I didn't like it quite as much as the first book. The sexism of the 1960s showed through pretty strongly and soured the book. Examples:

- All the doctors are male and all the nurses are female, even in a future that includes mind-bogglingly massive sociological, medical, and technological progress
- The nurses are called girls, even though they have clearly reached an adult age
- Nurse Murchison is continually sexually harassed by her boss, Dr. Conway, including unwanted physical touching
- Nurse Murchison's wishes to keep the relationship professional and platonic are disregarded by Dr. Conway, and he repeatedly tries to manipulate her into a sexual relationship
- Continuous references to Nurse Murchison's huge tits throughout the book

It may be a book about various advanced lifeforms set in the far future, but it was written by a human male in the 1960s and has some hack writing to prove it. ( )

A friend recommended [author: James White] a couple months ago, so I picked up a handful of them. This is the third one I've read, but the first out of what is apparently his mostly popular series (Sector General). It's my first introduction to a rather weird genre, "doctors in space". The book largely takes place at "Sector 12 General Hospital", a gigantic space station dedicated to treating injury and illness for thousands of races, with wildly varying environmental and social requirements. Most of the action follows one doctor (Senior Physician Conway) and his usual associates. It starts with a little diagnostic mystery - new patient from an unknown race is clearly dying, and not responding to treatments in a way that makes sense. From there the story takes a few twists and turns, following some consequences of the patient being in a way a galactic big shot.

Although it was generally enjoyable, the book has some real problems. One difficulty is the odd pacing: it starts off with some medical drama intensity, then goes into a lull in the middle, and finally builds, builds, builds the excitement, until 2 pages from the end, when things abruptly get tied up, leaving a somewhat unsatisfied feeling.

The other problem is that it's very dated, feeling more so than other novels from the early 60s. Although some of it is easy enough to ignore (giant computers, messengers for paper documents, etc), it displays a type and level of sexism that it's hard to believe used to exist: the doctors are men, the nurses are women, everyone is straight, and "the female mind is not capable of..." a number of things. It's actually quite jarring. Somewhat weirdly, I followed this by reading [book: Sector General], a collection of four short stories in the same universe. In three of these, the shapely and universally (well, among human males) desirable nurse of this novel has morphed into a highly competent and well-respected pathologist, with no reference to her having been a nurse before.

So I don't know. I'm not unhappy I read it, but I wouldn't particularly recommend it, unless you are a big fan of medical stuff (although the second half is more about logistics and paperwork than medicine). ( )

[Star Surgeon] is the second of the Sector General series.

Sector General is a hospital space station with an amazing variety of non-humanoid doctors treating a huge variety of non-humanoid patients.

In the first part of the book, the station, under the direction of hero protagonist Dr Conroy, must treat an alien that is so huge, long lived and powerful that it is thought of as god-like by the species that know it.

After the alien, whose name is Lonvellin, goes on its way, it contacts the station about a totally new uncontacted confederation of beings. There are a wide variety of treatable diseases on the planet Lonvellin visits. It contacts Sector General to send a crew to make contact and help the inhabitants.

What follows turns into an intergalactic war with a fascist empire lying about the motives of Sector General. Its citizens believe that they are doing the right thing by destroying the hospital ship and the destruction they wreak is terrible.

This one hits a bit close to the bone with a lying government and people happily falling into line to give their lives to defend it.

There is quite a bit of sexism in this novel; not uncommon for SF written in the early 1970’s. There are no women doctors or women in other leadership positions, although females of all species are wonderfully competent nurses and sexy love interests.

In many ways, it’s like stepping back in time fifty years – the good guys are impeccable, the women beautiful.

Still it’s an entertaining feel-good series and I plan to go on with it. ( )

White, James. Star Surgeon. Sector General No. 2. 1963. Del Rey, 1970.
If there was ever a series to buck you up during a pandemic, it is James White’s Sector General stories that appeared off and on from the early 1960s through the 1990s and in reprints and combo editions in this millennium. It does not matter that most of the humans on far future space station hospital catering to aliens from all over two galaxies are for all purposes twentieth-century Anglo-Irish or that all the sex, even the alien sex, so tame it would not make it on Gray’s Anatomy. What makes the series such a perennial favorite is its unabashed faith in scientific ingenuity to solve the most mysterious and intractable medical and social problems. The multispecies hospital is the perfect answer to the question, “Can’t we all just get along?” In Star Surgeon, Dr. Conway has to keep the hospital running when an alien bombardment takes out most of the senior staff. Can he use mind tapes from six different species at once and set up a ward in the oxygen-breather’s dining hall? You betcha. The first book in the series is Hospital Station. You should read it first. ( )

Wow, lots of action in this second book in the Sector General series! Read in the omnibus "Beginning Operations" ( )