Sector General

The second novel about the medics from Sector General and the Rhabwar ambulance crew, again this tale has separate stories held together with the framework story of the ambulance crew. This time the framework holds up a little more firmly as we see a sort of friendly friction between Conway and the Captain of the Rhabwar.

The first story in the collection is the Sector General origin story, Accident, which ties the origins of the great space hospital back to an earlier tale by White, Tableau.

The writing, I believe, is improving as I continue through this read of the Sector General books and stories, becoming fully fleshed out and less choppy as we go along.

Standard James White Sector General fair. If you like it, you'll like this.

Having said that, I have figured out what is missing in many of his SG books. They have the feel that you're watching an average Star Trek ep, one where the A plot is a medical emergency. But then that's it. There's no B or C plot. So, no character development, no fun twists where the B plot comes around and helps resolve the A plot. Just a little too straight forward of a sci fi medical story.

Even though this is from 1983, if you want to give someone an example of Golden Age SF, this would work just fine. This is classic SF with a hard S about as good as it gets. The first story, Accident, is the weakest of the lot, but things pick up with Survivor, and my favorite is Investigation, if only because it sets up the puzzle and solution more briefly and clearly than the final story, Combined Operation. Forget characterization. There's just one plot: "what the heck is this thing and how do we cure it (assuming it's actually hurt)?" To my mind, this is a far richer vein than military SF or technological puzzles. Pure SF is about science, and medicine turns out to be a great place to do science with a heart.

Anthology of four stories and all of them very very good. The first story is a continuation of a story in an earlier book in the series. The first story was of a war memorial which was a stasis cube that had been copied for two hundred years as a warning about war. A human and an alien dying together. After 200 years of peace and the Federation growing and medical science improving, the stasis was removed and the injured heroes healed. This story is what they did with their lives after revival and it turns out they were responsible for the decision to build Sector General...what a neat connection. The other stories were equally interesting and engaging.

Anthology of four stories and all of them very very good. The first story is a continuation of a story in an earlier book in the series. The first story was of a war memorial which was a stasis cube that had been copied for two hundred years as a warning about war. A human and an alien dying together. After 200 years of peace and the Federation growing and medical science improving, the stasis was removed and the injured heroes healed. This story is what they did with their lives after revival and it turns out they were responsible for the decision to build Sector General...what a neat connection. The other stories were equally interesting and engaging.

Second book in the Kindle omnibus "Alien Emergencies". The first section is a flash back to how the hospital came to be founded but the rest of the book continues with Dr. Conway on the Rhabwar (the ambulance ship introduced in the previous book of the omnibus).