January 18th post #1: Star Surgeon by James White

I haven't updated this journal thing for a while. Rather than making one big post about everything I want to say now that I'm finally making an update, I've decided to do multiple posts on the same day. This was some sort of big deal back in my Livejournal days, but I can't remember the details.

At some point last year, shortly after graduating from college, I stopped reading altogether. I'd been in the habit of reading on buses and trains, sometimes getting so absorbed by my books that I'd finish them in binges rather than going to bed. Anyway, there was one more book that I read last year, around November and December. I didn't check it out from the library, so owning it let me read it over a more prolonged period.

My two favorite hobbies are science fiction and bad science fiction. I don't think I could pull off a terse explanation for the former, other than saying I think it's obvious why one should read science fiction. And if you don't, you're a nincompoop. But it's the latter that's the point of interest here. The classic, brilliant works of authors like Jack Vance and Frederik Pohl, both of whom died last year (with Pohl's death, I believe we've lost the last great author from the "Golden Age" of science fiction) have their obvious appeals, and maybe some not-so-obvious ones—they can stand on their own merits. Not every old science fiction book was actually so meritorious, and just because a story is bad does not mean that it can't survive to the present day, where I can procure it cheaply, sometimes for free.

I've reviewed bad science fiction before on this blog, although usually it was published in an anthology mixed in with good science fiction. This is something a little different. I picked up Star Surgeon and some other old paperbacks for free when I dropped by the library the day before their book sale and rummaged through a box of old books they were giving away (they were running out of room for books that could actually sell, so it was sort of a junk bin, I suppose). It's a 1981 reprint of a 1963 novel. This book is the second one in a series called "Sector General." It's about a space hospital, of course. Yes, that's right. A space hospital. In space. With space doctors. I know, right? It's incredibly silly and the plot moves in a way that makes the whole thing even sillier than I'm probably making it seem. And yet, some aspects of the writing are actually pretty good. Star Surgeon is corny and unconventional, but never so bad that it's irritating. And by walking that fine line, at least to someone that reads books the way I do, the experience is delightful. Throw in the fact that it's what's essentially what's been described as "pacifist space opera" and it's all rather bewildering. Sometimes I think Star Surgeon is so bad it's good, sometimes I think it's actually just good on its own, and most of the time I think it's so weird it's worthwhile, even if it's never truly great. I am definitely tempted to hunt down the rest of this series.