What do you think?
Rate this book
The Hospital Ship
Out of Martin Bax's appalling vision of contemporary civilization in collapse sails The Hospital Ship. The British author's first novel is an account of an atomic-powered ark attempting to salvage a "remnant" from a world whose recent wars have resulted in the total loss of both social and individual stability. At first, skilled medical teams from the ironically named ship, the Hope-ful, pick up casualties from what seem to be local incidents. But as the crew treats these victims of mass psychosis—intensely withdrawn men and women, autistic children—all signs point toward a world-wide disaster. Psychiatrist Sir Maximov Flint joins the ship and introduces his own solu-tion—love therapy. His two prize patients are V, a Saigon prostitute, and W, a demoralized Wall Street broker-each a casualty of twentieth-century madness. On shore, the holocaust spreads. Landing parties discover in port after port whole populations of men crucified by quiet, neatly dressed Westerners. Forced to retreat from carnage so vast that the medical team can be of no use, the hospital ship sails on—a tiny, heroic vestige of humanity at the fringes of global catastrophe.Forming an integral part of the story, but also in wry counterpoint to it, are verbatim extracts from medical and financial papers and French accounts of a war-torn Indochina. With sardonic wisdom, Bax allows the scientific, business, and military establishments to indict themselves.
... the most exciting, stimulating and brilliantly conceived book I have read since Burroughs' novels." —J. G. BALLARD
223 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1976
About the author
Martin Bax
25 books3 followersMartin Bax was a British consultant paediatrician, who, in addition to his medical career, founded the Arts magazine Ambit in 1959. Since he created it, Ambit has published poetry, prose and artwork from the likes of Fleur Adcock, Peter Porter, Tennessee Williams, J. G. Ballard, Eduardo Paolozzi and many others.
His first published novel was The Hospital Ship published by Cape and New Directions in 1976. Love on the Borders was published by Seren in 2005. In the 1970s using text from The Hospital Ship he developed the Vietnam Symphony with jazz trumpeter Henry Lowther and this was performed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) and subsequently on BBC Radio 3. He also wrote for children and his book Edmond went Far Away was published in the US and the UK.
His first published novel was The Hospital Ship published by Cape and New Directions in 1976. Love on the Borders was published by Seren in 2005. In the 1970s using text from The Hospital Ship he developed the Vietnam Symphony with jazz trumpeter Henry Lowther and this was performed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) and subsequently on BBC Radio 3. He also wrote for children and his book Edmond went Far Away was published in the US and the UK.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
May 22, 2025
Ballardesque dystopian novel where the titular ship sails across a ravaged, demented world picking up patients to poke and prod and inveigle into weird sexual relationships. Splicing together accounts from the patients’ histories (commentaries on British colonialism and the Vietnam war), reports of the doctors’ freewheeling erotic lives, along with medical reports using technical language (Bax was a consultant paediatrician), the novel has a vague whiff of Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition (Bax published Ballard in his legendary magazine Ambit), without the stylistic coherence or singularity of vision of that epochal classic. The result is a mishmash of riveting and tedious and horrific set-pieces that capture the paranoia and dodgy sexual philosophising among intellectuals of the period.
June 10, 2013
The world was always ending in the 60s and 70s. The Cold War and Vietnam loomed large, in the times, and in this story of a medical vessel adrift in an ambiguously collapsing world. Rumors fly from the mainland, biblical menaces loom, patients are left abandoned on the beach for pickup. Also befitting the 70s, an overcurrent of sexual and sometimes romantic preoccupation sweeps through everything.
Like Chris Adrian and The Children's Hospital, and Bax was a medical doctor, a fact which shows in the overwhelming context of hospital rounds and operations, as well as in the scientific and more often sham-scientific interpositions that fill out the novel's collage-text. The story proper can almost be taken as a sort of connecting background for the pseucoscience (cited: Freud, Wilhelm Reich, and J.G. Ballard, among various other accounts of couples telepathy, and pelvic communication in the human female) and bits of received news reports and eye-witness accounts from an all too familiar outside world (all too convincing war atrocities, shareholder meetings, advertising circulars). There may even be a few veiled moments of straight reader-address by Bax (or address to a real significant other). At last: an interesting bricolage of its times, which, despite the apocalyptic main thread, doesn't always gel in character and narrative. Does it need to to successfully convey itself? Without those, the rest of the materials would seem to knit together even less cohesively, but still maybe there's enough fleeting interest to make a useful whole anyway.
