ISBN: 9780345292636
Edition Language: English
Mass Market Paperback, 245 pages
Published June 1981 by Del Rey
I'm partway through a rather large book right now so I dipped into my library to give this week's review. "Space Doctor" was written 38 years ago by Lee Correy, a pseudonym of G. Harry Steine, and is a great novel in the same vein as the early works of Robert Heinlein (who was a good friend with Steine) & Arthur Clarke. It tells of an energy hungry Earth, and the design and construction of the first of a series of Solar Powered Satellites in geosynchronous orbit.
The book's main character Dr. Tom Noels is hired on to design and operate an orbital hospital which is one of many stipulations that the government insists on before the project can go ahead. But, there has never been a hospital in orbit before so Noels has to reinvent virtually every medical technique that he has been trained in because it all depended on gravity, which he was soon to be without.
The author examines a number of different aspects of both engineering and medicine (G. Harry Steine was an engineer, and model rocket pioneer) and forces the reader to rethink how relatively mundane tasks might have to be redesigned to work in orbit, and eventually on long term missions to other planets. As the title suggests the main focus is on orbital medicine, but a few other aspects of engineering creep in as well along with a good dose of humour.
The blurb on the book jacket was one of the things that originally drew me to the novel as I had never heard of Lee Correy, and I was not disappointed as the story is well written, with believable characters. The plot itself is well thought out and overall is an extremely good read. I had hoped that a sequel to this novel was forthcoming but none was ever written.
