Arratepec's experiments, with Conway as a small figure in the foreground.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
must have for hard scifi readers,
By wolf@ixchel.imp.mx (mexico) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hospital Station (Mass Market Paperback)
Just imagine how a first class space hospital must be, hundreds of different ambiental conditions, aliens and sickness.The doctors must be creative, intelligent and corageous, to treat unknow species in conditions were nothing is what it seems, tear your patient into pieces to safe its life, try to run trough corridors of chlorine, high gravity , water, to safe a life, or try to convince your simbiotic assistant that your are doing the best treatment, when he can easily crush you. Be prepared for the most inmersive sci fi novel you have read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Brotherhood of Many Races,
By
This review is from: Hospital Station (Mass Market Paperback)
In 1957, Murray Leinster's "Med Service" appeared in _Astounding_, launching his popular series about Dr. Calhoun and his Tormal sidekick, Murgatroyd. That same year, James White's story "Sector General" appeared in the British science fiction magazine _New Worlds_, launching another science fictional medical series. I have always enjoyed Leinster's stories, but the stories by James White are far superior.One reason is the richness of the setting in the Sector General stories. Leinster's stories all take place on scattered planets. Med Service headquarters is in a kind of shadowy background. It is true that one story, "Ribbon in the Sky," has a brief scene at headquarters; but it is done so quickly that we never have a chance to visualize the setting. White takes the opposite tack. He starts by imagining the headquarters in detail. Let us suppose that we have a galaxy teeming with different life forms. Let us also suppose that we even have contact with some extra-galactic races. How will they be treated for medical problems? The answer is Sector General, a mega-sized space station shaped "like a misshapen Christmas tree." White must have had a grand time working out the details of how different races will be classified, how the corridors will be marked, what the plumbing and atmosphere pipes will be like, how the different sections for different planetary environments will be designed, how communications problems will be handled, how medical problems will be diagnosed (not always easy to do!), and what kind of treatments will be given. White has also carefully worked out the roles of different staff members at the hospital. What do the doctors and nurses of a mutitude of races do? What role does the Monitor corps (something like a military police force) play? What about the psychologist? The administrators? The chaplain? And why are diagnosticians accorded such a high status and yet at the same time looked upon as more than a little bit crazy? _Hospital Station_ (1962) is the first novel of the Sector General series and consists of the first five stories in the series, all from _New Worlds_. They are: "Medic" (originally "O'Mara's Orphan," 1960), "Sector General" (1957), "Trouble with Emily" (1958), "Visitor at Large" (1959), and "Out-Patient" (1960). The stories chronicle a span of time from when the hot-tempered construction worker O'Mara is saddled with a giant alien baby when the hospital is first being built until the time that young Dr. Conway tries a controversial treatment on a patient that causes everyone on the staff to despise him. (O'Mara, incidently goes on to become the acid-tongued head of Sector General.) In Murray Leinster's stories, the medical problem is always linked with some kind of planetary skulduggery. Not so with White's tales. Conflicts in the Sector General stories usually involve misunderstandings rather than villainies. White is depicting a background where there is a real brotherhood of races and cultures. In this respect, his stories are perhaps more like those of Hal Clement than those of Leinster. And like Clement, White has a fondness for titles with puns or double meanings. I'm betting that even armed with this knowledge you won't guess exactly where White is going until the final twist of each tale.
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