Like Chris Adrian and The Children's Hospital, and Bax was a medical doctor, a fact which shows in the overwhelming context of hospital rounds and operations, as well as in the scientific and more often sham-scientific interpositions that fill out the novel's collage-text. The story proper can almost be taken as a sort of connecting background for the pseucoscience (cited: Freud, Wilhelm Reich, and J.G. Ballard, among various other accounts of couples telepathy, and pelvic communication in the human female) and bits of received news reports and eye-witness accounts from an all too familiar outside world (all too convincing war atrocities, shareholder meetings, advertising circulars). There may even be a few veiled moments of straight reader-address by Bax (or address to a real significant other). At last: an interesting bricolage of its times, which, despite the apocalyptic main thread, doesn't always gel in character and narrative. Does it need to to successfully convey itself? Without those, the rest of the materials would seem to knit together even less cohesively, but still maybe there's enough fleeting interest to make a useful whole anyway.
December 10, 2025
By all means a companion piece to JG Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition, written by the editor of Ambit¹ magazine - where most of JG Ballard's graphic work and 'condensed novels' of the sixties were first published².
The similarities between Ballard's and Bax's books are indeed obvious, and so are the differences. Peculiar vibes notwithstanding, one cannot fail to notice these anti-novels have lots in common as to literary devices and scope - namely, to portray the cultural, social and political mayhem of their time.
It took almost a decade for Bax to catch up with Ballard, and the world had undergone quite a few radical changes in the meantime. Much water had flown under the bridge, what with (in no particular order) the end of the Vietnam war and its unsatisfactory outcome, the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Democratic Kampuchea³, the South American juntas, the plethora of minor conflicts in Africa⁴, Milton Friedman's acolytes warming up, the oil crisis, Nixon's fuck-up and the exhaustion of counterculture⁵. The world had changed, clearly not for the better, but it was still hard to fully realize the extent of a change that seemed to manifest itself in a cacophony of images, sounds, ideas and events the media were expert at exploiting but unable to make sense of. There were notes aplenty, but no scores; the pieces of the puzzle did match, but they formed no discernible picture.
Such was the zeitgeist Bax managed to portray in all its immense potential for destruction as well as creation: a decade - the Seventies - poisoned by a sense of universal decay, in which entropy ruled and the world was transitioning from latent psychosis to overt schizophrenia⁶. Whether that was shock therapy or euthanasia is still open to debate. What The Hospital Ship ultimately suggests is that debate itself has become a symptom of the malaise.
Bax's novel is a defiantly atypical work that hardly fits into the boundaries of dystopian sci-fi. The story - although there's no such thing as an actual story here - is set in a conceptually post-apocalyptic world where something dreadful is taking place without anybody knowing what it is. It might be anything, from nuclear warfare to a pandemic to natural catastrophes: descriptions are so scant there's no clue as to what is going on. Autism is spreading like wildfire among children, in the Mediterranean basin people are being crucified en masse (victims to a new⁷ form of insanity known as Crucifixion Disease) and radio communications only testify to a general state of depopulation. In this most weird disaster area a nuclear-powered hospital ship picks up the dying and the damaged of a civilization fallen apart, carrying its cargo of physical and mental illnesses and a motley crew of doctors wandering aimlessly amidst the ruins, unable to make sense of what they see and the role they're actually playing in it.
As befits this chaos, the narrative technique is anything but linear, in fact ⅔ of the book consist in excerpts from various other texts: Vietnam-war travelogues, essays on topics ranging from management to obstetrics to sociology and zoology, experiments on behavioural psychology, mock-scholarly references to writers gravitating around Ambit magazine (including JG Ballard and the author himself). Thus the story is interspersed with fragments from the most diverse sources that, together with the doctors' musings and the events they witness during their random journey around the world, conjure up a bewildering scenario where even the gruesome and the obscene have the intellectual allure of a philosophical riddle⁸.
