Background
Sector General is a gigantic multi-species hospital space station founded as a peace-promoting project by two heroes from opposite sides of humanity's only full interstellar war. The hospital accommodates patients and staff from dozens of species, with different environmental requirements, behaviors and ailments, but many of the stories feature types of patient that the builders did not anticipate. Initially most of the stories center round the career of Doctor Conway, who rises from junior surgeon to the top level, Senior Diagnostician. In the fourth book the Galactic Federation decides that the emergency service which the hospital offers to victims of space accidents and planetary catastrophes is its most effective means of making peaceful contact with new spacefaring species, which allows the series to expand its range of plots, characters and locations.
White said that The Troubles in Northern Ireland induced him to write about the sort of world he would like to live in, and that he disliked war and militarists. As a youth he wanted to become a doctor, but had to go out to work. Hence he relied on epidemics and natural disasters to provide the conflicts that stories need to make them interesting. He credited his wife, who was an intensive care nurse at the height of The Troubles, for advice on medical details and for pointing out how padres often did more good than doctors for disturbed patients, which inspired The Genocidal Healer.
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