RoboDocs- Dr.T 'Gus' Gustafson
What an interesting read, a novel written as imaginary
documentary on a near future doctor’s career, following his path from childhood
through medical school and training to eventual mixed fortunes as a robotically
enhanced family practitioner. There is a depth of humanistic sentimental
content, however it is future technology, not human behaviour that drives this
book. The author is a retired medic who speculates the future of his
profession. Gustafson brings a huge amount of personal experience of medicine
and its politics to this fascinating story. His real knowledge gives real bite,
a profound credibility and layered plausibility. His future ‘expectation’ is so
well constructed that it is difficult at times to keep touch with the fact that
we are reading of a future and not a ‘true’ life history. All the medical
politics, economic constraints and technologies are already seen today in their
infancy, such that very little of the science fiction seems implausible,
fantastical, in 2018.
The writing is straight forward and accurate, while the plot
is simple in design and yet rich with interesting detail. One might even say
the book is predictable, but no less enjoyable for that. This fiction is
written with almost a scientific efficiency, like a well written industrial
report, with just enough of a veneer of character story to give a richness, a
feeling of personal buy-in, of voyeuristic enjoyment, to the reading. I
recommend this book to all who wonder about the future of medicine, and where
it is taking both our medical practitioners and us all as hopeful patients.
This is a fiction brim full of interest, with a backstory centred around the
fears and ambitions of one particular doctor and his future long-suffering, wife;
one particular doctor who may even now be considering a medical career. Gustafson
has the skill to write speculation that reads as a medical future that is
already established hard fact. Does this doctor actual exist, one who might
possibly retire in say 2068?
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