Customer Reviews

Med Ship

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Med Ship is a collection of stories written by Murray Leinster between 1957 and 1966. They are the continuing adventures of Calhoun, a physician with the Interstellar Medical Service. He travels the galaxy in his own small spaceship with his pet and companion, Murgatroyd, visiting planets to try to solve public health issues. Each story is self-contained, and tells of Calhoun's adventures on a new planet that has a health crisis. Murgatroyd is utterly charming, and steals every scene he appears in. I was a little bit disappointed by the stories, because they were not what I was expecting. I thought that they would be stories of Calhoun trying to find solutions to health problems, but more often they are stories of Calhoun trying to defeat ruthless, greedy people who are using the health crises for their own advantage. I was also a bit put off by the tendency for every epidemic to be called "the plague." Overall, though, they are an enjoyable collection of stories about trying to stamp out ignorance and restore good health and prosperity to the peoples of the galaxy.

Editors Eric Flint and Guy Gordon have done a real service in assembling all eight of Murray Leinster's Med Service stories in a single volumn. The stories appeared in various magazines from 1957 through 1966 and used a standard plot formula. Dr. Calhoun (no first name) and his alien sidekick Murgatroyd encounter a series of situations on alien planets in which a medical problem is coupled with social or political troubles. Calhoun solves the medical problem, administers rough justice where necessary, and then moves off to another planet.

Honesty compels me to point out that this was the same formula used in an earlier science fiction medical series-- L. Ron Hubbard's Ole Doc Methuselah stories (1947-50). Hubbard's stories were crisply told, but were a bit marred by his pseudoscientific bent. Leinster's stories are a bit more rational and logical in tone, but one sometimes wishes that they had a bit of Hubbard's color and dash.

There are two Med Service novels in the omnibus. The first novel is _The Mutant Weapon_ (originally "Med Service," _ASF_, 1957). This novel has a theme that doesn't entirely mesh with the plot. The theme is that the universe provides a series of forces that prevent wrongdoing from getting out of hand; but the plot recounts how some villains come within a hair of committing planetary genocide. The second novel is _Pariah Planet_ (_Amazing_, 1961), which has an understated romance between Calhoun and a spunky heroine that leaves the reader with a mild feeling of regret that it doesn't work out at the end. Neither novel is a classic, but they are both solid, well-crafted pieces that rank among Leinster's top half-dozen novels. [For the record, my candidates for the other four novels are _The Forgotten Planet_ (1954), _The Pirates of Zan_ (1959), _The Wailing Asteroid_ (1960), and _The Duplicators_ (1964).]

The remaining six novelettes are (in order of book appearance): "Med Ship Man" (_Galaxy_, 1963), "Plague on Kryder II" (_ASF_, 1964), "Ribbon in the Sky," (_ASF_, 1957), "Tallien Three," (originally "The Hate Disease," _ASF_, 1963), "Quarantine World," (_ASF_, 1966), and "The Grandfather's War," (_ASF_, 1957). My three favorite short pieces are "The Grandfather's War," for its interesting take on the generation gap; "Ribbon in the Sky," for its theme of how chance events can both create problems and contribute to their solution; and "Tallien Three," for its metaphor of hate as a disease. "Med Ship Man," a heavy-handed satire of ruthless business practices, is easily the most obvious and weakest of all the Med Service stories.

John Clute (1972) has shrewdly noted that Murray Leinster's futuristic setting shares many of the characteristics of old-time Virginia, the author's home state. It is politically conservative, with a weak central government and a _laissez-faire_ economic system. People populating it are frequently isolated from one another. It is not a setting jostling with colorful, competing alien races and cultures. It is a bit more safe. A bit more comfortable. A bit more stable. In Leinster's universe, adventures are viewed as aberrations rather than the norm.

I picked up this book back in 2002 and I was surprised at how good this author was. Usually old science fiction stories can be very dated. This is not the case with Willim F. Jenkins (A.K.A. Murry Leinster), who has a good grasp of characters, and the action associated with the genre. I have to say that I am sorry I never never heard of him before Baen Books published this novel. If you like science fiction that is actually based in science and actually has a basis in reality, this book is for you. It's amazing to me this author is not more known in science fiction circles.

I'm reading an ebook edition of Med Ship and am enjoying it. It does repeat some things a bit but it really is a good book.

This book is basically an anthology of six novelettes and two novellas, chronicling the interstellar travels of Med Ship Man Calhoun and his alien sidekick Murgatroyd (kind of an intelligent mix between a small dog and a monkey, and who has special immune system traits), using the spaceship Aesclipus Twenty. These stories originally appeared in various SciFi magazines during the late-50s thru mid-60's. I somehow managed to get thru all the stories, and following are reviews of each of them:

** MED SHIP MAN (Novellete, 1963) - While the technology used by the bad guys is believable, the plot involves too many coincidences. The pushy businessman character who basically forces his way down to the "apparently deserted" planet is way too shallow. Calhoun obviously doesn't like ANY businessmen, supposedly because of the way the businessmen treated people and animals on the planet Texia. With the mystery of the deserted planet just beginning, almost immediately Calhoun suspects the businessmen as the bad guy. Well, the businessman ends up being from Texia, and he is involved with a scheme using cattle herding technology from Texia, to herd people on Maya away from the cities, so he can buy prime real estate dirt cheap.

