Search Worlds Without End

Hospital Station is a 1962 science fiction book by author James White and is the first volume in the Sector General series. The book collects together a series of five short stories previously published in New Worlds magazine between 1957 and 1960.

Contents:

• 7 - Medic - [Sector General] - (1960) - novelette (variant of O'Mara's Orphan)
• 41 - Sector General - [Sector General] - (1957) - novelette
• 85 - Trouble With Emily - [Sector General] - (1958) - novelette
• 114 - Visitor at Large - [Sector General] - (1959) - novelette
• 151 - Out-Patient - [Sector General] - (1960) - novella

This is the second installment of the Sector General series, about a huge multi-species hospital on the edges of the galaxy.

A "Fix-up" novel containing the introductory novelette Resident Physician and the novel length work, Field Hospital.

Sector General: A massive deep-space hospital station on the Galactic Rim, where human and alien medicine meet. Its 384 levels and thousands of staff members are supposedly able to meet the needs of any conceivable alien patient--though that capacity is always being strained as more (and stranger) alien races turn up to join the galactic community. Sentient viruses, interspecies romances, undreamed-of institutional catering problems--it all lands on Sector General's doorstep. And the only thing weirder than a hitherto unknown alien species is having a member of that species turn up in your Emergency Room.

Contents:

• 1 - Invader - [Sector General] - (1966) - novelette by James White
• 41 - Vertigo - [Sector General] - (1968) - novelette by James White
• 68 - Blood Brother - [Sector General] - (1969) - novelette by James White
• 103 - Meatball - [Sector General] - (1969) - novelette by James White
• 136 - Major Operation - [Sector General] - (1971) - novelette by James White

The medics were in worse danger than the victims they were trying so hard to save...

Contents:

• ix - The Secret History of Sector General - (1979) - essay by James White
• 1 - Contagion - [Sector General] - (1979) - novelette by James White
• 61 - Quarantine - [Sector General] - (1979) - novella by James White
• 121 - Recovery - [Sector General] - (1979) - novella by James White

Four tales of medical disaster and imaginative recovery.

Contents:

• 1 - Accident - [Sector General] - (1983) - novelette by James White
• 35 - Survivor - [Sector General] - (1983) - novelette by James White
• 71 - Investigation - [Sector General] - (1983) - novelette by James White
• 117 - Combined Operation - [Sector General] - (1983) - novella by James White

Conway is replaced on the ambulance ship Rhabwar by Diagnostician Prilicla. Conway visits healer Khone on the planet Goglesk, and witnesses first-hand their destructive racial mass-hysteria response to physical proximity. He inadvertently links minds with Khone and learns a great deal more. Back at Hospital Station, Conway decides to treat some Hudlar accident victims with a rear-to-front limb transplant, because stranger transplants require permanent exile. Conway also proposes staving off geriatric Hudlar problems by elective amputation. At the end, he successfully delivers a sentient telepathic Unborn (seen in the other novel of the series Ambulance Ship) from its violent non-sentient Protector.

Sector General Hospital was prepared for anything - except the alien standards of their newest trainee.

The protagonist of the story is Sommaradvan healer Cha Thrat. She bravely saved a human pilot who crashlanded on her planet, despite a complete lack of knowledge about his physiology. Contact with her species was established by the accident, so knowledge of their social customs is still virtually non-existent. However, she is invited to join the Sector General staff.

Cha Thrat innocently wreaks havoc by following her instincts and social customs. First she befriends a hypochondriac Chalder. Next, she is invited to assist at a therapeutic surgery operation to amputate the limb of a Hudlar, which will prolong its life (following events depicted in the previous novel in the series, Star Healer). When given the honour of cutting the limb, she obliges--and then deliberately cuts her own arm off as well, in accordance with the custom of her people. Next she saves the untouchable patient Khone (see Star Healer), and then finds a weird parasite species on a derelict spaceship. Due to the chaos she causes, every department in the hospital now refuses to allow her near their patients. O'Mara values her unusual approaches, and decides to add her to his staff.

In his zeal to cure the plague that has reduced the peaceful citizens of Cromsag to barbarism and war, Surgeon-Captain Lioren inadvertantly causes the death of the entire population and for punishment is banished to Sector Twelve General Hospital.

In this latest novel of the series, readers meet an alien chef named Gurronsevas who has come to Sector General to face the greatest challenge of his career--making hospital food palatable. His ensuing adventure combines interspecies administrative politics, ingenious science puzzles and a judicious admixture of action and adventure.

It's a massive hospital space station on the Galactic rim--384 levels, a staff of thousands--where human and alien medicine meet.

But Patient Hewlitt, new to Sector General, doesn't want to meet alien medicine--or alien doctors, or alien nurses, or aliens of any kind. Which is just too bad; he's an interesting case, and he'll have to get used to it.

In the meantime, it's always been an article of faith among Sector General's multispecies staff that infections can't pass from one alien race to another. But in this season of anomalies, it looks like they might have their first-ever interstellar virus on their hands, their tentacles, their cilla....

Combining intrigue, ingenious puzzles (and even more ingenious solutions), action, adventure and White's characteristic easy charm, Final Diagnosis is a science-fiction treat.

It's where human and alien medicine meet: a massive hospital space station on the Galactic Rim, with 384 levels and a multispecies staff of thousands.

In the course of practicing deep-space medicine, that staff has seen more than its share of challenges--from plagues caused by cafeteria food, to cafeteria food that resembles alien species. But now they are facing a disquieting new development: the terrifying Chief Psychologist, Dr. O'Mara, has been promoted to head of the hospital.

Worse, he's been given the job on a temporary basis, for just as long as it takes to train his own replacement. After that, he is up for mandatory retirement. Nobody at Sector General can begin to imagine what they'll do without him--assuming they last long enough to find out.

Now, in the latest adventure, the empathic Dr. Prilicla, a veteran of Sector General for years, is put in command of an expedition answering three distress beacons. What he finds is two hitherto-unknown intelligent species, one of which has nearly wiped out the other. And he also finds evidence of a botched first contact--along with a rare opportunity to set matters right.

Assuming, as always, that he can make an accurate diagnosis....