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Med Service #1
S.O.S. from Three Worlds
Virtually the only connecting links between the innumerable colonized planets were the Med Ships—lone starships carrying only one man and one beast. These trained teams of super-medical engineers took their lives in their hands on every planetfall. And for the team of Calhoun and Murgatroyd, three calls for help meant three challenges beyond all the experiences of all their systems.
Plague, mystery, and menace marked the missions—and the human enemies they faced on each world were just as virulent as the microscopic ones.
Plague, mystery, and menace marked the missions—and the human enemies they faced on each world were just as virulent as the microscopic ones.
- GenresScience FictionFiction
140 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1966
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About the author
Murray Leinster
898 books121 followerssee also:
Will F. Jenkins
William Fitzgerald Jenkins
Murray Leinster was a nom de plume of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an award-winning American writer of science fiction and alternate history. He wrote and published over 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays.
An author whose career spanned the first six decades of the 20th Century. From mystery and adventure stories in the earliest years to science fiction in his later years, he worked steadily and at a highly professional level of craftsmanship longer than most writers of his generation. He won a Hugo Award in 1956 for his novelet “Exploration Team,” and in 1995 the Sidewise Award for Alternate History took its name from his classic story, “Sidewise in Time.” His last original work appeared in 1967.
Will F. Jenkins
William Fitzgerald Jenkins
Murray Leinster was a nom de plume of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an award-winning American writer of science fiction and alternate history. He wrote and published over 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays.
An author whose career spanned the first six decades of the 20th Century. From mystery and adventure stories in the earliest years to science fiction in his later years, he worked steadily and at a highly professional level of craftsmanship longer than most writers of his generation. He won a Hugo Award in 1956 for his novelet “Exploration Team,” and in 1995 the Sidewise Award for Alternate History took its name from his classic story, “Sidewise in Time.” His last original work appeared in 1967.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 18, 2025
This is a collection of a novelette and two novellas that are part of Leinster's Med Service series. The stories feature Dr. Calhoun of the Interstellar Medical Service (and his wonderful simian sidekick, Murgatroyd), an organization which serves as the primary link between the many colonized worlds of a future human-dominated galaxy. They're clever stories that emphasize health and understanding rather than conquest and might, feel-good and hopeful stories of a promising future... kind of like Star Fleet and the Federation, but with Dr. McCoy doing just fine on his own. Medical stories have always had an enthusiastic readership in the field; Alan Nourse comes to mind, and more recently Elizabeth Bear. The Calhoun (& don't forget Murgatroyd!) stories filled a niche between Hubbard's Old Doc Methuselah and James White's Sector General. The three stories all appeared in John W. Campbell's Analog: the first, Ribbon in the Sky, when it was still known as Astounding in 1957, and the middle one, Plague on Kryder II in 1964 when it had adopted the bedsheet-sized format and finally Quarantine World from 1966. Leinster was always dependably entertaining and was known as the dean of science fiction writers for many years.
December 2, 2023
Nov 25, 2023
S.O.S. From Three Worlds (1967)
by Murray Leinster
series book MD2
1984 Grade A-
2023 Grade B+
The second book about Calhoun and the ship from the med-service heading out to do regular health checks on planets. This one has three interesting stories averaging 45 pages each. None of the checks turn out to be routine of course. The stories are interesting takes on what can go wrong, but the prose is old and very verbose. I had to do a lot of speed reading when the prose started to repeat itself.
S.O.S. From Three Worlds (1967)
by Murray Leinster
series book MD2
1984 Grade A-
2023 Grade B+
The second book about Calhoun and the ship from the med-service heading out to do regular health checks on planets. This one has three interesting stories averaging 45 pages each. None of the checks turn out to be routine of course. The stories are interesting takes on what can go wrong, but the prose is old and very verbose. I had to do a lot of speed reading when the prose started to repeat itself.
February 15, 2020
Like instant ramen noodles, the "Med Service" series of space adventures is simple and at first seems to be not very good until something in your brain tells you need more! There is a weird genius behind this series that I hope becomes rediscovered by contemporary scifi fans.
This entry is actually three separate stories originally published in the pulps between the mid 50s and 60s. They all center around a visit by a certain Dr. Calhoun of the Interstellar Med Service to various human colonies on various planets.
"Plague on Kryder II": Calhoun's ship is sabotaged on his way to investigate a new plague. Someone clearly doesn't want his help. In fact, someone wants him very dead...
"Ribbon in the Sky": Again, ship troubles land Calhoun unexpectedly on a frozen planet containing three forgotten colonial mining cities, and the inhabitants have gotten quite neurotic after all these years...
"Quarantine World": Calhoun is attending a medical lecture when all hell breaks loose outside as a clearly sick man falls to his death from a window. The Health Minister clearly wants to cover up this incident and Calhoun is determined to find out why, but he is unceremoniously forced off the planet with a strange disease brewing in his own bloodstream...
