Book Log 35/2010 - Alan E Nourse: Star Surgeon

[jacey]

Alan E Nourse: Star Surgeon
1959 (via Project Gutenberg)

Perhaps it's wrong to judge yesterday's SF by today's standards. This is very much a product of its time.

Earth is poised on the brink of becoming a full member of the Galactic Federation. Of all the races so far encountered Earth's humans have the best skills in medicine, and Earth has become the sole provider of medical services to the galaxy at large, contracting out their services to a multiplicity of species across the galaxy. Dal Timgar is the first non-human to be accepted by Hospital Earth as a student. His ambition is to become a surgeon.

He encounters hostility and prejudice all the way through his training, always being isolated and avoided by everyone except a fellow student, Tiger. One senior doctor encourages him; it seems another will go to any lengths to break him and prevent him from graduating and (when that fails) subsequerntly from completing his probationary patrol mission, with two other newly graduated doctors (including Tiger).

Tiger is his staunch friend - sometimes overpoweringly staunch - and eventually Dal wins over Jack, the third member of their little team, but it takes solving the puzzle of a plague and performing a heart transplant on his worst enemy for Dal to emerge victorious from his training run and to qualify as a Star Surgeon.

This would have been a YA if YA had been a concept back in 1959, as it was it was issued as a 'juvenile'. There are obviously overtones of racism. The way Dal is ostracised for being a different species would be unthinkable in this day and age, yet 1959 was a particularly troubled time, before the true emancipation of racial minorities in many countries. Though he wishes it were different, Dal doesn't seem to think there's anything much wrong with the way he's being treated and doesn't seem to be aware that this is any violation of his (non) human rights.

In the end when Dal proves himself and converts his enemy (by saving his life) it seems that this is all that's required to make him happy. Then it's revealed that Dal was a test case. His success/acceptance by Hospital Earth is the final trial. If humans can accept Dal and if Dal can graduate, Earth can finally become a full member of the Galactic Federation because humans have proved their tolerance of non-human species. (Somewhat ignoring the fact that Humans are already contracting to provide medical services to many non-human races across the galaxy.)

Yeah, right. Dal has had precisely 2 humans who are nice to him in eight years of training. The others have either been neutral or have shunned him completely. One senior doctor has actively tried to destroy his career on the grounds that he DOESN'T want aliens working for Hospital Earth because that will reduce Earth's galactic importance as physicians (definitely protectionism). But because Dal has emerged victorious from his probation by a) being a good surgeon and b) having the good luck to be the only surgeon on hand when his chief tormentor's venomous apoplexy brings on a soon-to-be-fatal heart attack, everything is OK now. Humanity has passed a test and proved its capacity for tolerance. That's a major logic hole that I can't really forgive - even in a book published in 1959.

The secondary thread running through this is Dal's reliance on Tiger's friendship, his sponsor's encouragement and his own 'Fuzzy' a symbiotic creature that gives Dal the benefit of ESP-level empathy should he choose to use it (which he only does once and thereby saves the day). Eventually Dal decides he can stand on his own two feet, even leaving Fuzzy behind, but worryingly he never fesses up to the advantage that Fuzzy can give him because he fears that humans will react badly to this.

A book that looks at some big questions but never really addresses them thoroughly. Back to what I said at the beginning. This book is a product of its time and sadly hasn't aged well.

Comments

[julesjones]

I recently read his Trouble on Titan, and felt the same way about it -- it was a YA that was a product of its time, and that hadn't aged well. In particular, Nourse was trying to tackle the issue of Othering a group of people because they were needed as an effectively slave workforce, but didn't notice his own assumptions about the proper place of women. It didn't really help that I read it sandwiched between two Clarkes of the same era, one of which pretty much skipped by the whole issue, and the other of which made it clear that women could be scientists, and might have to put their career on hold while they raised a family, but that it would be a career temporarily on hold by their own choice, not a hobby they did to fill in the time before they hooked a man.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I always feel bad about giving an unfavourable review based on hindsight, but as you point out there were other books around at the same time that did not make clicheed assumptions about minority groups.To give Nourse credit there was one mention of the protagonist thinking that humans were all colours and they all seemed to be treated as equals regardless, but none of those vari-coloured humans appeared on the page and all the med students seemed to be male. In fact, I can't recall one female character (even amongst patients).

[julesjones]

There are definitely 1950s and 1960s books where I'm willing to ignore stuff that would result in book-meets-wall in something written today. One example would be Harry Harrison's Plague From Space, where the female medical-type person gets to be the as-you-know-Bobette Companion a la Doctor Who, complete with emotional meltdown under stress, but is still written as a competent individual with something to contribute other than being the prize for the hero at the end of the book.

And even the Nourse was trying to show how and why Othering happens and how public opinion can be manipulated in order to justify poor treatment of a minority group. It's just a very weird juxtaposition with his obvious assumption that political stuff is for men, while the wimminz look after the kids.