Murray Leinster, SOS from Three Worlds: Super-Medic for Interstellar Catastrophes (Ace Books 1966)
This book contains three stories in which interstellar medic Calhoun and his cute furry alien sidekick Murgatroyd visit farflung planets and foil evil or foolish plots involving major medical crises. They are straightforward space adventures with a touch of comedy and just enough space-tech stuff to reassure. The story is the thing. I suspect they’re the kind of stories that were killed by television, supplanted in the lives of young readers by the likes of Star Trek and Doctor Who. I mourn their passing.
According to the blurb, Murray Leinster (real name Will F Jenkins) had been writing science fiction since the early 1920s, and his work had appeared in many magazines, ‘both slick and pulp’. There are signs that he wrote quickly and was paid per word, but he wrote well, with a spring in the step. This little bit of technical writing from the first paragraph of the first story (variations on which recur regularly) is an accurate indication of the narrative’s cheerful engagement with technical matters:
The Med Ship did something equivalent to making a hole, crawling into it, and then pulling it in after itself. In fact, it went into overdrive.
On the basis of the cover and the blurb, I was expecting a museum piece, but actually the book is great fun. My sorrow at its being out of print since 1966 was mollified when I discovered that Leinster wrote a total of eight Super-Medic stories, and in 2001 all eight were collected into an omnibus, Med Ship, edited by Eric Flint. There are lots of bits of Calhoun and Murgatroyd online if you want a taste.
Me fail? I fly! 