Double Contact

Sector General Hospital, out in deep space, may have a new administrator, but fortunately it still has White as its imaginative, dryly humorous chronicler, spinning out intriguing story lines. This time, responding to distress signals, ambulance ship Rhabwar finds an alien ship with a new genus aboard, the Trolanni, two of whom it rescues and brings in for treatment (White's description of the area-by-area search of the alien ship is first-rate writing). Senior physician Prilicla helps sort the patients' medical problems and, with his strong empathy, starts untangling their psychological problems. Things start going badly when pirate ships manned by crossbow-carrying spiders kidnap the practical pathologist Murchison. So now the Rhabwar show more crew has to go through the requisite first-contact procedures a second, hairier time. With tact and patience, Prilicla manages beautifully. The day is saved, and a low-key moral about the importance of learning how to live with others unlike oneself is delivered. Sector General fans old and new will enjoy, enjoy show less

Responding to a distress call, the crew of the space ambulance Rhabwar find themselves having to simultaneously manage two first contact situations where the patients believe they are predators on the hunt.

A fine conclusion to this series. This time the main POV character is Dr Prilicla, one of my favourite characters in the series, who to my surprise turns out to be male although I'd always assumed they were female.

I've enjoyed this series so much I'm tempted to go back and read the whole series again from the beginning.

The final Sector General novel. Prilicla has been a character in almost every if not every Sector General story up till now and finally gets it's own storyline. The ambulance ship Rhabwar is called to answer three distress signals in the same solar system. Two are unknown and one is from the first ship that answered the first two. Prilicla has its manipulatory appendages full, rescuing and treating the Monitor Corps crew then winnowing out the secrets of the alien space craft. But life is never simple, and the crew of the Rhabwar finds themselves faced with another intelligent species on the planet below.
Coming after Mind Changer, Double Contact was a disappointment for me. It was good to see Prilicla get its own story, but most of the show more book focused on its empathy and the Educator tapes it carried were something tacked on at the end like a footnote. I was also unsettled by reference to Prilicla as he throughout the book when my personal impression always had Prilicla pegged as feminine. show less

Um. Pretty good story, seriously marred by stupid assumptions. I'm surprised, White has been very good about writing alien aliens. But here - an insectoid alien makes the verbal assumption that one robot is female, because it's smaller and more streamlined than the first they saw! There is a strong underlying assumption that every species they encounter has exactly two sexes, which pair-bond - both of the first contact situations are strongly affected by the medical treatment of one lifemate convincing the other. The world they visit also seems oddly welcoming - sun, sand and sea, nothing noxious or dangerous (though admittedly, they're cautious about that last). The primary character is Prilicla (the insectoid) - which produces some show more odd effects, like Prilicla being referred to as 'he' (when I'm used to it being called 'it', when Conway was the primary character) and Murchison, a human female, being referred to as 'it' even during frequent comments about 'it' wearing, or not wearing, a swimsuit. I forget the details of some of my other objections, but I kept being thrown out of the story by sheer disbelief that a Sector General person would say something that dumb. The plot would have been pretty good if it were better executed, though. A neat ambulance ship adventure, with (as the title hints) First Contact with two intelligent species (though not the two you think it will be, after the first chapter). Interesting physical, technical, and social structures; interesting people, too, in varied forms. But the medical parts read a trifle perfunctory, plus the gender assumptions were annoying, and the social differences only pointed up the similarities of the underlying assumptions. A weak continuation of a good series. I'm going to go back and read the early ones - O'Mara and Conway. They were more interesting and more thought-provoking. show less

This sweet-hearted novel kept me turning pages, and I enjoyed the protagonist (a cowardly, intelligent, highly empathetic fly-like alien). A decent sci fi novel.

A good quick read, not requiring too much from the reader. James White is always inventive and enjoyable, especially on the topic of aliens in general and first contact in particular. I haven't read enough Sector General novels to know whether the idea would get repetitive.

This final book in the Sector General series features Dr. Prilicla, which was fun as he had been a favorite secondary character in many of the earlier books. Prilicla and the crew from the ambulance ship Rhabwar in responding to a distress beacon find themselves in a first contact situation with what appears to be a robotic race! In time, first contact with a second race becomes unavoidable when members of that race kidnap Murchison.

I was a tad disappointed that this final book didn't have Dr. Conway in it...