The story is therefore more about a feeling than an actual understanding of what's going on; this book only works on a conceptual level, a proviso that should discourage all impatient readers from picking it up. It's a short read that does nonetheless require effort and dedication without necessarily being a rewarding experience, given its peculiar nature. Most of all, it's one of those literary curios that could only be a product of Seventies: a decade torn between spiritual élan⁹ and nihilism, years of intellectual suppuration in which the good and the bad were rotting side by side, making it hard for anyone to discern between the two.
¹ It was in the pages of Ambit that the embryos of Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition and Crash started to develop. Among the contributors were artists of the calibre of Eduardo Paolozzi, David Hockney, Ralph Steadman and Peter Blake, just to give you an idea. Sadly enough, the magazine has recently announced that publication will end after 64 years with issue #249.
² If you're not into experimental fiction or at least willing to give up all conventional points of reference with regards to narrative, structure, character development etc, ça va sans dire that this book is not for you. If on the contrary you're a sucker for this sort of thing, go get a copy ASAP.
³ Democratic 🤣
⁴ Well, I guess the concept of 'minor' war only applies to Angola if you were a resident of, say, Bel Air at the time, the inconveniences of living in Luanda being the stuff of legend among Wilshire Blvd. acupuncturists.
⁵ ...which some are still trying to blame on Charles Manson & Co. by conveniently overlooking the actual f-a-c-t-s. Alas, Haight-Ashbury had already turned into an open-air sewer and the Age of Aquarius was over long before the Family kids paid a visit to 10050 Cielo Drive.
⁶ The reference to Deleuze/Guattari, and maybe tangentially R. Laing, is pretty obvious at this point.
⁷ Not quite, even though it's been out of style for a while now.
⁸ "Near a tree by a river there's a hole in the ground..."
⁹ Crank it up.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u-7fibt...
The similarities between Ballard's and Bax's books are indeed obvious, and so are the differences. Peculiar vibes notwithstanding, one cannot fail to notice these anti-novels have lots in common as to literary devices and scope - namely, to portray the cultural, social and political mayhem of their time.
It took almost a decade for Bax to catch up with Ballard, and the world had undergone quite a few radical changes in the meantime. Much water had flown under the bridge, what with (in no particular order) the end of the Vietnam war and its unsatisfactory outcome, the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Democratic Kampuchea³, the South American juntas, the plethora of minor conflicts in Africa⁴, Milton Friedman's acolytes warming up, the oil crisis, Nixon's fuck-up and the exhaustion of counterculture⁵. The world had changed, clearly not for the better, but it was still hard to fully realize the extent of a change that seemed to manifest itself in a cacophony of images, sounds, ideas and events the media were expert at exploiting but unable to make sense of. There were notes aplenty, but no scores; the pieces of the puzzle did match, but they formed no discernible picture.
Such was the zeitgeist Bax managed to portray in all its immense potential for destruction as well as creation: a decade - the Seventies - poisoned by a sense of universal decay, in which entropy ruled and the world was transitioning from latent psychosis to overt schizophrenia⁶. Whether that was shock therapy or euthanasia is still open to debate. What The Hospital Ship ultimately suggests is that debate itself has become a symptom of the malaise.
Bax's novel is a defiantly atypical work that hardly fits into the boundaries of dystopian sci-fi. The story - although there's no such thing as an actual story here - is set in a conceptually post-apocalyptic world where something dreadful is taking place without anybody knowing what it is. It might be anything, from nuclear warfare to a pandemic to natural catastrophes: descriptions are so scant there's no clue as to what is going on. Autism is spreading like wildfire among children, in the Mediterranean basin people are being crucified en masse (victims to a new⁷ form of insanity known as Crucifixion Disease) and radio communications only testify to a general state of depopulation. In this most weird disaster area a nuclear-powered hospital ship picks up the dying and the damaged of a civilization fallen apart, carrying its cargo of physical and mental illnesses and a motley crew of doctors wandering aimlessly amidst the ruins, unable to make sense of what they see and the role they're actually playing in it.
