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Authors: James White
Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations
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Table of Contents
TO THE FIRST SECTOR GENERAL OMNIBUS
BY BRIAN STABLEFORD
This omnibus contains the first three volumes in the Sector General series. Because they were written at a time when magazines were gradually being displaced by paperback books as the core of the science fiction field, all three are “mosaic novels” made up of items that had previously been published as magazine stories. The five stories making up
Hospital Station
were published in
New Worlds
between 1957 and 1960, the novelette and novella making up
Star Surgeon
appeared in the same magazine in 1961-62, and the five novelettes making up
Major Operation
were published in the anthology series
New Writings in S-F
between 1966 and 1971. The series continued to grow thereafter until its author died in 1999, eventually spanning the greater part of half a century—a half-century which, as is nowadays a matter of routine, saw far greater political and technological changes than any of its predecessors.
Hospital Station
were published in
New Worlds
between 1957 and 1960, the novelette and novella making up
Star Surgeon
appeared in the same magazine in 1961-62, and the five novelettes making up
Major Operation
were published in the anthology series
New Writings in S-F
between 1966 and 1971. The series continued to grow thereafter until its author died in 1999, eventually spanning the greater part of half a century—a half-century which, as is nowadays a matter of routine, saw far greater political and technological changes than any of its predecessors.
Nothing dates as quickly as the future, but remote images tend to date better than nearer ones and a galactic culture spanning thousands of worlds is as distant a prospect today as it was in 1957. All fiction that deals with hypothetical futures is anchored in the present, so the Sector General series has had to evolve as time has passed, but the central themes of the series are as pertinent today as they were in 1957, and the argument developed in the series has lost none of its force. James White matured as a literary artist in the course of his career—and a considerable measure of that maturation is displayed within the pages of this book—but he was always a careful and clever writer, and his passion and sense of wonder did not diminish as the business of writing became familiar, so this almost-lifelong series maintained an evenness of tone, vivacity and moral
concern unmatched by any of its rivals. It is a remarkable achievement, and a fitting monument to the life of a man whose unfailing modesty always tended to conceal the true extent of his intellect and the real strength of his character.
concern unmatched by any of its rivals. It is a remarkable achievement, and a fitting monument to the life of a man whose unfailing modesty always tended to conceal the true extent of his intellect and the real strength of his character.
The first time that the author was invited to comment publicly on the Sector General series was in the June 1960 issue of
New Worlds,
which featured the last of the novelettes combined in
Hospital Station
. “The background idea for the Sector General series,” White explained, “is one that developed gradually over the years. I have always had a fondness for stories with a medical slant—my ambition is to write one as good as Lester del Rey’s ‘Nerves’—and as it is always easier to do what one likes rather than otherwise, many of my leading characters have been doctors. To one with pacifist inclinations—feelings shared on both sides of the typewriter among the SF fellowship, I think—a doctor character is important in that all sorts of violent, dramatic and emotionally loaded incidents happen to him as a matter of course. So an author who doesn’t relish killing off a lot of people or things can inject some legitimate bloodshed into his stories by substituting an accident or natural catastrophe for War.”
New Worlds,
which featured the last of the novelettes combined in
Hospital Station
. “The background idea for the Sector General series,” White explained, “is one that developed gradually over the years. I have always had a fondness for stories with a medical slant—my ambition is to write one as good as Lester del Rey’s ‘Nerves’—and as it is always easier to do what one likes rather than otherwise, many of my leading characters have been doctors. To one with pacifist inclinations—feelings shared on both sides of the typewriter among the SF fellowship, I think—a doctor character is important in that all sorts of violent, dramatic and emotionally loaded incidents happen to him as a matter of course. So an author who doesn’t relish killing off a lot of people or things can inject some legitimate bloodshed into his stories by substituting an accident or natural catastrophe for War.”
Contemporary readers will readily appreciate that White’s judgment as to the extent that his pacifist sympathies were shared within the SF community was a trifle optimistic, but that only served to make his efforts all the more necessary and all the more admirable. Alongside the Sector General series White produced other works of a similar ideological stripe, most of them—“Tableau” and “The Ideal Captain” (both 1958) are good examples—being satires whose manner and method recall the work of the other leading British SF writer of sarcastic anti-war stories, Eric Frank Russell.
