Alan E. Nourse (1928–1992)

Alan Nourse was a science fiction writer with a day job as a practicing physician. He began writing science fiction to help pay for his medical education and continued writing in the genre for over 30 years. In his first novel, Trouble on Titan (1954), a boy travels to Titan with his stiff-necked military father. He makes friends on Titan and helps his father deal with a dangerous rebellion. There are other surprises as father and son each have things to learn. The adventure keeps moving, and the science elements are not as dated as one might expect, with one glaring exception--no one would use wood to shore up a mine tunnel on Titan. Nourse and Robert Heinlein were friends for decades, and Trouble on Titan reads like an early Heinlein juvenile, which is not a bad thing.… (more)

I remember reading Intern either during first year of medical school or the summer before. It scared me to death, thinking this was what I had to look forward to. But later in the midst of it I loved every minute.

I graduated from Med school in 1978 and many of the procedures and treatments Doctor X details here were just starting to become obsolete. It is a VERY realistic picture of hospital medicine before technology. My father was an intern in 1946, so much of Doctor X experiences were novel, although they were both on call from Friday morning to Monday.

Anyway this is a well written description of medicine at the dawn of the “ we can do something for this patient other than morphine” age, and before CT scans ( I saw the first CT scan on one of my patients at Hopkins)

This book is important for another reason. Despite all the technology, what makes a great doctor hasn't changed. Just reading his introduction to Pediatrics brought tears to my eyes. . He and the nurses recognize kind compassionate and expert docs when they see them , and you will too.… (more)

This is a very diverse collection for a single author anthology. The range is particularly impressively given that this is not a career retrospective but covers just the few years from 1952 through 1956. "Second Sight" is a solid early entry to the Hoffman Medical Center "Psi High" stories, though not listed as such in the Internet SF Database. It makes for an interesting almost sequel to "My Friend Bobby", the best story in the book, on how telepathy can breed monsters on both sides of the parent-child relationship. "The Canvas Bag" is a quiet mood piece from F&SF. "An Ounce of Cure" and "Meeting of the Board" are overdone comic inferno stories. "The Counterfeit Man" is an overwrought variation on Campbell's "Who Goes There" where the main character spins an incredibly complicated -- but true -- hypothesis about shape-changing aliens based on no evidence at all. "The Expert Touch" is a forced, predictable story about psychological manipulation, salvaged slightly by just the right closing line. The other stories, including "The Link" and "Circus" that are original to the collection, are similarly contrived idea stories.

Other than "My Friend Bobby" and "Second Sight", there's not much here for the modern reader, but this is a solid and representative collection for fans of 1950s American SF.… (more)