Amph Sector General: James White's Hospital in Space

James White's Sector General novels are a long-time favorite of mine. Not too long ago most of them were re-released into three omnibus volumes - Beginning Operations (2001), Alien Emergencies (2002), and General Practice (2003). For those unfamiliar with the series it followed the stories of doctors and nurses in a multi-species hospital space station. Unfortunately the series ended with White's death.
Has anyone else been a fan of the series?

 

Yes. I discovered the series back in the late 1990s with The Galactic Gourmet, which I picked up because the title sounded amusing. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that not only was it well-written, there was a whole series to catch up on. I've read Mind Changer, First Contact, and Final Diagnosis, and own Beginning Operations. I found the hospital's species classification system to be particularly clever, along with the range of characters and personalities among the hospital staff.

 

I love this series, and recently resurrected the species code on the CarbonEye SW...007 rpg on the Role Playing Forum!

I recall having between 5 and 7 books, and even got one signed by James White himself "to a fellow DBDG" some years ago at a science fiction convention in Britain.

I can only find one of my books now, The Genocidal Healer, which wasn't even the autographed one (), and was the last one that I was aware off.
Just looking at a list of the books (http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/w/james-white/) and these are the ones I can recall having:

1. Hospital Station (1962)
2. Star Surgeon (1963)
4. Major Operation (1971)
6. Ambulance Ship (1979)
7. Sector General (1983)
8. Star Healer (1984)
9. Code Blue - Emergency (1987)
10. The Genocidal Healer (1992)


Alright, make that 8 books.

 

I've got all of them, but the older ones are really yellowed and kinda brittle. I think a few are first edition paperbacks as well. If I want to reread one of the old ones I use the omnibus edition.

 

To quote an MSN messenger buddy, "bwahahaha".

Found my signed copy, of Code Blue: Emergency, the one with tranee Cha Thrat.

It had been bugging me for weeks how I could have gotten rid of those books; maybe I'll find some more.

 

I think we have a SW equivalent, or more like the MASH television series, in the Medstar pair of books, Battle Surgeons and Jedi Healer, concerned with a Republic medical unit during the Clone Wars.

And I think there is a nod to James White's masterpiece series on page 87, of the first book, with a newly arrived droid giving his credentials before being interrupted:

"...I've had extensive medical programming, including access to the database files of Sector Gen-"

 

I didn't notice that - I will have to take a look..