White’s was not the first extraterrestrial medical series to appear in science fiction—it had been preceded by L. Ron Hubbard’s tales of “Ole Doc Methuselah” and Murray Leinster’s Med Ship series—but neither of these authors had shown the same scrupulous commitment to the extension of the Hippocratic oath to cover all intelligent life-forms that became the moral foundation-stone of the Sector General series. The work of the medically-qualified Alan E. Nourse was much closer in spirit to White’s, but Nourse’s juvenile novel
Star
Surgeon
—whose title was unnecessarily and confusingly hijacked for the second of White’s mosaic
novels—did not appear until 1959, two years after the first Sector General story.
Star
Surgeon
—whose title was unnecessarily and confusingly hijacked for the second of White’s mosaic
novels—did not appear until 1959, two years after the first Sector General story.
In a later essay reprinted as a preface to
Ambulance Ship
(1979), “The Secret History of Sector General,” White modestly confessed that the series got off to a shaky start because the magazine version of “Sector General” (1957) was slightly confused in its aims and execution, but once the basic location was established White knew that he had found the perfect format to develop his plotting skills within an appropriate framework. He eventually supplied a “prequel” to that first story which filled in the background more carefully—it appears here as the first part of
Hospital Station
—and reinforced the template which confronted concerned physicians with intellectually-challenging puzzles. The second major feature of the series has always been its brilliant ingenuity; there is no other which can match its prolific production of intriguingly bizarre aliens, or the care and cleverness with which alien biology is extrapolated into psychology and culture.
Ambulance Ship
(1979), “The Secret History of Sector General,” White modestly confessed that the series got off to a shaky start because the magazine version of “Sector General” (1957) was slightly confused in its aims and execution, but once the basic location was established White knew that he had found the perfect format to develop his plotting skills within an appropriate framework. He eventually supplied a “prequel” to that first story which filled in the background more carefully—it appears here as the first part of
Hospital Station
—and reinforced the template which confronted concerned physicians with intellectually-challenging puzzles. The second major feature of the series has always been its brilliant ingenuity; there is no other which can match its prolific production of intriguingly bizarre aliens, or the care and cleverness with which alien biology is extrapolated into psychology and culture.
At first, the editor to whom White sold all the early Sector General stories, John Carnell, saw it as a light-hearted and comedic enterprise, and Carnell persuaded White to rewrite what was originally intended to be the third story in the series because it was “too serious.” The ever-obliging White did so, but continued nevertheless, in a typically patient and subtle fashion, to import a necessary gravity into the series. By the time he produced “Resident Physician” and “Field Hospital”—the items combined as
Star Surgeon
—all the issues raised in the sidelined story that had become “Occupation: Warrior” (1959) had been re-raised and scrupulously addressed. Although Carnell may have been wrong to cast that story out of the series, his intervention ensured that White would make every possible effort to maintain a balance between the playful element of his stories and their earnest undercurrent—a balance whose delicacy always worked to their advantage.
Star Surgeon
—all the issues raised in the sidelined story that had become “Occupation: Warrior” (1959) had been re-raised and scrupulously addressed. Although Carnell may have been wrong to cast that story out of the series, his intervention ensured that White would make every possible effort to maintain a balance between the playful element of his stories and their earnest undercurrent—a balance whose delicacy always worked to their advantage.
The particular character of James White’s SF, and the Sector General series in particular, is partly the legacy of his upbringing as an Ulster Scot, and an adult life spent in a province whose festering political sores are conventionally referred to, with telling understatement, as “the troubles.” He was born in 1928 in Belfast, where he lived and worked until failing health hastened his retirement from formal employment in 1984. Having left school without any significant qualifications
at the age of fifteen, he worked as a retailer in the gentlemen’s clothing trade for more than twenty years before his writing skills enabled him to embark on a belated second career as a clerk and publicity officer for Shorts Aircraft. In the meantime, he obtained spiritual sustenance and solace from science fiction fandom; one of his closest friends was fellow SF writer Bob Shaw.
at the age of fifteen, he worked as a retailer in the gentlemen’s clothing trade for more than twenty years before his writing skills enabled him to embark on a belated second career as a clerk and publicity officer for Shorts Aircraft. In the meantime, he obtained spiritual sustenance and solace from science fiction fandom; one of his closest friends was fellow SF writer Bob Shaw.
