The Genocidal Healer, by James White
Aug. 26th, 2024 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeRogan: I never thought a sci-fi book about an alien atheist failed doctor who accidentally becomes a chaplain would make me cry multiple times but it did!
On a recent trip, I needed a book to keep me busy for 30 hours of flight, and I chose the Genocidal Healer, by James White. James White, a now-deceased Irish sci-fi author, is most known for his Sector General series, which includes the Genocidal Healer. He wrote the series for over forty years, and it's basically a medical procedural in space with a solid formula: (mostly nonhuman) doctors at the Sector General space hospital work together to solve medical conundrums for very inhuman beings, many of whom have are very upset and uncooperative not because they're stupid jerks, but because they're deeply unwell and being a being is complicated.
I am a sucker for teamwork stories. If a story involves a group of different people uniting (and I mean REALLY working together, not just a bunch of loose cannons who happen to synergize by accident) and achieving a noble common goal, I have good odds of liking it. James White's Sector General books hit that sweet spot for me beautifully, because White's whole deal is that everyone involved is trying as best they can and making decisions that make sense. There are no bad guys in Sector General--no obstructive bureaucrats, no manipulative evil patients, no horrible malpractitioners. Everyone at Sector General is in the top of their field, has been carefully psychologically tested to be as maximally tolerant and decent as possible (because they have to work with beings of vastly different species and cultural norms), and the challenges and conflicts in this book are purely people are mortal and life is complicated.
I have never once regretted reading a Sector General book. Even at their "worst," they kept me entertained and curious and gave me a look at a potential future of cooperation and mutual respect. It's what I love most about sci-fi.
The Genocidal Healer is one of the later books in the series, thirty years into its run, when White (then in his sixties) had fulfilled his main characters' arcs and was kinda noodling around, fiddling with new characters in different roles in the hospital. Enter Lioren, a defrocked surgeon who has just committed accidental genocide, wants nothing more than to commit suicide, and is instead consigned to never practice medicine again and told, "No. We aren't going to kill you. You're going to live with what you've done and just have to start your life over at the Psych Department so we can keep an eye on you."
Lioren is not human. He is a four-legged, four-armed Tarlan. Nevertheless, this is a very Catholic book (as James White was himself) that mostly occupies itself with the problem of evil (why does God allows terrible things to happen?) and the experience of crushing guilt (how can you ever morally make up for something so heinous?) Depending on you, this may make the book one you never want to touch... or, like me, you might find it deeply moving and thoughtful.
Science fiction, at least the stuff I read, often avoided or sneered at religion, or at least the trappings of it. Spider and Jeanne Robinson's Stardance books might be literal fucking alien rapture stories, but there's always this pretense that it's not really about RELIGION. Others, like Jay Hosler's Last of the Sandwalkers, sees religion purely as a tool for social control and corruption. The Genocidal Healer is a rarity for me: an atheist protagonist who finds himself dealing with other people's religions and finding his place among them, while remaining an atheist. The Genocidal Healer deals with religion not as a tool of social control or corruption (because there are no bad guys in Sector General) but as dealing with morals and ethics. What is good? What is evil? What is progress? How do we overcome the intrinsic limitations of our understanding, our moral failings? What is forgiveness? How do we deal with failure, and its sometimes unspeakable consequences?
Lioren is a character who doesn't want to apologize, not because he believes he did nothing wrong, but because he knows the horror of what he did, and he feels that apologizing would be trying to erase that moral stain. I feel like the Genocidal Healer doesn't try to shy away from this. I don't feel like it ever says, "Oh, you didn't mean to, it's okay," it's always, "you did your best, it wasn't good enough, and you have to live with that." How it grapples with that made a powerful read for me. It's the first time I've seen a book deal with the idea of forgiveness in a way I could understand. I feel like this is a book that could only have been written by an older author.
So that's the book's plot. But this book also engaged in the multi themes in a way that, though not load-bearing enough to get this book on![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
pluralstories, I really want to talk about.
See, the highest rank at Sector General is Diagnostician. And every Diagnostician at Sector General is multi by choice. See, "while Sector General was equipped to treat every known form of intelligent life, no single entity could hold in its mind even a fraction of the physiological data necessary for this purpose" (78) so the greatest doctors of their own species, should they so desire, have Educator tapes made of their minds. A doctor of a different species can insert those tapes and make use of their knowledge and skills, allowing Sector General to function.
Normally, these tapes are erased the moment the procedure is over, but "the Diagnosticians were those rare beings whose minds were stable enough to retain permanently six, seven, and in one case up to ten physiology tapes simultaneously. To these data-crammed minds were given the initiation and direction of original research in xenological medicine in addition to the practice and teaching of their considerable art." (78-79)
This is a challenging state of being, one not everybody is cut out for, because the tape doesn't just contain skills and knowledge, but "the entire memory and personality of the donor entity as well" and "geniuses were rarely nice people" "with all sorts of pet peeves and phobias" (79). Finding food all the tapes can agree on is an ongoing thing in Sector General.
