Content area
Full text
James White was a Belfast-born science fiction author writing from the mid-1950s until his death in 1999. He was extremely active in science fiction fandom, setting up the group Irish Fandom with Walt Willis. White worked at Short Brothers aerospace company in Belfast, writing science fiction stories in his spare time. What make White relevant to the discipline of medical humanities is his Sector General stories, set on a vast intergalactic space station that serves as a hospital for numerous alien species. In addition, medical practitioners also abound throughout White's standalone fiction. While not exhaustive, this article will attempt to serve as an introduction to White's work for those working in the medical humanities, outlining features of interest, and briefly critiquing the more repressive utopian excesses of novels such as The Dream Millennium and Underkill . The article will begin with a discussion of White's Sector General series, before considering the author's standalone fiction as a means through which to interrogate White's medicine-inspired pacifism.
White often declared himself a pacifist, and as such was uninterested in militaristic science fiction stories in which humanity battles hostile aliens, such as those found in the popular space operas of the genre's 'golden age'. 1 Instead, White chose to write within the subgenre of medical science fiction, a type of science fiction developed by the science fiction writer Murray Leinster in the pages of American science fiction magazines such as Astounding and Galaxy . 2 White's Sector General stories are set on a vast space station that serves as a hospital for a heterogeneous assortment of injured alien organisms, whose care is informed by a four-letter categorisation system that denotes the kind of atmosphere suitable for the patient. 3 In an essay entitled 'The Secret History of Sector General', White explains his rationale for the Sector General stories: 'Normally I do not like stories of violence or the senseless killing that is war...However, in a medical sf story of the Sector General type the violence is usually the direct or indirect result of a natural catastrophe, a disaster in space or an epidemic of some kind. And if there is a war situation...then the medics are fighting to save lives and the Monitor Corps, like the good little...