No. Not the Nigerian Short story, or the novel by James White, or maybe just a reference to the way sf and futurists usually get it wrong. From Malthus to Gore, from Verne to Stephenson… There may be snippets of truth, but we’re good at getting it wrong.

James White – whose ‘Sector General’ stories I quite enjoyed from the medical point of view, was a hardcore pacifist, so he and I were never going to be philosophically on the same page, had some fascinating concepts — the idea of time travel being a way of space-travel for one, and the idea behind ‘THE WATCH BELOW (even if it was too much like perpetual motion for me) and many of ideas of alien physiology and medicine in the Sector General stories fascinated me. I just wanted an execution more in line with my viewpoints.

I am idly curious: is there a medical sf subgenre beyond White? Is there a rural sf (or fantasy – that is not historical) subgenre – outside of Simak and me (and few Heinlein books)?

I have the feeling that fragmentation may be a coming thing – it’s always been FINDING your niche readers (or writers) that has been hard. Maybe AI – which is good at tailoring will change that.

I’d kind of like Ambulance stories with aliens.