It is likely that James White will be best remembered for his SECTOR GENERAL SERIES, which
started with several short stories set aboard an orbiting hospital station that catered to various alien
species, eventually expanding to 12 volumes, some
patched together from shorter pieces, some fulllength novels. The success of the series is in some
ways unfortunate, because this comparatively
lightweight work occupied so much of White’s
writing career. His nonseries novels suggest that he
was potentially a much more skilled writer.
His first three novels were relatively minor, although entertaining. A doctor discovers that his
patients are aliens secretly studying human culture
in The Secret Visitors (1957). Second Ending (1962)
is about the last man on a deserted Earth, awakened from suspended animation to explore the
abandoned world in the company of a team of
robots. Escape Orbit (1965, also published as Open
Prison) follows the adventures of a group of humans stranded on a hostile planet. The Watch
Below (1966), on the other hand, is an extremely
impressive effort. During World War II, a small
group of people manages to survive inside a sunken
ship. Their descendants are rescued by aliens from
a water world seeking a new home in the Earth’s
oceans. What might seem an implausible plot is remarkably well done. All Judgment Fled (1968) is
also a first contact story, with matters complicated
by predictable internal squabbling and political
maneuvering.
White’s novels during the 1970s were often
less than optimistic. Tomorrow Is Too Far (1971) is
set within a research project that observes unexpected results after a routine experiment. Lifeboat
(1972, also published as Dark Inferno) is the story
of a disastrous accident in space. The Dream Millennium (1974) follows humans exploring the stars
in search of a new home free of the excessive pollution that is destroying the Earth’s ecology. Aliens
attempt to exterminate the human race in Underkill (1979).
The mood of White’s work improved during
the 1980s. In Federation World (1988) humans are
exploring the possibility of resettling a large population on an enormous artificial world to be jointly
colonized by multiple races. The Silent Stars Go By
(1991) is the most interesting of his later novels,
an alternate history in which it was the Irish who
discovered the New World.
White’s non–Sector General short stories
have been collected in Deadly Litter (1964), The
Aliens Among Us (1969), Monsters and Medics
(1977), Futures Past (1982), and The White Papers
(1996).