As befits this chaos, the narrative technique is anything but linear, in fact ⅔ of the book consist in excerpts from various other texts: Vietnam-war travelogues, essays on topics ranging from management to obstetrics to sociology and zoology, experiments on behavioural psychology, mock-scholarly references to writers gravitating around Ambit magazine (including JG Ballard and the author himself). Thus the story is interspersed with fragments from the most diverse sources that, together with the doctors' musings and the events they witness during their random journey around the world, conjure up a bewildering scenario where even the gruesome and the obscene have the intellectual allure of a philosophical riddle⁸.
The story is therefore more about a feeling than an actual understanding of what's going on; this book only works on a conceptual level, a proviso that should discourage all impatient readers from picking it up. It's a short read that does nonetheless require effort and dedication without necessarily being a rewarding experience, given its peculiar nature. Most of all, it's one of those literary curios that could only be a product of Seventies: a decade torn between spiritual élan⁹ and nihilism, years of intellectual suppuration in which the good and the bad were rotting side by side, making it hard for anyone to discern between the two.
¹ It was in the pages of Ambit that the embryos of Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition and Crash started to develop. Among the contributors were artists of the calibre of Eduardo Paolozzi, David Hockney, Ralph Steadman and Peter Blake, just to give you an idea. Sadly enough, the magazine has recently announced that publication will end after 64 years with issue #249.
² If you're not into experimental fiction or at least willing to give up all conventional points of reference with regards to narrative, structure, character development etc, ça va sans dire that this book is not for you. If on the contrary you're a sucker for this sort of thing, go get a copy ASAP.
³ Democratic 🤣
⁴ Well, I guess the concept of 'minor' war only applies to Angola if you were a resident of, say, Bel Air at the time, the inconveniences of living in Luanda being the stuff of legend among Wilshire Blvd. acupuncturists.
⁵ ...which some are still trying to blame on Charles Manson & Co. by conveniently overlooking the actual f-a-c-t-s. Alas, Haight-Ashbury had already turned into an open-air sewer and the Age of Aquarius was over long before the Family kids paid a visit to 10050 Cielo Drive.
⁶ The reference to Deleuze/Guattari, and maybe tangentially R. Laing, is pretty obvious at this point.
⁷ Not quite, even though it's been out of style for a while now.
⁸ "Near a tree by a river there's a hole in the ground..."
⁹ Crank it up.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u-7fibt...
November 10, 2025
One for tru Ballard heads, in that the doctor-editor who inspired much of The Atrocity Exhibition essentially rewrote it, set on a ship, a decade or so later, like a London literary gent became crazed on psychedelics and accidentally came up with Apocalypse Now (which is I think more or less what happened here). A terrible mess, incoherent and sloppy, but in places fascinating, and if patient one could spend a lot of time trying to unpack exactly what is going on and what all the sources are (eg, the short and dispassionate account of Ann Quin's suicide, thrown in apparently at random).
January 27, 2020
4.5/5 (Very Good)
The Lure. A nuclear powered hospital ship with a giant morgue. “THEY ARE CRUCIFYING US.” Love therapy. Will you move from your fetal position?
“1. Are you in love? [with Bax’s The Hospital Ship] (a) Yes (b) No.” (170)
Joachim Boaz scrawls…
"YES:
First, musical equivalencies. Francis Dhomont [...]
Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...
The Lure. A nuclear powered hospital ship with a giant morgue. “THEY ARE CRUCIFYING US.” Love therapy. Will you move from your fetal position?
“1. Are you in love? [with Bax’s The Hospital Ship] (a) Yes (b) No.” (170)
Joachim Boaz scrawls…
"YES:
First, musical equivalencies. Francis Dhomont [...]
Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...
October 3, 2014
I didn't enjoy this book but I think I might have missed the point a bit, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and hence more stars than I would have given in otherwise. It felt like around half the book is the actual story, with the remainder being made up of excerpts from various medical texts, tourism brochures and various other publications. These quotes ran to several pages at a time and seemed to be only vaguely related to the main story. I found this annoying more than clever.
The story, as much as there is one, concerns a hospital ship that travels around the world following some sort of global disaster. The medical staff pick up various survivors with physical injuries and mental disorders and attempt to treat them. Some of the treatment methods are quite bizarre and much of the book concerns these methods and the relationships between the various crew members.
I think this book requires a bit of effort to really appreciate it. If you're looking for something a bit unusual then maybe this is your cup of tea.
