James White was an old-fashioned SF writer, which both helps and hurts his last book, Double Contact.
White, who died in August, is best known for his 12-volume "Sector General" series, a chronicle of the adventures of doctors aboard a gigantic interstellar hospital run by a peacefully expanding Federation.
Sector General was a place where any life-form imaginable might show up, either as a doctor or a patient, and where figuring out what's normal about a patient was often as difficult as figuring out what had gone wrong.
While Double Contact -- the latest and possibly last of the books -- isn't much different from the previous installments of the series, the sense of comfortable familiarity White obviously felt for the material makes up for what the book may lacks in innovation.
Same song, serious key
Characters came and went in Sector General, but not much changed about the series since it started in 1962.
The formula remained simple: White hung his story on an interesting hook and let his knowledge of character and medical procedures do the rest. Sometimes -- as when a famous chef tried to make hospital food edible in The Galactic Gourmet -- the hook wasn't serious, but sometimes it was.
This time, the hook is fairly serious. An unusual series of distress beacons has been detected by the hospital, and the ambulance ship Rhabwar has been dispatched to investigate and render assistance. Senior Physician Prilicla, an insectile life-form with empathic powers, is in charge of the mission.
After the Rhabwar finds that the source of the signals is on a crippled Federation survey ship and a badly damaged alien vessel, the Sector General team finds itself conducting rescue operations. That's fairly routine work, but Prilicla and his fellow doctors are also embroiled in not one but two first contact situations with vastly different alien species, neither of which has any reason to trust the Federation.
It's a ticklish situation, and the Rhabwar and its crew don't have the diplomatic staff to deal with it. Instead, they have to make do with Dr. Prilicla's empathy, the limited resources of their ship, and some inspired improvisation. Fortunately, a little improvisation can go a long way.
Return to the Golden Age
This is an old plot, of course, and White didn't put many twists in it. Nothing shocking or especially surprising happens, and the writing style is straight out of the Golden Age of science fiction, complete with occasionally awkward bits of exposition.
White's aliens aren't very alien, either. They're really just humans in funny outfits. As the star of the book, Dr. Prilicla enjoys a somewhat more developed viewpoint, but his alien nature doesn't extend far beyond his lack of physical strength and frequent need for sleep.
This familiarity of the aliens doesn't hurt the plot, and actually underscores White's theme of how much seemingly different beings have in common. However, it may disappoint sophisticated readers who have grown accustomed to some of the truly alien viewpoints we've seen in recent years.
Since both Double Contact and Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky feature spider-like aliens, some readers may be struck by the contrast between White's more classical SF depiction of the alien and Vinge's careful construction of convincing, truly alien aliens.
Even with these caveats, however, Double Contact is enjoyable. The denizens of Sector General are appealing, and seeing them in action again is like spending a relaxed evening with old friends.
White was a particularly inventive writer when it came to technology and medicine. His alien medical procedures were realistic and easy to follow, and the crew of the Rhabwar comes up with some entertaining tricks to communicate with and defend themselves from their dangerous patients.
Finally, there's something comforting about the Sector General ethic. White's doctors were almost complete pacifists, dedicated to understanding and helping any lifeform they encounter. When they had to defend themselves, they did so creatively and non-violently. In the Sector General universe, there were never any conflicts that couldn't eventually be reconciled.
I'm not sure I can share this fundamental optimism about the universe. I'd like to, though, and that longing for a kind of golden age makes Double Contact a pleasant read.
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