** PLAGUE ON KRYDER II (Novellete, 1964) - The trusting Calhoun bumbles thru and dodges multiple attempts on his life while interfering with a pack of interstellar bandits who take advantage of planets, upon which they have unleashed plagues.

** THE MUTANT WEAPON (Novella, 1957) - A story of a biological warfare attack on a newly colonized planet. This story contains some excellent detailed descriptions of Leinster's Planetary Grid and Interstellar Drive technologies, but also contains a lot of backward technology; for example, reel-to-reel tape drives. There are some good parts that give a decent picture of the horrors of germ warfare

**+ RIBBON IN THE SKY (Novellete, 1957) - A semi-decent story, with more backwards technology (e.g. Calhoun has to manually perform photo comparisons, something a computer has been able to do long ago). The most interesting parts are related to human biological theories, based on separated human populations; and this even leads to a bit of romance. This is possibly the best story of the collection (but that isn't saying much).

** TALLIEN THREE (Novellete, 1963) - Calhoun & Murgatroyd arrive at planet to do a routine medical survey, and lo and behold, the planet is experiencing a biologically-based revolution, that ends up being masterminded by yet another mad scientist gone bad. Crummy plot in general, but the nightmarish technology causing the population to be turned into garbage-eating ghouls is unique, to say the least, and future computer technologies are described pretty well, considering this was written in 1963.

** QUARANTINE WORLD (Novellete, 1966) - A seemingly pefectly healthy world undergoes a Medical Service inspection - but things are just a bit too perfect. It turns out that another "plague" is being hidden from the rest of the Galaxy, for "evil business purposes" (Leinster is definately a socialist, if not a communist, at heart). Nothing very different about this story than the rest.

* THE GRANDFATHERS' WAR (Novellete, 1957) - A colony is forced to evacuate their younger people to another star system, when their star becomes unstable and threatens to go nova. The overworked younger people become embittered against the older generation and rebel. Oh, and of course there is great sickness brewing amongst the youngest people on the new colony... this story could have actually been good, given a Twilight Zone-like ending - but it ends up with some highly unlikely rocket heroics by Calhoun, and a sappy kiss-and-makeup ending.

** PARIAH PLANET (Novella, 1961) - Calhoun is sent to a sector neglected by the Med Service for far too long, and encounters a planet whose inhabitants are subjected to famine and rascist isolationism by another more well to do planet in a nearby solar system. This could have been one of the better stories in the book, but the persistant meddling by Calhoun in the two planets' affairs made me think that MED SHIP didn't stand for MEDical SHIP, but really stood for MEDdling SHIP.

At the time this review was written, this book was available on the Baen Online Free Library (and if it wasn't, I wouldn't have wanted to pay more than a bargain-shelf book price to read this dated collection of SciFi stories).

Murray Leinster was considered one of the pioneers of "modern" SciFi writing, and was a longtime mainstay of the genre. If nothing else, some folks might get a kick out of sampling some of his writing by reading one or two of the stories from this anthology. He does a pretty good job describing some of his more advanced technologies; for instance the Planetary landing grids, and interstellar travel mechanisms. However, his older stories didn't even foresee the use of observation satellites or spy planes which were to become common place just a few years after the stories were written (in the book rockets are launched to take photographs). And, lets face it, the stories are somewhat slow-paced/dull, and the character development does not stand up to what we expect to find in present day SciFi stories. Oh, and could we have some good-looking women, please? And finally, these stories have a strong and naïve socialist leaning (in one story all businessmen are seen as evil, and in others economic classes are virtually non-existent).

NOTE1: Some folks have complained about the incessant repetition of simple facts... the reason there is so much repetition, is because this is a collection of independent stories that were originally designed to be read separately; so, in each story he has to repeat descriptions of technologies and main character's traits (especially Murgatroyd's). The net result is that the stories get more and more repetitive and boring as you make your way thru the book.

NOTE2: The medical spaceship Aesclipus Twenty is named after the Greek/Roman God of medicine and healing Asclepius/Aesculapius.

I loved Med Ship I passed it on rather than turn it in to the used book store. Each story is complete within itself but complemented the other stories.

P.S. It is a book of short stories and novellettes.

I found these stories to be poorly written and uninteresting. The author shows no respect for the reader's intelligence by repeating the same information throughout a story, as if we might forget. The protagonist seems to solve each problem halfway through, then we spend the rest of the story watching his predictions come true and his solutions solve the problem like clockwork.

If you're looking for good medical science fiction, seek out James White's fine "Hospital Station" series (recently reprinted) and Jody Lynn Nye's "Taylor's Ark" series.

This book seems terribly-babyish and boring, as if it is intended for a 10yr old to read.

The worst Sci-Fi I've ever read.