First, let's get any of the negatives in this review out of the way. The writing at times can be a bit clunky and have some plot holes, erroneous assumptions, and silly premises. A minor point is that the title of this collection is strange because in only one story is there actually an "SOS" from one of the worlds Calhoun ends up visiting. And in all these stories, the "worlds" are more like small towns. Leinster would have us believe that the only actions that matter on a planet are confined to the limits of a small colonial city and the woods just outside. Or, as in "Ribbon in the Sky," one must travel to a legendary, unexplored, and far away place to discover a secret--which is just a day-trip away... Are these really "worlds" or just little asteroids that Calhoun is visiting?
Aside from the unfortunate nomenclature, these really are intelligent stories written for a YA audience about human psychology. Each adventure deals with a different motif concerning human behavior, including love, loneliness, greed, altruism, or mass hysteria.
As in other "Med Service" stories, the themes are foreshadowed with excerpts from a fake book on philosophy written by "Fitzgerald," a name no doubt derived from Leinster's own name "William Fitzgerald Jenkins." Here is an example:
"Since we cannot retract an action, we tend to feel that we cannot retract the thought which produced it. In effect, we cling desperately to our mistakes. In order to change our views we have commonly to be forced to act upon new thoughts, so urgent and so necessary that without disowning our former, mistaken ideas, we can abandon them tactfully without saying anything to anybody, even ourselves."
I love how on the surface these stories are about infectious disease, but at their heart they deal with issues of mental health and human nature. This is one of the reasons this series gets praise for feeling more modern than other space operas of its day.
Everything in this series is much deeper than it appears, as the author cleverly builds characters and scenarios with little exposition but with surgically precise suggestive revelations. The Med Service itself, to which our hero Calhoun belongs, is an overall deus ex machina, like the Timelords in "Doctor Who." You don't ever really see or know much about the organization, just as you don't know much about Calhoun himself, but it is the basis for civilization and all of the situations presented in these stories.
"We medics... made it necessary for men to invent interplanetary travel because we kept people from dying and the population on old Earth got too large. Then we made interstellar travel necessary because we continued to keep people from dying and one solar system wasn't big enough. We're responsible for nine-tenths of civilization as it exists today..."
Similarly, characters are not described in great detail, but in just a few short pages of subtle interactions you come to understand their personalities. Take the character of Hunt. His very name is symbolic of his actions and his underlying motivations--he first hunts for Calhoun, then seeks his lost daughter, and ultimately his greatest search is for the Truth behind the mystery that has enslaved his people for generations. He is a big man with a big voice, but he is as brave as he is scared, and intelligent as he is uneducated. All of this is revealed with no explanation or exposition. For example, this brief dialogue between he and Calhoun just plants another seed in the reader about his mind and personality:
"Hunt regarded the pinkish brook trout fillet he'd just separated. He bit off a mouthful and chewed, thoughtfully. 'That really tastes better cooked,' said Calhoun mildly. 'But it is good this way also,' said Hunt."
This allows for Leinster to focus directly on the action and story without sacrificing the reader's precious time or character development. It is a particularly intriguing quality of his writing.
So if you run across these books and--with any degree of providence--my humble reviews, hopefully you will be tempted to give them a try and enjoy them as much as I did.
This entry is actually three separate stories originally published in the pulps between the mid 50s and 60s. They all center around a visit by a certain Dr. Calhoun of the Interstellar Med Service to various human colonies on various planets.
"Plague on Kryder II": Calhoun's ship is sabotaged on his way to investigate a new plague. Someone clearly doesn't want his help. In fact, someone wants him very dead...
"Ribbon in the Sky": Again, ship troubles land Calhoun unexpectedly on a frozen planet containing three forgotten colonial mining cities, and the inhabitants have gotten quite neurotic after all these years...
"Quarantine World": Calhoun is attending a medical lecture when all hell breaks loose outside as a clearly sick man falls to his death from a window. The Health Minister clearly wants to cover up this incident and Calhoun is determined to find out why, but he is unceremoniously forced off the planet with a strange disease brewing in his own bloodstream...
First, let's get any of the negatives in this review out of the way. The writing at times can be a bit clunky and have some plot holes, erroneous assumptions, and silly premises. A minor point is that the title of this collection is strange because in only one story is there actually an "SOS" from one of the worlds Calhoun ends up visiting. And in all these stories, the "worlds" are more like small towns. Leinster would have us believe that the only actions that matter on a planet are confined to the limits of a small colonial city and the woods just outside. Or, as in "Ribbon in the Sky," one must travel to a legendary, unexplored, and far away place to discover a secret--which is just a day-trip away... Are these really "worlds" or just little asteroids that Calhoun is visiting?