The story, as much as there is one, concerns a hospital ship that travels around the world following some sort of global disaster. The medical staff pick up various survivors with physical injuries and mental disorders and attempt to treat them. Some of the treatment methods are quite bizarre and much of the book concerns these methods and the relationships between the various crew members.
I think this book requires a bit of effort to really appreciate it. If you're looking for something a bit unusual then maybe this is your cup of tea.
July 29, 2015
Not long after the Vietnam War a nuclear-powered hospital ship tours the world, gathering up whoever it can treat and dropping them off wherever they may go. The medical profession aboard includes some grand old men with pet theories in psychiatry and social theory. Meanwhile the outside world is collapsing in to disorder; gangs are sweeping through the chaotic cities, performing mass crucifixions and then moving on. The text is interspersed with odd supporting texts drawn from diaries or clinical or polemical sources, all charting the rising madness of the 20th century.
Shame there wasn't a film version as Graham Crowden would have been ideal for playing Sir Maximov, though in a way he did it anyway in "Britannia Hospital". This would be ideal work material for a "War Of The Worlds"-style 70s concept album.
Shame there wasn't a film version as Graham Crowden would have been ideal for playing Sir Maximov, though in a way he did it anyway in "Britannia Hospital". This would be ideal work material for a "War Of The Worlds"-style 70s concept album.
September 2, 2015
This story seems to be a wash of dream-like experiences and nightmarish visions of a future world undergoing a very stressful socio-psychological phenomenon, and a hospital ship travels from location to location trying to help these people affected. In between the events in the book, there are snippets of medical notes, psychology essays and descriptions war in Southeast Asia, and combined with the strange ideas of the doctors on the ship, it's hard to tell exactly who has gone crazy and who hasn't. Interestingly enough, this writer ended up becoming a pediatrician himself, and also founded Ambit, an English literary magazine associated with JG Ballard.
November 15, 2017
4.5 Stars
October 7, 2021
Apocalyptic collage with enough dirty bits to challenge the experimentation.
November 2, 2019
I know I have said this before, but truly, up to this point in time, this is the strangest book I have ever completed (I’ve started stranger, but I knew better than continue). Why, you may ask? The plot, or plots, were too slippery to grasp. The various levels of hierarchical divisions (chapters, small print section headings, large print section headings, extra gaps between certain paragraphs) do not seem to jive with the various methods of storytelling (third person -- Euan, young doctor; omnipotent newscaster/historian/encyclopedia imparter of information not always appearing to be relevant to the rest, sometimes complete with footnotes and references; first person plural narrators seemingly unrelated to those on the ship; first person singular narrator, in the form of muses over medical notes, maybe; a memoir written in both second person and first person plural -- not the same as the first person plural mentioned above; first person narrator describing various studies such as anthropology; memos/announcements about an unnamed company). The knitting of the different threads feels less like a scarf and more like a set of drummers, each bend on following a different rhythm, each hoping to make it to the beat where 7/8, 11/16, 3/4, etc all converge. I have seen/heard drummers accomplish this feat. I don’t think these threads ever did.
Quotes that caught my eye
Its brash younger sister, the American Exchange, where the stocks of smaller companies are traded, is still open to visitors, who watch white-jacketed dealers dash round the floor at a racing walk occasionally yelling in apparent agony and making passionate tic-tac signs to anyone who is watching. It is an eerie way for fortunes to evaporate. (26)
Any patient who said something vociferously enough for long enough in any medical facility got what they wanted in the end. (32)
Equally they found Ginny’s vagueness, which had infuriated the Hopeful’s officers, rather reassuring. It put reality properly away. (141)
It’s something to do with education and too early an exposure to the world’s ills. It’s teaching them political philosophy and general theories with nothing to apply them to that does it. now, I’d not allow people to be taught that sort of thing at all. I’d make them do anatomy. Nothing like dissecting someone’s balls to make one protective of one’s own and other people’s. (155-56)
General application form: hospital ship ‘Hopeful’
(Note: this form to be filled in by all grades of staff before specialized application forms are issued.)
1 Are you in love?
(a) Yes (b) No
If (a) apply jointly on form X2/OF/US.
