The Genocidal Healer

A Cross between ER and the bar scene in Star Wars 4, the Sector General Series explores some aspect of a multi-species, multi-environmental hospital believably through the presentation of characters that you will come to love from tentacle to wing tip to pseudopod. Each piece presents some aspect of the foremost teaching hospital in the galaxy through medical mysteries which the reader may solve from credible extrapolations from today's medecine and biology. This novel deals with a surgeon who nearly wipes out a planetary population and grows throughout to become a nearly indispensible part of Sector General. Dealing with the hero's guilt in the process, it does so without being in any way doctrinaire, it is tremendously thought-provoking without stepping on any reader's religious or philosophical toes. On any level this novel is a terrific read whether you are new to the Sector General series or a virtual resident.

James White's Sector General Stories are entertaining and intelligent stories that are truly 'good' both in terms of their quality, and in that there are very few bad or negative characters. Can you imagine Star Wars without the evil empire, or Star Trek without the Borg and the Klingons? Well, James White created a universe of full of weird aliens who were all trying to do good - by working in a vast multispecies hospital space station and trying to actually save lives. "The Genocidal Healer" is probably the best of the bunch. Most of the books have a human as the main character, but here the story is centred around Lioren, a Tarlan with numerous limbs, a dedication to medicine- and more than a little arrogance. Lioren had been in charge of a desperate medical mission on the newly-discovered world of Cromsag. Civilisation on this world had rapidly decayed over the past few centuries due to a really nasty plague. Not only were the inhabitants disfigured and dying, but they felt compelled to indulge in grotesque bouts of hand-to-hand violence. With only a few thousand Cromsaggar remaining, Lioren feels he has to act quickly, but through a disastrous error of judgement he almost wipes out the remaining population so that there are only a few dozen left. Almost overwhelmed by guilt , Lioren wants to be executed for his crime, but instead is 'merely' transferred to Sector General as a closely supervised trainee in the psychology department - the traditional dumping place there for medical misfits. Whilst working there Lioren meets other beings who have grave problems of their own - such as the Earth-human Dr Mannen, who is no longer a physician and now a terminally ill old man. More crucially he encounters Hellishomar, an enormous octupuslike alien from a species called the Groalterri (so big that when it eventually undergoes surgery, the doctors climb inside its body). Hellishomar has an intelligence to match his size, and carries a burden of guilt too - it feels it has committed a great sin... "What is the difference between a crime and a sin?" Lioren asks himself, and indeed he is starting to ask a lot of religious questions, which takes the Sector General books into new territory. James White was a Catholic , and here he starts to tackle big themes. If there is a God in the Universe, a God not just for Humans, but for Tarlans, Cromsaggar , Groalterri and all species, how can he let a whole species such as the Cromsaggar suffer in such a way? "The Genocidal Healer" is a thoughtful book. The characters are well-drawn and believable, there's a scientific puzzle, a theological mystery and the Groalterri are particularly interesting. Although there are religious questions here the author doesn't try to force you to accept any particular answers. But those Christians who can't accept evolution might conclude that James White believed in a rather more universe-spanning God than they do.

The first 5 chapters cover the court-martial of Monitor Corps Surgeon-Captain Lioren, who, dissatisfied with the verdict given in the civilian hearing held just before the story opens, has insisted on "its" (actually he, but "it" is polite interspecies usage) right to a court-martial. He's not defending himself; quite the contrary. He's *prosecuting*, and asking for the death penalty, regarding the Cromsag Incident, wherein most of the planet's population died as an indirect result of his treatment; the incident is shown unfolding in flashback, interspersed with the trial.O'Mara, against Lioren's wishes, is acting as his defender, and argues that his only fault is that his perfectionist standards - Lioren has lived only for his work - have made him far too hard on himself. He actually requested his transfer from Sector General to the Monitor Corps in search of an environment with higher standards of discipline.Lioren (who loses his fight to commit judicial suicide) has sworn never again to exercise his status as a Resident Physician; the Monitor Corps can't use him. But O'Mara, who abhors waste, claims him as a trainee for the psychology department, in its tradition of taking talented insubordinate misfits under its wing. (See _Code Blue: Emergency_ for the story of how Cha Thrat, the other non-human member of the psychology department and O'Mara's co-counsel in the court-martial, made the same transition.) Note that the psychology department, officially at least, isn't there for the *patients*, but to catch any signs of problems developing among the hospital *staff*, as well as running the Educator tape system that allows physicians of one species to treat patients of another. One of the routine assignments of the department, for example, is to evaluate progress reports from tutors on various trainees. (The Nidian tutor Cresk-Sar, for example, may look like a fluffy red-gold teddy bear, but his reports are so hideously boring that even the penitential Lioren will do almost any other assignment on his plate before wading through them).White's galactic civilization has non-interference directives, but unlike some other fictional universes, these directives can be waived in light of good sense, as in Cromsag's case, wherein the population was rapidly heading for extinction. But in one case, the decision of whether to interfere with a less developed culture isn't theirs to make, and the hospital now has a *very* uncommunicative member of that species under treatment. But Lioren, whose problems are so much worse than those of any of the patients, and who no longer has any career or dignity left to lose, has begun to develop a certain talent for getting the most unlikely people to speak with him in confidence...Some long-term patients from previous books appear as Lioren adapts to his new job: Khone (see _Star Healer_), part of the long-term project of treating its/her species' inherited phobias; the Protectors of the Unborn; and Dr. Mannen, who in hi