Alien Emergencies - James White [1]
Several well-loved props run through the sequence. The most famous is the species classification system which sums up a creature’s shape and physiology in four terse letters. Theoretically this coding can extend to many further “decimal places,” but the first four suffice for practical and narrative purposes. Earth-humans are DBDG and “similar” warm-blooded oxygen-breathers have similar codes, with teddy-bear Nidians and Orligians also being DBDG while the furry, caterpillar-shaped Kelgians are DBLF. Weirder creatures include chlorine-breathing PVSJs and psi-talented V-codes. One buried joke concerns the unfortunate Gogleskan species of Star Healer, classification FOKT, who are almost unable to prevent themselves from forming mindlessly destructive mobs. This, by intention, greatly tickled the local SF fan group in the traditionally tough city of Glasgow, Scotland: the Friends of Kilgore Trout.
The classification scheme began as homage to E. E. “Doc” Smith’s perhaps unworkably human-centred version from Gray Lensman and Children of the Lens, in which true Homo sapiens is classed AAAAAA while the most alien monstrosities imaginable—the horrid Ploorans in their cryogenic winter metamorphosis—register as “straight Z’s to ten or twelve places.” It is a happy coincidence that James’s first-ever published words, in his and Walt Willis’s fanzine Slant 4, were firmly inserted into a contribution that was being horrid to Doc Smith: “[These opinions of the great Smith are not those of the typesetter, J. White.]”
Nearly half a century later he was honoured with the 1998 Skylark Award, presented by the New England SF Society in memory of Doc Smith and his Lensmen, and so consisting of an absolutely enormous magnifying lens. James found this practical as well as decorative, since by then his sight was failing to the stage where he needed such a glass to read even large type on the computer screen.
Besides demoting humans from AAAAAA to the modest DBDG, James distanced himself in other little ways from the traditional SF anthropocentrism of an era when John W. Campbell still stalked the earth. (It should be remembered that the first Sector General story appeared in 1957.) Smart and sympathetic aliens are foregrounded from the very beginning. Virtually all the hospital’s top medical consultants, the eccentric Diagnosticians, are nonhuman. When a roving ambulance ship is introduced, it’s named Rhabwar after a great doctor from the history of its Tralthan FGLI builders. When Rhabwar’s first mission appears to be a simple rescue of boring old humans and someone remarks, “There will be no juicy extraterrestrial cases on this trip,” he is crushingly answered by a Kelgian nurse: “To us, Earth-human DBDG’s are juicy extraterrestrials.” In three later novels beginning with Code Blue—Emergency (1987), the viewpoint characters are aliens who are not only as likeable as the human medics but every bit as accident-prone. Real equality includes the equal right to make blazing mistakes.
Another notable and fruitful series prop is Sector General’s system of Educator tapes, which help prepare doctors for other-species surgery by uploading the skills of an expert from the relevant world. The dark side of this piece of narrative convenience is that a complete and often cantankerous e-t personality is loose in your head, objecting to your vile choice of food (a regular Sector General canteen sight is a Senior Physician eating “visually noncontroversial” sandwiches of uncertain content, with his eyes tight shut) and possibly imposing strange glandular urges. In the short “Countercharm,” series hero Senior Physician Conway uses a tape recorded from a randy Melfan ELNT, and finds himself distracted from vital operations by an uncontrollable case of the hots for his gorgeous Melfan pupil—who happens to be a giant crab.
The regular human cast includes wisecracking, problem-solving