H. L. Gold 40 min read

Dr. Kalmar hates a fresh assistant from an Earth medical school, they always want to change things, never grasping that a strange planet develops its own techniques to meet its own needs.

H. L. Gold's 1953 story is a sharp first-contact and social-SF tale of clashing medical customs on an alien world. Clever, wry golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a green young doctor's Earthly certainties collide with the hard-won wisdom of a very different planet.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

40 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Henry Sharp