2 If (b), do you want to be in love?
(a) No (b) Yes
If (b), state whether you wish to love
(a) Same sexed humans (b) Opposite sexed humans (c) Beasts*
3 How long will you love for?
(a) Ever (b) 50 years + (c) 35 years + (d) 18 years +
(e) 13-18 years (f) 5-13 years (g) 1-5 years (h) Into the new year
4 How many people can you love? State a number between naught and infinity.
* Opportunities for bestiality aboard the Hopeful are limited. Applicants who have no inclination for aquatic species are advised to withdraw.
It is not our fault that the old books and traditions of human history exhibit so many absurdities.
But it is our fault if we know all this, but disregard it and refuse to take it seriously. (197)
Who/what is…?
‘The son, like john Rockefeller, Pierpont Morgan, Armour, Gould and the other gifted young entrepreneurs who were of proper age, sent substitutes to the draft armies ….’ (106) Gould, would that be Jay or George Jay? And which Armour would that be?
Is this a real thing? ‘… MacBeth’s … sinister poem game “Fin du Globe” (1963) .... (117)
The study by the Sherif’s (discussed on page 135) have points which don’t jive with the standard discussion. Makes me wonder what else has not been properly researched….
Does he mean ‘conjunctiva’ rather than ‘conjunctive’ in this sentence? “…pulling down her lower lid to look at her conjunctive.” (145)
In trying to figure out what “residuum” means in this context on pages 157-58 (‘…as in the case of fishes, the two ducts coalesce into one above the outlet of the residuum’) I think I may have discovered that the author is paraphrasing Aristotle, without reference, which is strange when one considers all the other, oddly formed, references he does include.
Is “do-Goders’ (165) a typo, and if not what is it? And the same question for ‘cloche-makers’ later in the same sentence.
In this sentence: ‘Labour is the process by which h the products of concention (foetus, placenta, membranes and liquor amnii) are expelled from the uterine cavity through the lower uterine segment, cervix and vagina.’ (175) is “concention” a typo and Bax actually meant to write “conception”?
Is “symphysis” another misspelling, this time of “symphysis” (179)? So annoying!
Bax talks about (in his interminable discussion of labor and birth) two ‘methods’ with regards to the expulsion of the placenta: Schultze‘s method (which is some sort of election system) and Duncan’s method (of which I can find no reference). What is he talking about?!?
Very annoying how Bax just mixes things up by not taking the time to sort through how people and groups wish to be referred as. For an example, have a look at his discussion of the Moi on pages 198-99. He not only mixes up tribes and ethnic groups but also languages with peoples. One (Sore) even seems to be misspelled or made up all together. Even back in the 70s it was not that hard to do a bit of research, grrrr….
Uhhhh, later in this discussion is a clue to this particular narrator, he uses an Edwardian term for an item of clothing instead of one contemporaneous with the writing of the novel or one that could be thought typical of the future this novel represents. If this particular narrator is representing that particular time period, then the racism, sexism, etc. makes sense, although it is still reprehensible and I still can’t understand why it is necessary to the writing, unless this is how the author makes his outdated views clear to the reader without directly implicating himself.
Quotes that caught my eye
Its brash younger sister, the American Exchange, where the stocks of smaller companies are traded, is still open to visitors, who watch white-jacketed dealers dash round the floor at a racing walk occasionally yelling in apparent agony and making passionate tic-tac signs to anyone who is watching. It is an eerie way for fortunes to evaporate. (26)
Any patient who said something vociferously enough for long enough in any medical facility got what they wanted in the end. (32)
Equally they found Ginny’s vagueness, which had infuriated the Hopeful’s officers, rather reassuring. It put reality properly away. (141)
It’s something to do with education and too early an exposure to the world’s ills. It’s teaching them political philosophy and general theories with nothing to apply them to that does it. now, I’d not allow people to be taught that sort of thing at all. I’d make them do anatomy. Nothing like dissecting someone’s balls to make one protective of one’s own and other people’s. (155-56)
General application form: hospital ship ‘Hopeful’
(Note: this form to be filled in by all grades of staff before specialized application forms are issued.)
1 Are you in love?
(a) Yes (b) No
If (a) apply jointly on form X2/OF/US.