Lioren himself "was once required to carry three tapes simultaneously" (92), so he knows what it's like to be multi himself, though it was temporary for him. He agrees with "the saying often repeated among the hospital staff that anyone who was sane enough to practice as a Diagnostician was mad" (79).
Among Lioren's cases over the course of the book involves dealing with a very old Earthling ex-Diagnostician named Mannen, who is dying of old age and now deprived of all its tapes--its friends. (In the Sector General books, the protagonist gets whatever pronouns make sense for them, but everyone outside their own species is referred to as "it." This includes characters who are protagonists in other books, meaning their pronouns may change from book to book. Since Lioren isn't human, he refers to all humans as "it.")
"The host is able to impose peace and order," Mannen explains, "usually by learning to understand and adapt to and make friends with these alien personalities without surrendering any part of his own mind [...] but now the mental battlefield is deserted, emptied of the onetime warriors who became friends. I am all alone with the entity called Mannen, and with only Mannen's memories, which includes the memory of having many other memories that were taken from me. [...] I am lonely, lonely and empty and cared for and completely pain-free while I spend a subjective eternity waiting for the end." (92)
Mannen cannot get its old friends back. The nature of the tapes mean that they come in fresh every time; the donor entity's "mind records were taken before they even knew of [Mannen's] existence," so even if it got its tapes put back in, the others wouldn't know it from Adam, and that's no good for someone terminally ill. Lioren can only help Mannen find something else to do, and make peace with its own solitary mind. (And yes, this was one of the parts that made me cry. I've never gotten to have a book that describes this kind of desolation.)
Lioren is also given a task to keep watch over a specific Senior Physician (who currently carries tapes) to see what its deal is. Seldal is a three-legged flightless bird surgeon without hands, who uses its beak with surgical tools strapped on. After much circumspect investigation, Lioren comes to realize that Seldal has become especially close with a tape made from a Tralthan, an enormous six-legged elephant-ish being. Lioren says, "The partial control of Seldal's mind was relinquished willingly. I would say that the Tralthan donor, rather than being kept under tight control by the host mind, has been befriended by Seldal. The feeling may be even stronger than that. There is professional respect, admiration of a personality that possessed the Tralthan attributes of inner calm and self-assurance that is so unlike Seldal's own, and it is probable that a strong emotional bond has formed between the Senior Physician and this immaterial Tralthan that is indistinguishable from nonphysical love. As a result, we have a Nallajim Senior [Seldal] who has willingly assumed the personality traits of a Tralthan and is a better physician and a more content being because of it." (217)
So yes, this book made me cry in a good way. And though I've read a good few Sector General books, this is the one I'm going to keep!
On a recent trip, I needed a book to keep me busy for 30 hours of flight, and I chose the Genocidal Healer, by James White. James White, a now-deceased Irish sci-fi author, is most known for his Sector General series, which includes the Genocidal Healer. He wrote the series for over forty years, and it's basically a medical procedural in space with a solid formula: (mostly nonhuman) doctors at the Sector General space hospital work together to solve medical conundrums for very inhuman beings, many of whom have are very upset and uncooperative not because they're stupid jerks, but because they're deeply unwell and being a being is complicated.
I am a sucker for teamwork stories. If a story involves a group of different people uniting (and I mean REALLY working together, not just a bunch of loose cannons who happen to synergize by accident) and achieving a noble common goal, I have good odds of liking it. James White's Sector General books hit that sweet spot for me beautifully, because White's whole deal is that everyone involved is trying as best they can and making decisions that make sense. There are no bad guys in Sector General--no obstructive bureaucrats, no manipulative evil patients, no horrible malpractitioners. Everyone at Sector General is in the top of their field, has been carefully psychologically tested to be as maximally tolerant and decent as possible (because they have to work with beings of vastly different species and cultural norms), and the challenges and conflicts in this book are purely people are mortal and life is complicated.
I have never once regretted reading a Sector General book. Even at their "worst," they kept me entertained and curious and gave me a look at a potential future of cooperation and mutual respect. It's what I love most about sci-fi.
The Genocidal Healer is one of the later books in the series, thirty years into its run, when White (then in his sixties) had fulfilled his main characters' arcs and was kinda noodling around, fiddling with new characters in different roles in the hospital. Enter Lioren, a defrocked surgeon who has just committed accidental genocide, wants nothing more than to commit suicide, and is instead consigned to never practice medicine again and told, "No. We aren't going to kill you. You're going to live with what you've done and just have to start your life over at the Psych Department so we can keep an eye on you."
Lioren is not human. He is a four-legged, four-armed Tarlan. Nevertheless, this is a very Catholic book (as James White was himself) that mostly occupies itself with the problem of evil (why does God allows terrible things to happen?) and the experience of crushing guilt (how can you ever morally make up for something so heinous?) Depending on you, this may make the book one you never want to touch... or, like me, you might find it deeply moving and thoughtful.