Although he rarely referred to them directly, “the troubles” are ever-present in the background behind the scenarios of White’s stories and in every explanation that he ever gave of their content. The brief comment accompanying his entry in
The St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers
observes that: “The attempt to understand the behavior and thought processes of … aliens frequently illuminate the human condition as well, and the problem of learning to adapt to a totally alien viewpoint places in proper perspective the very minor differences of skin pigmentation and politics which bedevil our own culture.” White always saw the future in terms of a highly problematic but desperately necessary quest for lasting peace, whose establishment would require a respectful tolerance for all differences of form and faith.
The St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers
observes that: “The attempt to understand the behavior and thought processes of … aliens frequently illuminate the human condition as well, and the problem of learning to adapt to a totally alien viewpoint places in proper perspective the very minor differences of skin pigmentation and politics which bedevil our own culture.” White always saw the future in terms of a highly problematic but desperately necessary quest for lasting peace, whose establishment would require a respectful tolerance for all differences of form and faith.
As a professional writer, White’s fortunes were very mixed. He sold the first story he ever wrote to John Carnell in 1953, and when
New Worlds
reached its hundredth issue in 1960 only one author, Francis G. Rayer, had contributed more stories to the magazine. White overtook Rayer soon afterward but his own tally was swiftly overtaken in the mid-1960s by J. G. Ballard (whose first
New Worlds
story, “Manhole 69,” had appeared in the same issue as “Sector General”) when his more traditionally-inclined work was claimed by Carnell—who was his agent as well as his editor—for
New Writings in S-F.
New Worlds
reached its hundredth issue in 1960 only one author, Francis G. Rayer, had contributed more stories to the magazine. White overtook Rayer soon afterward but his own tally was swiftly overtaken in the mid-1960s by J. G. Ballard (whose first
New Worlds
story, “Manhole 69,” had appeared in the same issue as “Sector General”) when his more traditionally-inclined work was claimed by Carnell—who was his agent as well as his editor—for
New Writings in S-F.
When SF became briefly fashionable among respectable British publishers in the late 1960s and early 1970s five of White’s novels appeared in hardcover, to some acclaim, but as the tide of fashion passed he was soon thrust back into the established mold of the genre paperback writer. He never won an award in Britain or America and toward the end of his life he could not get his books published in his native land. The novel that he and many others considered to be his
magnum opus, The Silent Stars Go By
(1991)—an alternative history in which Irish settlers establish a Hibernian Empire in the Americas long before Columbus, with the eventual happy result that Earth’s first starship blasts off in 1492—never appeared there.
magnum opus, The Silent Stars Go By
(1991)—an alternative history in which Irish settlers establish a Hibernian Empire in the Americas long before Columbus, with the eventual happy result that Earth’s first starship blasts off in 1492—never appeared there.
Ironically, it was only in the U.S.A., the homeland of militaristic SF, that he could find an adequate audience for his pacifist fiction in his later
years, although
Underkill
(1979), a viscerally effective and brutal futuristic satire of life in Belfast, had earlier been considered too shocking for U.S. publication. White never complained about this indignity, and always seemed profoundly grateful to have any audience at all, but he was an exceedingly courteous man, soft-spoken and unusually generous of spirit. The development of the Sector General series was intimately bound up with his personal development as an exceptionally tolerant and compassionate human being.
years, although
Underkill
(1979), a viscerally effective and brutal futuristic satire of life in Belfast, had earlier been considered too shocking for U.S. publication. White never complained about this indignity, and always seemed profoundly grateful to have any audience at all, but he was an exceedingly courteous man, soft-spoken and unusually generous of spirit. The development of the Sector General series was intimately bound up with his personal development as an exceptionally tolerant and compassionate human being.
