The Genocidal Healer

Rating:
Summary: A Repaired Review of an Excellent Book
Review: I reviewed "The Genocidal Healer" once, but pieces of the review disappeared somewhere between me and the end product. Here we go again: "The Genocidal Healer" is part of James Whites "Sector General" series. "Sector General" is an enormous hospital ship/space station that is staffed by and serves a multitude of highly divergent intelligent species (including humans). It has been the setting for an entire series of novels by James White, and none of them have been disappointments. This might be the best of the lot, however. On one level, this is a well-written, fun, and exotic future-space story that flows rapidly. It is also a story of redemption and the need to accept imperfection and to settle for mere excellence. The main character is an alien, highly moral, and highly skilled doctor who, in his zeal to cure a plague amongst a just-discovered species that has been almost decimated, almost causes their complete extinction (a few survive). The surgeon, Lioren, is reprimanded, but feels this is too lenient, and seeks the death penalty. Instead, his superiors accept his resignation from medicine and assign him to the psychology department. Through his own tragedy and a study of many religions, he becomes a highly effective "Healer of the Mind" and saves himself along the way. This is the best of an excellent series of books. THIS NEEDS TO BE REPRINTED, PLEASE!

Rating:
Summary: A Repaired Review of an Excellent Book
Review: I reviewed "The Genocidal Healer" once, but pieces of the review disappeared somewhere between me and the end product. Here we go again: "The Genocidal Healer" is part of James Whites "Sector General" series. "Sector General" is an enormous hospital ship/space station that is staffed by and serves a multitude of highly divergent intelligent species (including humans). It has been the setting for an entire series of novels by James White, and none of them have been disappointments. This might be the best of the lot, however. On one level, this is a well-written, fun, and exotic future-space story that flows rapidly. It is also a story of redemption and the need to accept imperfection and to settle for mere excellence. The main character is an alien, highly moral, and highly skilled doctor who, in his zeal to cure a plague amongst a just-discovered species that has been almost decimated, almost causes their complete extinction (a few survive). The surgeon, Lioren, is reprimanded, but feels this is too lenient, and seeks the death penalty. Instead, his superiors accept his resignation from medicine and assign him to the psychology department. Through his own tragedy and a study of many religions, he becomes a highly effective "Healer of the Mind" and saves himself along the way. This is the best of an excellent series of books. THIS NEEDS TO BE REPRINTED, PLEASE!

Rating:
Summary: Even Sector General doesn't have a perfect success rate
Review: The first 5 chapters cover the court-martial of Monitor Corps Surgeon-Captain Lioren, who, dissatisfied with the verdict given in the civilian hearing held just before the story opens, has insisted on "its" (actually he, but "it" is polite interspecies usage) right to a court-martial. He's not defending himself; quite the contrary. He's *prosecuting*, and asking for the death penalty, regarding the Cromsag Incident, wherein most of the planet's population died as an indirect result of his treatment; the incident is shown unfolding in flashback, interspersed with the trial.

O'Mara, against Lioren's wishes, is acting as his defender, and argues that his only fault is that his perfectionist standards - Lioren has lived only for his work - have made him far too hard on himself. He actually requested his transfer from Sector General to the Monitor Corps in search of an environment with higher standards of discipline.

Lioren (who loses his fight to commit judicial suicide) has sworn never again to exercise his status as a Resident Physician; the Monitor Corps can't use him. But O'Mara, who abhors waste, claims him as a trainee for the psychology department, in its tradition of taking talented insubordinate misfits under its wing. (See _Code Blue: Emergency_ for the story of how Cha Thrat, the other non-human member of the psychology department and O'Mara's co-counsel in the court-martial, made the same transition.) Note that the psychology department, officially at least, isn't there for the *patients*, but to catch any signs of problems developing among the hospital *staff*, as well as running the Educator tape system that allows physicians of one species to treat patients of another. One of the routine assignments of the department, for example, is to evaluate progress reports from tutors on various trainees. (The Nidian tutor Cresk-Sar, for example, may look like a fluffy red-gold teddy bear, but his reports are so hideously boring that even the penitential Lioren will do almost any other assignment on his plate before wading through them).

White's galactic civilization has non-interference directives, but unlike some other fictional universes, these directives can be waived in light of good sense, as in Cromsag's case, wherein the population was rapidly heading for extinction. But in one case, the decision of whether to interfere with a less developed culture isn't theirs to make, and the hospital now has a *very* uncommunicative member of that species under treatment. But Lioren, whose problems are so much worse than those of any of the patients, and who no longer has any career or dignity left to lose, has begun to develop a certain talent for getting the most unlikely people to speak with him in confidence...

Some long-term patients from previous books appear as Lioren adapts to his new job: Khone (see _Star Healer_), part of the long-term project of treating its/her species' inherited phobias; the Protectors of the Unborn; and Dr. Mannen, who in his old age has fallen from his lordly Diagnostician status to that of patient. The Carmody incident referred to by Braithewaite, incidentally, is from "Sector General" in the collection _Hospital Station_.

IRRELEVANT NOTE: The Bruce Jensen cover art on the 1st US paperback edition is a full-face view of Hellishomar in his ward, complete with the gantries supporting the lights and equipment for the surgical team shown to scale. And you thought *Emily* from _Hospital Station_ was big...