Science fiction, at least the stuff I read, often avoided or sneered at religion, or at least the trappings of it. Spider and Jeanne Robinson's Stardance books might be literal fucking alien rapture stories, but there's always this pretense that it's not really about RELIGION. Others, like Jay Hosler's Last of the Sandwalkers, sees religion purely as a tool for social control and corruption. The Genocidal Healer is a rarity for me: an atheist protagonist who finds himself dealing with other people's religions and finding his place among them, while remaining an atheist. The Genocidal Healer deals with religion not as a tool of social control or corruption (because there are no bad guys in Sector General) but as dealing with morals and ethics. What is good? What is evil? What is progress? How do we overcome the intrinsic limitations of our understanding, our moral failings? What is forgiveness? How do we deal with failure, and its sometimes unspeakable consequences?
Lioren is a character who doesn't want to apologize, not because he believes he did nothing wrong, but because he knows the horror of what he did, and he feels that apologizing would be trying to erase that moral stain. I feel like the Genocidal Healer doesn't try to shy away from this. I don't feel like it ever says, "Oh, you didn't mean to, it's okay," it's always, "you did your best, it wasn't good enough, and you have to live with that." How it grapples with that made a powerful read for me. It's the first time I've seen a book deal with the idea of forgiveness in a way I could understand. I feel like this is a book that could only have been written by an older author.
So that's the book's plot. But this book also engaged in the multi themes in a way that, though not load-bearing enough to get this book on
pluralstories, I really want to talk about.See, the highest rank at Sector General is Diagnostician. And every Diagnostician at Sector General is multi by choice. See, "while Sector General was equipped to treat every known form of intelligent life, no single entity could hold in its mind even a fraction of the physiological data necessary for this purpose" (78) so the greatest doctors of their own species, should they so desire, have Educator tapes made of their minds. A doctor of a different species can insert those tapes and make use of their knowledge and skills, allowing Sector General to function.
Normally, these tapes are erased the moment the procedure is over, but "the Diagnosticians were those rare beings whose minds were stable enough to retain permanently six, seven, and in one case up to ten physiology tapes simultaneously. To these data-crammed minds were given the initiation and direction of original research in xenological medicine in addition to the practice and teaching of their considerable art." (78-79)
This is a challenging state of being, one not everybody is cut out for, because the tape doesn't just contain skills and knowledge, but "the entire memory and personality of the donor entity as well" and "geniuses were rarely nice people" "with all sorts of pet peeves and phobias" (79). Finding food all the tapes can agree on is an ongoing thing in Sector General.
Lioren himself "was once required to carry three tapes simultaneously" (92), so he knows what it's like to be multi himself, though it was temporary for him. He agrees with "the saying often repeated among the hospital staff that anyone who was sane enough to practice as a Diagnostician was mad" (79).
Among Lioren's cases over the course of the book involves dealing with a very old Earthling ex-Diagnostician named Mannen, who is dying of old age and now deprived of all its tapes--its friends. (In the Sector General books, the protagonist gets whatever pronouns make sense for them, but everyone outside their own species is referred to as "it." This includes characters who are protagonists in other books, meaning their pronouns may change from book to book. Since Lioren isn't human, he refers to all humans as "it.")
"The host is able to impose peace and order," Mannen explains, "usually by learning to understand and adapt to and make friends with these alien personalities without surrendering any part of his own mind [...] but now the mental battlefield is deserted, emptied of the onetime warriors who became friends. I am all alone with the entity called Mannen, and with only Mannen's memories, which includes the memory of having many other memories that were taken from me. [...] I am lonely, lonely and empty and cared for and completely pain-free while I spend a subjective eternity waiting for the end." (92)
Mannen cannot get its old friends back. The nature of the tapes mean that they come in fresh every time; the donor entity's "mind records were taken before they even knew of [Mannen's] existence," so even if it got its tapes put back in, the others wouldn't know it from Adam, and that's no good for someone terminally ill. Lioren can only help Mannen find something else to do, and make peace with its own solitary mind. (And yes, this was one of the parts that made me cry. I've never gotten to have a book that describes this kind of desolation.)
Lioren is also given a task to keep watch over a specific Senior Physician (who currently carries tapes) to see what its deal is. Seldal is a three-legged flightless bird surgeon without hands, who uses its beak with surgical tools strapped on. After much circumspect investigation, Lioren comes to realize that Seldal has become especially close with a tape made from a Tralthan, an enormous six-legged elephant-ish being. Lioren says, "The partial control of Seldal's mind was relinquished willingly. I would say that the Tralthan donor, rather than being kept under tight control by the host mind, has been befriended by Seldal. The feeling may be even stronger than that. There is professional respect, admiration of a personality that possessed the Tralthan attributes of inner calm and self-assurance that is so unlike Seldal's own, and it is probable that a strong emotional bond has formed between the Senior Physician and this immaterial Tralthan that is indistinguishable from nonphysical love. As a result, we have a Nallajim Senior [Seldal] who has willingly assumed the personality traits of a Tralthan and is a better physician and a more content being because of it." (217)
So yes, this book made me cry in a good way. And though I've read a good few Sector General books, this is the one I'm going to keep!
golly!
Date: 2024-08-27 11:30 am (UTC)that's friggin awesome, dude :D
-kc
Re: golly!
Date: 2024-08-27 03:14 pm (UTC)