Sector General books in order

Reading order

Sector General is a space hospital. That’s the entire premise of James White’s 14-book series, and it’s enough to sustain nearly four decades of stories. The station sits in deep space and accepts patients from every known species in the galaxy. The medical staff have to figure out alien physiologies on the fly — what counts as a disease in one species might be normal function in another, and a treatment that saves one patient could kill the next.

Most of the series follows Dr. Conway, who arrives at Sector General as a junior surgeon in Hospital Station (1962) and works his way up to Senior Diagnostician. The books are structured as medical puzzles. A patient shows up with symptoms nobody recognizes. Conway and his colleagues have to determine the species, understand its biology, and find a treatment before time runs out. White, who wanted to be a doctor but couldn’t afford medical school, channeled that interest into fiction that treats alien medicine with real rigor.

The series ran from 1962 to 1999. White wrote the final entry, Double Contact, while his own health was failing — diabetes had cost him most of his vision. He died shortly before the book’s publication. The James White Award for short fiction was later established in his name. The Sector General books are considered foundational to medical science fiction as a subgenre.