VURT YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2)

By: Mandy Keifetz
July 6, 2024

One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of science fiction novels and comics from the Eighties (1984–1993, in our periodization schema). Series edited by Josh Glenn.

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THE GENOCIDAL HEALER | JAMES WHITE | 1992

“Is the psychology department staffed with insubordinate misfits and entities with a history of emotional disturbance?” asks Captain-Surgeon Lioren, multi-limbed wearer of Blue Cloak of Tarla.

“Without exception,” his colleagues say.

James White’s Sector General books take place in the titular 384-level multispecies hospital on the galactic rim. At Sector General, xenophobia is the foundational sin, and all beings strive to overcome it. The series was written in Northern Ireland between 1947 and 1997. Xenophobia — and foundational sin — were always on his mind. White often said that his books were escapism for him; that Northern Ireland was bleak and sorrowful and hopeless; but at Sector General xenophobia always loses, and peace always wins.

While the first seven Sector General books are old-fashioned medical detective stories (the way, say, House is), 1992’s The Genocidal Healer addresses xenophobia, sin, and religion directly.

We meet Captain Surgeon Lioren at his court martial, a trial he has initiated himself after his own world has found him legally innocent of genocide. He seeks the death penalty for an error in medical judgment which cost the lives of most of the residents of Cromsagg. He is found innocent and, since he refuses to practice medicine, he is remanded to the department of psychology. As a trainee-shrink, Lioren leaves much to be desired; but this is true of all of Sector General shrinks, who serve as fighters against the darkest of ills: xenophobia.

The author’s wife was a surgical nurse in Belfast throughout the Troubles; she observed that sometimes the best medicine for the gravely wounded is sympathy for someone even worse off. Lioren, whose wound is moral, moves through the hospital as its darkest shadow, to whom all the gravely injured are drawn, because his situation is bleaker than their own. By listening carefully, by studying their worlds’ religious beliefs, and by being someone whose problems are worse, the avowed atheist cures a god-like giant stingray of telepathy deafness. He cures a terminal human of depression. Eventually, he cures even himself.

White’s books are full of the most gorgeously realized but also horrifically alien aliens. In his multispecies hospital, they learn not to fear one another. The books, which I have reread dozens of times, may have been written as an antidote to the Troubles, but they work just as well against any human woe — in all of which the original sin is xenophobia. Or at least it would be pretty to think so.

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VURT YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mark Kingwell on SNOW CRASH | Mandy Keifetz on THE GENOCIDAL HEALER | Matthew De Abaitua on SWAMP THING | Carlo Rotella on THE PLAYER OF GAMES | Lynn Peril on GEEK LOVE | Stephanie Burt on THE CARPATHIANS | Josh Glenn on DAL TOKYO | Deb Chachra on THE HYPERION CANTOS | Adam McGovern on KID ETERNITY | Nikhil Singh on THE RIDDLING REAVER | Judith Zissman on RANDOM ACTS OF SENSELESS VIOLENCE | Ramona Lyons on PARABLE OF THE SOWER | Jessamyn West on the MARS TRILOGY | Flourish Klink on DOOMSDAY BOOK | Matthew Battles on THE INTEGRAL TREES | Tom Nealon on CLAY’S ARK | Sara Ryan on SARAH CANARY | Gordon Dahlquist on CONSIDER PHLEBAS | Alex Brook Lynn on VURT | Miranda Mellis on STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SAND | Nicholas Rombes on RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH | Adelina Vaca on NEUROMANCER | Marc Weidenbaum on AMERICAN FLAGG! | Peggy Nelson on VIRTUAL LIGHT | Michael Grasso on WILD PALMS.

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