Russ Allbery: Review: Code Blue—Emergency

Review: Code Blue—Emergency, by James White

Code Blue—Emergency (annoying em-dash in original title) is the
seventh book of James White’s Sector General science fiction series about
a vast multi-species hospital station. While there are some references to
(and spoilers for) earlier books in the series, you don’t have to remember
the previous books to read this one. I had no trouble despite a nine-year
gap.

I read this as part of the Orb General Practice omnibus, which
collects this novel and The Genocidal Healer.

Cha Thrat is a Sommaradvan warrior-surgeon, member of a newly-discovered
species that is beginning the process of contact with the Federation. She
saved a Monitor corps human after an accident on her world, performing
some some highly competent surgery on a species she had never seen before.
That plus her somewhat outcast status on her own world due to her very
traditional attitude towards medical ethics led Sector General to extend
an offer of medical internship, and led her to leap into the unknown by
accepting. This may have been a mistake; there is a great deal that Sector
General does not understand about Sommaradvan medical ethics.

This series entry is another proper (if somewhat episodic) novel and the
first book of the series that doesn’t primarily focus on Conway. He makes
an appearance in his new role as Diagnostician, but only as a supporting
character. Code Blue—Emergency is told in the tight third-person
perspective of Cha Thrat, an alien who finds many things about Sector
General baffling, confusing, and ethically troubling (and who therefore
provides a good reader surrogate for reintroducing the basics of how the
hospital works).

Using an alien viewpoint is a more sophisticated narrative technique than
White has used previously. I’m glad he tried it, and it mostly works,
although I have some complaints. Cha Thrat comes from the middle cast of a
strictly hierarchical society of three casts, but is also immensely
stubborn and used to a medical system in which doctors take sole
responsibility for their patients. This creates a lot of cultural
conflicts, and I do enjoy science fiction where the human attitudes are
portrayed as the strange ones, but the cultural analysis offered by this
novel is not very deep.

The pattern of this book is for Cha Thrat to stumble into a successful
approach to a problem while being either oblivious to or hostile to the
normal hierarchical structure expected of medical trainees. This is
believable as far as it goes. She is a skilled and intelligent doctor with
some good instincts and a strong commitment to patient care, but is also
culturally inclined to not ask for help. It makes sense for that to be a
serious problem in a hospital. Unfortunately, no one says this directly.
Sector General staff get quite upset in ways that seem more territorial
than oriented towards patient safety, no one directly explains to Cha
Thrat why following a process is important or shows examples of what could
go wrong, and plot armor means that her mistakes usually have positive
outcomes. One can extrapolate the reasons why she is not a good medical
student, but the reader is forced to do the extrapolation.

This is the sort of book where the narration makes clear there are
unresolved cultural clashes that are going to cause problems but hides the
details. To Cha Thrat, her perspective is so obvious she never bothers to
explain it to the reader, so the specifics come as a surprise. As with the
alien perspective, I’ve seen this technique used with more subtlety and
sophistication in other books, but White’s version mostly works. Cha Thrat
is a sympathetic protagonist because she is truly trying to take the most
ethical and empathetic action in every situation and is clearly competent.
Most of my frustration as a reader, ironically, lands on the other Sector
General doctors who seem to make little to no effort to understand her
perspective when she fails to conform to their expectations. This is
believable in the abstract, but the whole point of Sector General is that
they’re supposed to be wiser about interspecies difference than this.

Also, sometimes their reactions just seem petty. Cha Thrat has a very
hierarchical concept of medicine that matches the social classes of her
culture. For her, the highest tier of doctor are wizards who treat rulers,
because the work of rulers is mostly mental and intellectual and therefore
the diseases of rulers are treated with magic spells performed with words
to reshape their thinking rather than surgery on their bodies. O’Mara and
the other Sector General psychologists take great offense at this,
muttering about being called witch doctors, which I found completely
absurd. This is a comprehensible, if odd, description of psychology from a
wholly alien species. Surely one’s first reaction should be that words
like “wizard” or “magic” are translation errors. Don’t get offended; look
to see if the underlying substance matches, which it clearly does.

Apart from cultural and psychological clashes, Code Blue—Emergency
has the standard episodic Sector General structure of interesting medical
mysteries that require lateral thinking. I find this sort of puzzle story
satisfying, particularly given the firm belief of every character in an
essentially pacifist and empathetic approach to even the most alien of
creatures. This determined non-violence is one of the more interesting
things about this series, and it continues here.

White does tend towards both biological and gender essentialism for
everyone other than the protagonist and main supporting characters, but he
seemed to be walking back some of the more outrageous limitations on women
that appeared in previous books. There is still some nonsense in here
about how females of any species can’t be Diagnosticians, but then Cha
Thrat, who is female, seems to violate the justification for that rule
over the course of this novel (sadly without comment). Perhaps he’s
setting up for proving Sector General wrong about this prejudice.

I picked this up after reading Elizabeth Bear’s Machine, which is essentially a (better written) Sector General
novel that got me in the mood for reading more. I wouldn’t give Code
Blue—Emergency any awards, but it delivered exactly what I was looking
for. This series is not as deep or well-written as some more recent SF,
but it is reliably itself and reliably entertaining. There are worse
things in a series. Recommended if you’re in the mood for alien ER
in space.

The omnibus edition that I read has an introduction to both novels by John
Clute. It does add some interesting insights, but (as is somewhat typical
for Clute) it also spoils parts of both books. You may want to read it
after you read the novels.

Followed by The Genocidal Healer.

Rating: 7 out of 10