Aside from the unfortunate nomenclature, these really are intelligent stories written for a YA audience about human psychology. Each adventure deals with a different motif concerning human behavior, including love, loneliness, greed, altruism, or mass hysteria.
As in other "Med Service" stories, the themes are foreshadowed with excerpts from a fake book on philosophy written by "Fitzgerald," a name no doubt derived from Leinster's own name "William Fitzgerald Jenkins." Here is an example:
"Since we cannot retract an action, we tend to feel that we cannot retract the thought which produced it. In effect, we cling desperately to our mistakes. In order to change our views we have commonly to be forced to act upon new thoughts, so urgent and so necessary that without disowning our former, mistaken ideas, we can abandon them tactfully without saying anything to anybody, even ourselves."
I love how on the surface these stories are about infectious disease, but at their heart they deal with issues of mental health and human nature. This is one of the reasons this series gets praise for feeling more modern than other space operas of its day.
Everything in this series is much deeper than it appears, as the author cleverly builds characters and scenarios with little exposition but with surgically precise suggestive revelations. The Med Service itself, to which our hero Calhoun belongs, is an overall deus ex machina, like the Timelords in "Doctor Who." You don't ever really see or know much about the organization, just as you don't know much about Calhoun himself, but it is the basis for civilization and all of the situations presented in these stories.
"We medics... made it necessary for men to invent interplanetary travel because we kept people from dying and the population on old Earth got too large. Then we made interstellar travel necessary because we continued to keep people from dying and one solar system wasn't big enough. We're responsible for nine-tenths of civilization as it exists today..."
Similarly, characters are not described in great detail, but in just a few short pages of subtle interactions you come to understand their personalities. Take the character of Hunt. His very name is symbolic of his actions and his underlying motivations--he first hunts for Calhoun, then seeks his lost daughter, and ultimately his greatest search is for the Truth behind the mystery that has enslaved his people for generations. He is a big man with a big voice, but he is as brave as he is scared, and intelligent as he is uneducated. All of this is revealed with no explanation or exposition. For example, this brief dialogue between he and Calhoun just plants another seed in the reader about his mind and personality:
"Hunt regarded the pinkish brook trout fillet he'd just separated. He bit off a mouthful and chewed, thoughtfully. 'That really tastes better cooked,' said Calhoun mildly. 'But it is good this way also,' said Hunt."
This allows for Leinster to focus directly on the action and story without sacrificing the reader's precious time or character development. It is a particularly intriguing quality of his writing.
So if you run across these books and--with any degree of providence--my humble reviews, hopefully you will be tempted to give them a try and enjoy them as much as I did.
October 5, 2015
Not a novel, but rather 3 short stories about Dr. Calhoun from the Med Service, and his trusty simian sidekick Mergatroyd. Pretty much a frontier medicine serial in space. Nothing remarkable, but fun stories in the classic 60s sci-fi mode... each with a lesson. The first focuses on not relying on computers too much, then, ironically, the 2nd focuses on how human error can break the best designed machines. Nicely done, that. The 3rd is more of a warning against martyrdom, which the cool and collected Dr. Calhoun prevents. Fun stuff to pass a long plane flight ;).
November 23, 2020
Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...
"In times of stress, positivist stories about spacemen devoted to selfless service solving medical crises with their friendly tormals (think furry mobile petri dishes) bring a bit of warmth to my bitter heart. While a medical mystery to be solved with logic and resolve forms the core of each story, Murray Leinster hints at the future history of this decentralized spacescape–a product of chaotic often business-driven expansion. As [...]"
"In times of stress, positivist stories about spacemen devoted to selfless service solving medical crises with their friendly tormals (think furry mobile petri dishes) bring a bit of warmth to my bitter heart. While a medical mystery to be solved with logic and resolve forms the core of each story, Murray Leinster hints at the future history of this decentralized spacescape–a product of chaotic often business-driven expansion. As [...]"
July 18, 2024
3.5 rounded up.
I did like these stories, especially the third one. The main character Calhoun was interesting, but I felt that Murgatroyd was not used to his full potential. The action was kind of subdued, at least compared to todays storytelling, but I'm glad I read this.
I did like these stories, especially the third one. The main character Calhoun was interesting, but I felt that Murgatroyd was not used to his full potential. The action was kind of subdued, at least compared to todays storytelling, but I'm glad I read this.
July 30, 2024
An entertaining collection of stories about an interstellar medic and his animal companion. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
March 9, 2025
A bit dated but a good story
April 11, 2017
Um livro com três histórias independentes que seguem um mesmo personagem. Lê-se bastante bem, mas penso que pelo menos uma das histórias (a do meio) poderia ser melhor explorada. Gostei da explicação (nada datada) das viagens inter-estelares.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews