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rushthatspeaksThis is a very specific subgenre of fiction: the hospital novel. James White's Sector General books combine the hospital novel with hard SF; they're set at a space hospital which has to medically handle many, many different species.
I had never read any of them but this sounded like a recipe for good light reading, so I picked up the one which had additional interest for me, in that the main character is a chef whose mission, or obsession, is to improve the hospital food. For everybody, including that guy who eats high-intensity radiation.
And indeed, this was good soothing light reading, in the 'problems come up and we solve them through intelligent discussion' direction. The book was a bit oddly structured, in that the first half works through a bunch of food solutions for hospital-dwelling aliens and the second half is a first-contact story, and while there is some emotional arc to tie the two together, there isn't much, because this sort of book never has much emotional arc. So it feels kind of like a fix-up, even though I don't think it is, or as though it really wanted to be two novellas with a large page in between them reading 'Part Two'. But whatever. I enjoyed the viewpoint character, who is not human and does not really understand humans and does not want to because he is cooking here, dammit, and who is plausible as a chef not in the technical sense that the book knows much about actual food prep-- it's okay to middling on that-- but in the sense that he has no other life and is an obsessed workaholic who is convinced he is the universe's gift to food, which summarizes most chefs I've known (and I am not saying that as a bad thing; I sometimes wish I were more like that).
The prose is a bit clunky and overly polysyllabic but it is clear and readable, so I don't much care, because again, this is not the sort of book you read for style.
This is the sort of book you read if you want to read about people intelligently fixing interesting technical issues which don't have much danger to them, concerning fields you care about, with aliens. If that is what you want, this is exactly what you would like. I shall keep the rest of them in mind for the next time I want that, because sometimes I really just do. You know, like the day after turning my brain inside out over a book I found difficult and rewarding.
I had never read any of them but this sounded like a recipe for good light reading, so I picked up the one which had additional interest for me, in that the main character is a chef whose mission, or obsession, is to improve the hospital food. For everybody, including that guy who eats high-intensity radiation.
And indeed, this was good soothing light reading, in the 'problems come up and we solve them through intelligent discussion' direction. The book was a bit oddly structured, in that the first half works through a bunch of food solutions for hospital-dwelling aliens and the second half is a first-contact story, and while there is some emotional arc to tie the two together, there isn't much, because this sort of book never has much emotional arc. So it feels kind of like a fix-up, even though I don't think it is, or as though it really wanted to be two novellas with a large page in between them reading 'Part Two'. But whatever. I enjoyed the viewpoint character, who is not human and does not really understand humans and does not want to because he is cooking here, dammit, and who is plausible as a chef not in the technical sense that the book knows much about actual food prep-- it's okay to middling on that-- but in the sense that he has no other life and is an obsessed workaholic who is convinced he is the universe's gift to food, which summarizes most chefs I've known (and I am not saying that as a bad thing; I sometimes wish I were more like that).
The prose is a bit clunky and overly polysyllabic but it is clear and readable, so I don't much care, because again, this is not the sort of book you read for style.
This is the sort of book you read if you want to read about people intelligently fixing interesting technical issues which don't have much danger to them, concerning fields you care about, with aliens. If that is what you want, this is exactly what you would like. I shall keep the rest of them in mind for the next time I want that, because sometimes I really just do. You know, like the day after turning my brain inside out over a book I found difficult and rewarding.
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Date: 2011-01-17 09:00 am (UTC)The main thing that bugs me about it is that, particularly in the early stories, the gender roles can be kind of awful. White does better than some of his contemporaries at having female doctors who actually do things, but the stories often settle back into the "men are doctors, and women are nurses and love interests" stereotypes. However, I believe this does get better as the series goes on (I've personally only read the first five, and the one you review here is much later in the series).