Editing James White (author) (section)

=== Sector General ===
The [[Sector General]] series consists of 12 books published originally between 1962 (''[[Hospital Station]]'') and 1999 (''[[Double Contact]]'').<ref name="White1962HospitalStation">{{cite book
| title=Hospital Station | author=James White | publisher=[[Ballantine Books|Ballantine]] | year=1962
}}</ref><ref name="White1999Double Contact">{{cite book
| title=Double Contact | url=https://archive.org/details/doublecontactsec00jame | url-access=registration | author=James White | publisher=[[Tor Books]] | year=1999
| isbn=9780312870416 }}</ref> Additional short stories set in the Sector General Universe ('"Countercharm", "Tableau", "Occupation: Warrior", and "Custom Fitting") appear in other collections by White.<ref name="SectorgeneralBiobiblio" />

Sector General is a gigantic multi-species hospital [[space station]] founded as a peace-making project by two heroes from opposite sides of humanity's only full interstellar war.<ref>{{cite book
| title=Sector General | author=James White | publisher=[[Ballantine Books|Ballantine]] | year=1983
| chapter=Accident
}}</ref> The hospital accommodates patients and staff from dozens of species, with different environmental requirements, behaviours and ailments.<ref name="SectorgeneralBiobiblio" /> Initially most of the stories concern the career of Doctor Conway, who rises from junior surgeon to Diagnostician.<ref name="White1962HospitalStation" /><ref name="White1985Star Healer">{{cite book
| title=Star Healer | url=https://archive.org/details/starhealer0000whit | url-access=registration | author=James White | publisher=[[Ballantine Books|Ballantine]] | year=1985
| isbn=9780345320896 }}</ref> In the fourth book the Galactic Federation decides that the emergency service which the hospital offers to victims of space accidents and planetary catastrophes is the most effective means of making [[First contact (science fiction)|peaceful contact]] with new spacefaring species, which allows the series to expand its range of plots, characters and settings.<ref name="White1979Ambulance Ship">{{cite book
| title=Ambulance Ship | author=James White | publisher=[[Ballantine Books|Ballantine]] | year=1979
}}</ref> The seventh and later books each have a different and usually alien viewpoint character, which gave them "considerable new pep".<ref name="Langford1983WhiteandSectorGeneral" /> They also expand the range of issues beyond purely medical, and in [[Mike Resnick]]'s opinion treat issues such as guilt and forgiveness better than most science fiction.<ref name="Resnick1996WhitePapersIntro">{{Cite book | contribution=Introduction | author=Mike Resnick | title=The White Papers | publisher=NESFA Press | year=1996 | isbn=978-0-915368-71-6 | url=http://www.sectorgeneral.com/articlesresnick.html | access-date=18 December 2008 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020114101345/http://www.sectorgeneral.com/articlesresnick.html | archive-date=14 January 2002 | url-status=dead }}</ref>

The series defined the subgenre of multi-species medical stories,<ref name="Langford1983WhiteandSectorGeneral">{{Cite news
| author=Dave Langford
| title=James White and Sector General
| newspaper=[[White Dwarf (magazine)|White Dwarf]]
| year=1983
| url=http://www.sectorgeneral.com/articleslangford.html
| access-date=18 December 2008
| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080706092117/http://www.sectorgeneral.com/articleslangford.html
| archive-date=6 July 2008
| url-status=dead
}} Also at {{cite web | url=http://www.ansible.co.uk/writing/odyss01.html | access-date=18 December 2008 | title=Critical Mass | author=Dave Langford }}</ref> and was "the first explicitly [[pacifist]] [[space opera]]" series, when much of contemporary space opera from the United States was notably military.<ref name="White1979Ambulance Ship" /><ref name="Stableford2004HistDictJamesWhite">{{Cite book
| author=Brian M. Stableford | contribution=James White | pages=385–386
| title=Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Literature
| publisher=Scarecrow Press| year=2004 | isbn=978-0-8108-4938-9
| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nzmIPZg5xicC&dq=%22james+white%22+biography+science+fiction&pg=PA249
| access-date=18 December 2008
}}</ref>