Med Ship

Editors' Afterword

To modern science fiction readers, the "dean of science fiction" is a reference to Robert Heinlein. But the phrase was actually first applied to Murray Leinster, and the unofficial title was one he carried for many years.

There were three reasons he enjoyed that accolade.

The first is simply his longevity as a writer. Leinster's first science fiction story, "The Runaway Skyscraper," was published in Argosy magazine in February of 1919. And he continued to publish science fiction stories for half a century thereafter.

The second reason is that Leinster, to a large degree, set the basic parameters for science fiction. He was the first writer—or, at least, the most important one—to establish such fundamental themes as "first contact" and "alternate history" and a number of other basic story lines in the genre.

In fact, in the stories which are collected in this volume, Med Ship, Leinster established the sub-genre of the "science fiction doctor story." That sub-genre, as with so many others which Leinster created, would be explored and expanded on by later writers. Alan Nourse's Star Surgeon and James White's very popular Sector General series are the direct lineal descendants of these stories—as is the current Stardoc series by S.L. Viehl.

The third reason he was called "the dean of science fiction writers," however, is the most important. Without it, the first two would be of only academic interest. Leinster was one of a handful of early science fiction writers who placed telling a story at the center of the stage, not "illustrating science in fiction." He, probably more than any other writer in the first decades of the twentieth century, transformed science fiction into a real genre of fiction. And that is why his work survives, and why we are re-issuing these volumes.

We began with his Med Ship stories, because those are probably the best known of his works to the modern audience. This edition, for the first time, contains all eight of the stories which Leinster wrote in that setting. In the next volume, Planets of Adventure, we will present more of the best stories which Leinster wrote. As the title suggests, these all have a common theme: adventures on other planets.

It seems a fitting title. By and large, it's fair to say that Leinster created that sub-genre also. Granted, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom novels were already coming into print when Leinster was still a teenager. But Barsoom, although it claims to be Mars, is not really a planet so much as the setting for a fantasy adventure. Leinster's planets—such as the planet on which Burl struggles against giant mutated insects in The Forgotten Planet, or the ones on which Colonial Survey Officer Bordman has his adventures—are those of a science fiction writer, not a fantasist.

In truth, it's hard to think of any branch of science fiction which Murray Leinster didn't pioneer. And write wonderfully entertaining stories in the process.

Think of him as "the dean of science fiction emeritus," if you wish. Or simply, as we do, as one of science fiction's all-time greatest story-tellers.

—Eric Flint

—Guy Gordon

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