Comments on: The Future of Medicine

By: Laura

Laura — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 21:15:44 +0000

Nancy Kress, The Body Human: Three Stories of Future Medicine

By: Jenn

Jenn — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 19:14:10 +0000

Even though it was published last year, Max Berry’s MACHINE MAN was a nice gritty existential man-in-the-machine sci-fi triller, with not a small bit of medical sci-fi and body modification.

By: Laer Carroll

Laer Carroll — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 16:14:47 +0000

A more recent example is Lois McMaster Bujold’s CRYOBURN, about a world which has implemented widespread cryogenic storage for the ill or for those who want to hop into the future and keep their health. As you might expect, there are problems as well as benefits to this approach.

By: Sylvia Engdahl

Sylvia Engdahl — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 02:08:00 +0000

You might be interested in my independently-published novel STEWARDS OF THE FLAME, which deals with an interstellar colony where the medical establishment is literally the government and even minor medical problems are treated by force. It presents lack of individual choice about medical issues as tyranny, and some reviewers have commented that this is all too close to the direction in which we are heading, despite the intentional exaggeration of it in the story. Implanted GPS trackers (in everyone, whether they’re sick or not) are viewed by the characters as the last straw. The book can be downloaded free this month at most major ebook retailers and a paperback edition is also available.

By: Christian Schoon

Christian Schoon — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 20:50:45 +0000

Re: Paul’s comment above, I can point younger readers to a forthcoming medico-SF novel that picks up on the veterinary angle. Disclaimer: it’s my book: “Zenn Scarlett,” coming from Strange Chemistry Books (the new YA imprint of Angry Robot Books), due out in May, 2013. Story follows the adventures of a 17-year-old novice exoveterinarian specializing in the treatment of large, dangerous alien animals as she works through her first year of school at the venerable Ciscan Cloister training clinic on Mars. Details… at my blog: christianschoon.com

By: Michael Walsh

Michael Walsh — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 21:39:23 +0000

“Mercy Point” was indeed awful. It lasted all of 8 episodes.

By: Paul Riddell

Paul Riddell — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 23:23:19 +0000

I have to admit that I gave up on seeing more medical science fiction when I was a kid, but a lot of that was because I practically grew up in a hospital, and what was being pitched as “medical science fiction” was usually pretty mediocre compared to the real thing. (For all of the people espousing Alan Nourse’s _The Blade Runner_, for instance, it was grand…when I was 14. I tried reading it again when I was twenty, and the BIG MESSAGE hitting me in the head over and over left me dizzy.) What I was craving in fiction, I found in nonfiction with the “The Best American Science Writing” collections from HarperCollins/Ecco. Every last one, and I’ve been purchasing them for a third of my life, is a joy, and approximately a third to a quarter of the articles reprinted in each tie to medical science. (I’ll also add that they cover veterinary science, which is even more underrepresented in SF. I still chuckle appreciatively over learning the distinct differences, veterinary medicine-speaking, between camels and horses, and how most of the research ties into the fact that female camels are the best racing camels. Apparently, a racing camel’s best racing years are also its most fertile years, so there’s a lot more to breeding thoroughbred camels than in breeding thoroughbred horses.)

On the other hand, if I really disliked humanity, or disliked it more than normal, I’d bring up the old WB series “Mercy Point”. Calling it “ER in Space” doesn’t come close to describing how horrible this was. If you missed it, be thankful: I forced myself to watch the pilot when I was still writing for “Sci-Fi Universe,” and I’d sooner be locked in a broom closet with Bruce Sterling and Whitley Strieber than watch another one.

By: Michael Walsh

Michael Walsh — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 18:23:21 +0000

Tor has six volumes of the Sector General books in print – well worth dipping into.

The online Science Fiction encyclopedia concludes the White entry with:
“Though never ambitious in a literary sense, all White’s mature work is illuminated by clear compassion and controlled anger at every form of intentional violence”
http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/white_james

The SFE also has an entry on Medicine:
http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/medicine

By: Jack Hillman

Jack Hillman — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 18:00:51 +0000

And don’t forget Star Surgeon and Mercy Men by Alan E Norse.

By: Jack Hillman

Jack Hillman — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 17:57:44 +0000

You could also read the Ole Doc Methuselah Stories by (gulp) L.Ron Hubbard. They’re good and there’s no Scientology in them!

By: Glennis

Glennis — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 15:14:34 +0000

SL Viehl has her Stardoc series. There is the old Sector General series by James White.

By: [dave]

[dave] — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 14:43:26 +0000

The Patron Saint of Plagues by Barth Anderson was sort of medical SF? To my thoroughly unscientific eyes, anyway. A near future medical thriller, anyway. Although what I liked most was its premise that Mexico had become a global superpower. Although I don’t remember whether it passed muster as far as the Bechdel test or being a good representation of Mexico to a Mexican.

By: Andrew Porter

Andrew Porter — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 19:26:27 +0000

There’s been a ton of medical SF, by James White—his multi-book STAR SURGEON series; Murray Leinster (MED SHIP, reprinted by Baen); and others. MDs Alan Nourse and F. Paul Wilson have also done genre stuff.

By: Michael A. Burstein

Michael A. Burstein — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 15:31:14 +0000

I’ve heard good things about the Sector General series by James White, but they’re old and I haven’t read many of them. You might want to ask someone else about them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sector_General

By: Michael Walsh

Michael Walsh — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 15:23:51 +0000

From the past, James White’s “Sector General” series. Basically a hospital in space that treats humans and non-humans. Not surprisingly, there’s a Wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sector_General . The stories are good fun puzzles.

While I can’t comment on the “good” aspect of it, occupying a very, very small niche of dental SF there’s Piers Anthony’s “Prostho Plus” which is described in the Wiki as “follows the adventures of a prosthodontist, Dr. Dillingham who is picked up by aliens who are in need of dental work.”

By: Komaváry

Komaváry — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 01:38:29 +0000

Itoh Project: Harmony

http://www.haikasoru.com/harmony/

Medical SF at its best.

(Plus, is Frankeinstein medical SF?)

By: Eddie Cochrane

Eddie Cochrane — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 01:16:53 +0000

Well the classics are James White’s Sector General series, Murray Leinster’s Med Service stories and Groff Conklin’s anthology “Great Science Fiction About Doctors”, which I recall getting in the ’70s and was a very good and surprisingly large collection of stories.