The Sector General series eventually came to comprise twelve volumes;
Double Contact
, issued by Tor in 1999, was the last of them. It may seem odd that a narrative frame devised in 1957 could still be viable, without any significant modification, in 1999, but that persistence is a faithful reflection of the tenacity and artfulness with which the series clung to its basic principles. Its central characters do not simply spend all their time trying to heal people of many different biological types; they are always prepared to go to lengths so extraordinary as to be almost incredible to avoid killing
anyone
, no matter how extreme the temptation, provocation or apparent justification.
Double Contact
, issued by Tor in 1999, was the last of them. It may seem odd that a narrative frame devised in 1957 could still be viable, without any significant modification, in 1999, but that persistence is a faithful reflection of the tenacity and artfulness with which the series clung to its basic principles. Its central characters do not simply spend all their time trying to heal people of many different biological types; they are always prepared to go to lengths so extraordinary as to be almost incredible to avoid killing
anyone
, no matter how extreme the temptation, provocation or apparent justification.
While his predecessors fitted their medical romances to a standardized “wandering vigilante” framework, White conceived of interplanetary medicine in terms of the staff of a vast hospital, further supported by an entire galactic bureaucracy committed to preventing war and cementing harmonious inter-species relationships. Even when Sector General sends out teams of paramedics in ambulance ships, and even when the quasi-military Monitor Corps is forced to involve its own personnel in their operations, the collective purpose of all the collaborators is to save as many lives as possible, without discrimination as to species. All other moral judgments are held in abeyance. The fact that White’s characters are so often forced to do this in secret, carefully covering the tracks of their own altruism, is a revealing comment on the politics of everyday life in Northern Ireland in the latter part of the twentieth century.
As an ingenious designer of alien physiologies White is, of course, forced to rely on the logic of Darwinian evolution. His Diagnosticians solve novel problems in the only way available to them, by applying the logic of adaptation by natural selection to their knowledge of particular physical environments. He is always fully aware of the harsher implications of evolutionary theory: of the ceaseless struggle for existence that
renders nature “red in tooth and claw.” His interplanetary ambulancemen can hardly help being aware of the fact that any new species they encounter are likely to perceive them as dangerous monsters to be opposed with all available firepower. Their job is not merely to bring comfort and succour to the injured but to meet all paranoia with dutiful patience and all hostile fire with assiduous fortitude. Even under mortal threat, they make every possible effort to understand the behavior and thought processes of others, in the hope of establishing sufficient rapport to render any and all differences harmless.
renders nature “red in tooth and claw.” His interplanetary ambulancemen can hardly help being aware of the fact that any new species they encounter are likely to perceive them as dangerous monsters to be opposed with all available firepower. Their job is not merely to bring comfort and succour to the injured but to meet all paranoia with dutiful patience and all hostile fire with assiduous fortitude. Even under mortal threat, they make every possible effort to understand the behavior and thought processes of others, in the hope of establishing sufficient rapport to render any and all differences harmless.
Newly-encountered alien species, in this framework, usually have to be persuaded to set aside the preconceptions and habits of far more than a lifetime, and then to recognize the benefits that might accrue to them as a result of contact with hundreds of other species of whose existence and oft-exotic nature they had not previously dreamed. For the achievement of such an astonishing feat the only reward available to the heroes of the stories is promotion to a slightly higher rank, which entitles the promoted individuals to wrestle with even-more-complicated problems in the future. This restriction of available rewards is, however, an asset as well as a limitation. Sector General stories are replete with dramatic tension and narrative zest; they feature interesting ideas, cleverly extrapolated with charm and wit; they insist—very hard—that any attempt “to understand the behavior and thought processes of aliens” is
bound
to “illuminate the human condition,” and that the project of “learning to adapt to a totally alien viewpoint” is the
only
intellectual exercise available to all of us that is guaranteed to place in their proper perspective “the very minor differences of skin pigmentation and politics which bedevil our own culture.”
bound
to “illuminate the human condition,” and that the project of “learning to adapt to a totally alien viewpoint” is the
only
intellectual exercise available to all of us that is guaranteed to place in their proper perspective “the very minor differences of skin pigmentation and politics which bedevil our own culture.”
BOOK: Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations
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