2 If (b), do you want to be in love?
(a) No (b) Yes
If (b), state whether you wish to love
(a) Same sexed humans (b) Opposite sexed humans (c) Beasts*
3 How long will you love for?
(a) Ever (b) 50 years + (c) 35 years + (d) 18 years +
(e) 13-18 years (f) 5-13 years (g) 1-5 years (h) Into the new year
4 How many people can you love? State a number between naught and infinity.
* Opportunities for bestiality aboard the Hopeful are limited. Applicants who have no inclination for aquatic species are advised to withdraw.
It is not our fault that the old books and traditions of human history exhibit so many absurdities.
But it is our fault if we know all this, but disregard it and refuse to take it seriously. (197)
Who/what is…?
‘The son, like john Rockefeller, Pierpont Morgan, Armour, Gould and the other gifted young entrepreneurs who were of proper age, sent substitutes to the draft armies ….’ (106) Gould, would that be Jay or George Jay? And which Armour would that be?
Is this a real thing? ‘… MacBeth’s … sinister poem game “Fin du Globe” (1963) .... (117)
The study by the Sherif’s (discussed on page 135) have points which don’t jive with the standard discussion. Makes me wonder what else has not been properly researched….
Does he mean ‘conjunctiva’ rather than ‘conjunctive’ in this sentence? “…pulling down her lower lid to look at her conjunctive.” (145)
In trying to figure out what “residuum” means in this context on pages 157-58 (‘…as in the case of fishes, the two ducts coalesce into one above the outlet of the residuum’) I think I may have discovered that the author is paraphrasing Aristotle, without reference, which is strange when one considers all the other, oddly formed, references he does include.
Is “do-Goders’ (165) a typo, and if not what is it? And the same question for ‘cloche-makers’ later in the same sentence.
In this sentence: ‘Labour is the process by which h the products of concention (foetus, placenta, membranes and liquor amnii) are expelled from the uterine cavity through the lower uterine segment, cervix and vagina.’ (175) is “concention” a typo and Bax actually meant to write “conception”?
Is “symphysis” another misspelling, this time of “symphysis” (179)? So annoying!
Bax talks about (in his interminable discussion of labor and birth) two ‘methods’ with regards to the expulsion of the placenta: Schultze‘s method (which is some sort of election system) and Duncan’s method (of which I can find no reference). What is he talking about?!?
Very annoying how Bax just mixes things up by not taking the time to sort through how people and groups wish to be referred as. For an example, have a look at his discussion of the Moi on pages 198-99. He not only mixes up tribes and ethnic groups but also languages with peoples. One (Sore) even seems to be misspelled or made up all together. Even back in the 70s it was not that hard to do a bit of research, grrrr….
Uhhhh, later in this discussion is a clue to this particular narrator, he uses an Edwardian term for an item of clothing instead of one contemporaneous with the writing of the novel or one that could be thought typical of the future this novel represents. If this particular narrator is representing that particular time period, then the racism, sexism, etc. makes sense, although it is still reprehensible and I still can’t understand why it is necessary to the writing, unless this is how the author makes his outdated views clear to the reader without directly implicating himself.
April 5, 2026
An intriguing read. others have called it ballardesque, and I'd have to agree. The author shifts abruptly between the ongoing narrative and chunks of "data" written almost like an academic paper and that can be quite jarring at times other times the narrative shift feels like it works really well. Definately a product of it's time, while also still managing to feel relevent to current events. Overall a book worthy of tracking down and reading.
September 10, 2018
quite an odd odyssey. I had fun. :)
August 2, 2021
Borderline unreadable. I suppose it must be one of the earliest examples of someone trying to emulate JG Ballard, so it’s interesting. Just not good, at all.
August 23, 2013
Despite being over 35 years old, The Hospital Ship has not dated. Many of Bax's concerns still trouble us, and events in the Middle East today provide a shockingly contemporary parallel with those of the novel. This is an intriguing and sometimes beguiling work, one that rewards repeated reading. There's a rather good looking new edition available in eBook, hardback and paperback editions, and the publisher is apparently going to issue more of Bax's unpublished novels written around the same time as this and that include many of the same characters. Be aware though that this is not an 'easy' read, there's no movie-like narrative arc and there are scenes of a highly sexual nature…
October 19, 2016
crazy and surreal book
Read
March 3, 2022Huh.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews