Doctor Doctor

Major Operation (Sector General, book 3)

By James White

14 May, 2023

**Because My Tears Are Delicious To You**

11 comments

Support me with a Patreon monthly subscription! — 14 May, 2023

**Because My Tears Are Delicious To You**

11 comments

Major Operation (first published in 1971) is the third of James White’s Sector General books. Like the first volume and unlike the second, Major Operation is a collection of short pieces. In this case, all involve the enigmatic planet Meatball.

Sector 12 General Hospital is a vast hospital space station. Located in deep space, Sector General is equipped to treat all known life forms and to make a good try at treating unknown beings as well. The staff is as diverse as its patients.

Warning: James Does Not Like Sector General as Much as Other People Do.

Meatball is peculiar in that the continents and seas are filled with a superabundance of life. The continents in particular are covered in a layer of living flesh, thus the planet’s name. The Federation is no stranger to peculiar worlds and even more peculiar beings. If there are intelligent beings on the planet, the Federation will do its best to invite them to join the galactic community. Key to the effort: the hardworking staff of Sector General.

I picked this up because the edition I saw had a John Berkey cover and I’d had good luck with books with Berkey covers. In this case, results were mixed.

On the plus side, SF novels that firmly eschewed violent solutions were rare at the time. There were other SF medical works but not many, and none as prolific as the Sector General books. In retrospect, I am a little surprised this setting never got the shared universe treatment or even a GURPS sourcebook.

On the minus side, the problems and solutions in this volume often seem contrived. As well, a number of problems could have been avoided if Sector General and the Federation were familiar with the concept of due diligence. As it is, they like to charge in without having the facts. It is true they eventually resolve all the crises, but it seems that points should be deducted if the crises one is solving were initially due to iatrogenesis.

I found this book memorable for reasons other than the merits of the stories: this is the book that showed me how useful alphabetizing libraries could be. Until I organized my library, I didn’t connect this volume with Monsters and Medics. If there were two books by White (one of which I enjoyed), there might be more. A search for his books ensued.

Major Operation is available as part of Beginning Operations: A Sector General Omnibus, which can be found here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Apple Books), here (Barnes & Noble), and here (Chapters-Indigo).

Now for the stories.

Invader • [Sector General] • (1966) • novelette

Was Mannon’s sequence of medical mishaps evidence of professional error or was some outside force working on the unfortunate surgeon? Chief Psychologist O’Mara investigates. Evidence links the mishaps to a recent expedition to the newly discovered planet Meatball.

I cannot help but notice that the staff begin by assuming Mannon is innocent, despite all the evidence (and Mannon’s own conviction) pointing the other way.

Vertigo • [Sector General] • (1968) • novelette

Believing that a space craft launched from Meatball is in trouble, a Federation ship “rescues” its pilot. The rescue very nearly kills the craft’s occupant, thanks to the rescuers’ profound ignorance of the occupant’s biology. Can Federation – Meatball relations be salvaged?

The first error made by the Galactics was assuming that the occupant needed rescuing. From Meatball’s perspective, aliens kidnapped their astronaut. After that, the story is about the Federation’s struggle to solve a problem caused by the Federation.

Blood Brother • [Sector General] • (1969) • novelette

Meatball native Surreshun forgives all and provides an introduction to its exuberant civilization. Evidence suggests that Shurreshun’s people, the Rollers, are not alone on Meatball. Making contact with this hypothetical second civilization poses great personal risk.

Meatball having a ferociously active land ecology, the Rollers have taken to clearing regions with the application of dirty nuclear weapons. Rather unbelievably, the Rollers deal with the long-term implications of poisoning their world by ignoring the problem. Logically, any civilization that did that would not last long.

Meatball • [Sector General] • (1969) • novelette

The staff of Sector General are convinced that Drambo (formerly known as Meatball) is home to at least two unrelated civilizations. The Rollers were easy to locate. The hypothetical second civilization proves enigmatic.

Major Operation • [Sector General] • (1971) • novelette

Sector General’s staff tackles the challenge posed by dangerously ill patients, each the size of a continent, with an alien physiology as yet poorly understood and no ability to communicate. Even the concept of communication is lacking. Failure to bridge the communications gap will be fatal.

Comments

Robert Carnegie

Hospital management, O'Mara, is essentially sure that Dr Mannen is at fault, and Mannen is almost certain to be dismissed. Good doctors don't come easy but he is replaceable. Even without an explanation for events, his own loss of confidence may be bad enough. Colleagues who agree do not need to do anything. Colleagues who disbelieve that Mannen would become incompetent for no reason will seek another explanation. Colleagues with an open mind will help out, within reason, until the eye of O'Mara falls on them as I recall. Maybe it's being a hospital, Sector General is a workplace where some colleagues are crotchety but none are antagonistic. Having a brilliant psychologist in charge with extremely detailed files on staff's life stories probably helps. O'Mara is nice to people only when he's considering them as patients, and that includes colleagues, who do not want to be in that situation.

In alien medicine, it's mostly the creatures that the Federation has never encountered before that are difficult, but a premise of this universe is that living species are mostly the same on all worlds, except when they aren't. Which is when it's difficult. Also, these tend to be cases where the doctors have to rush in, or else patients will die before they are treated. Relatively few of the patients die while they are being treated.

Greg Morrow

Greg is one of those people who likes Sector General more than James does.

Swampyankee

I, too, like the Sector General stories, probably more than JDN. "Contrived solutions" are pretty much de rigueur in sff, so if they bothered me particularly, I'd just give up on the genre.

Bunrab

I liked the Sector General books, but then, I read them when they were published, when there were fewer things in the genre to compare it to. So much of the genre was fighting and empire, and I was something of a biology nerd so a nonviolent medical series was great. The sexism ticked me off even then, though.

Marcus Rowland

I liked the Sector General series when I first came across some of the stories in anthologies in the sixties, and still have a soft spot for them - White's universe seemed a lot more believable and enjoyable that the galactic empires and endless wars other space opera was pushing. I started to notice the flaws much later, which are mostly period sexism and occasional moments of contrived stupidity by some of the characters, but the series as a whole is still a fun read. I think it worked best at novelette length, not novels, but that's just personal taste.

The main problem I see with Major Operation is that it's very much an interventionist story - the native Dramboans are messing up by the standards of galactic civilisation and Sector General swoops in to save the day, and very little is said about the impact this has on the native culture, beyond a slightly contrived genetic and cultural preference for alien contact that smooths things a little. You'd think there would still be protest movements on Drambo, cultural anthropologists and other interested parties deploring the changes, etc. etc., but it doesn't seem to happen that way.

Instances of the hospital staff coming close to killing their patients, usually as a result of unknown alien biology and failure to communicate, were a little too common throughout the series. The reasons for it made some sense, but it amazed me that nobody ever sued for medical malpractice. The series that comes closest to it in that respect is probably House. Damn, now I want someone to write some House / Sector General crossover fanfic...

Robert CarnegieMarcus Rowland

In a later book, Doctor Cha Thrat suffers disgrace and an important limb injury, but, I don't quite remember, she may have enough to spare?

ElRobert Carnegie

She does. Actually, she cuts off the limb herself.

ElMarcus Rowland

Thinking about the malpractice question — how much of that is a product of the US medical system (privatized medicine). It’s pretty obvious that the medical system in question in White’s books is not privatized but is underwritten by all the beings involved in the galactic federation. There is actually quite a bit of argument/angst in the books that deal with the consequences of a case that might go wrong (even though the doctor(s) in question may be well-meaning sorts. In many cases the doctors are concerned with causing a war due to mismanagement of a case. In several of the books, a protagonist makes mistakes and is demoted or reprimanded. One example is Cha Thrat, although there is the dietician as well. Even O’Mara is reprimanded in the very first story.

This is not my favorite of the General Hospital books, but it is still preferable to Heinlein or Ass-imov. While the sexism is annoying, it comes across more as a product of when the book is written rather than the supercilious ness certain other authors have. And to a certain degree, although not entirely successfully, White at least tries to correct it in later books.

ElEl

Please forgive the typos. . .

Ross

I never thought of it, but it is odd that GURPS never did a sourcebook -- it seems like the kind of thing that would have been right up their alley. Perhaps nobody on staff happened to have read them, or they couldn't get the rights, or just had too many other projects.

Of course you could roll your own in your space-themed TTRPG of choice.

Hmm.

This is ~Free Trader~ Sector General Ambulance Beowulf, calling anyone... Mayday, Mayday, we are under attack...

James Doyle

Here in the UK, many of these were first published in the New Writings in SF anthologies, and picking up one of these anthologies and finding either a Sector General or Unorthodox Engineers story would provoke anticipatory pleasure, if not excitement, in teenage me. Completing my NWiSF collection recently, I got to reread some of these. Are they as great as 1970s me remembered? No. But are they are welcome change from a) astronauts blasting anything they see b) grimy near-future Britain or c) opaque Brian Aldiss whimsy? Yes.