Fiction complete, p.1
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Fiction Complete
H. G. Stratmann
(custom book cover)
Jerry eBooks
Title Page
About H. G. Stratmann
“Biolog”
Bibliography
Short Fiction Bibliography
Fiction Series
Tin Angel
Symphony in a Minor Key
The Best is Yet to Be
The Eumenide
The Human Touch
Phoenix
Going Home
Tempora Mutantur
To Him Who Waits
Achromamorph’s Burden
Jurisimprudence
Naked Came the Earthling
Hearts in Darkness
The Paradise Project
The Last Temptation of Katerina Savitskaya
When All Else Fails
The Invasion
Wilderness Were Paradise Enow
Thus Spake the Aliens
The Day the Music Died
Primum Non Nocere
To Save Man
Neighborhood Watch
Prometheus
Henry G. (H. G.) Stratmann, MD, FACC, FACP is a cardiologist and a part-time science fiction writer. He grew up in the small rural town of East Carondelet, Illinois. He graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in chemistry from St. Louis University. He subsequently received his MD from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine and did his postgraduate training at St. Louis University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, completing both his residency in internal medicine and his cardiology fellowship there. He is board-certified in internal medicine and cardiology, with prior certification in nuclear cardiology for twenty years while practicing that latter discipline.
While temporarily working part-time in his medical practice, Stratmann obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in physics with a minor in astronomy and astrophysics at Missouri State University. He conducted astronomy research on yellow supergiant stars as a NASA intern as part of the NASA-Missouri Space Grant Consortium program. He also successfully completed a research project on the variability of sparsely studied RR Lyrae stars.
Stratmann has been married to Maryellen Amato, MD, a fellow physician and a nuclear radiologist, for over forty-one years. They have two sons, Henry G. Stratmann III and Joseph T. Stratmann.
BIOLOG Jay Kay Klein
Henry G. Strattmann, M.D.
With SF writers and readers heavily into “tech” sciences, biological SF tends to come largely from physicians such as Henry G. Stratmann, MD. He grew up in a small town near St. Louis, MO, earned a BA in chemistry from St. Louis University, and an MD from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. Five years of post-grad training followed in internal medicine and cardiology at St. Louis University for board certification.
As you might expect from an Analog contributor, Henry started adult life off as valedictorian of his high school, received a BA in two and a half years, and earned an MD at age 23- He is currently Associate Professor of Medicine at the St. Louis School of Medicine and director of the coronary care unit at a VA medical center.
Astronomy captivated Henry like most of Analog’s contributors and readers. One of his four telescopes is a home-built reflector, with a commercial 10-inch mirror. He began reading SF when he was seven. Appearing in Analog gives him a great deal of personal satisfaction. Most of his writing has been in medical journals, largely centered on nuclear cardiology. His physician wife is a nuclear radiologist.
Henry didn’t think of writing fiction until his letter published in the August, 1992 Analog drew a nice note from writer Gerald Nordley. Supplying medical details, Henry collaborated with Gerald on “Tin Angel” for the July, 1994 issue. Another letter in the August, 1994 issue led to corresponding with Kevin J. Anderson. In addition to the writers’ collegial atmosphere found in science fiction, Henry also has benefited from Stan Schmidt continuing the Analog editor’s tradition of being writer-friendly. “His incisive comments on what I was doing right or (far more often!) wrong with my stories and his suggestions on improving them have been invaluable.”
Obligations have kept Henry from attending SF conventions, but he hopes to get to a Worldcon to meet the three gentlemen in person who have helped him develop as a writer. Foreseeable stories will probably speculate about the impact of medical advances on the individual. Later, he’d like to try other types of stories such as “alternate histories.”
Like all SF writers, Henry is interested in a diversity of areas, such as electronics, computers, classical music, and rocketry. Given the life-and- death nature of cardiology, Analog readers can only hope to get a tithe of the interesting stories Henry could turn out as a full-time writer. Many Analog contributors have been multifaceted individuals who have a love for science fiction. This results in stories by writers collectively acquainted with the entire spectrum of human knowledge.
Originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, October 1996
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Collections
Symphony in a Minor Key: Science Fiction Tales of Time and Space (2010)
The Paradise Project (2010)
Nonfiction
Using Medicine in Science Fiction: The SF Writer’s Guide to Human Biology (2015)
SHORT FICTION BIBLIOGRAPHY
Tin Angel, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, July 1994
Symphony in a Minor Key, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, October 1996
The Best is Yet to Be, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 1996
The Eumenide, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, January 1998
The Human Touch, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, May 1998
Phoenix, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, October 1998
Going Home, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, April 1999
Tempora Mutantur, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, July/August, July 1999
To Him Who Waits, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 1999
Achromamorph’s Burden, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, February 2000
Jurisimprudence, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, September 2000
Naked Came the Earthling, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, July/August, July 2001
Hearts in Darkness, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, March 2002
The Paradise Project, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November 2007
The Last Temptation of Katerina Savitskaya, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, September 2008
When All Else Fails, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, March 2009
The Invasion, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, April 2009
Wilderness Were Paradise Enow, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 2009
Thus Spake the Aliens, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, January/February, January 2010
The Day the Music Died, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, May 2010
Primum Non Nocere, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 2010
To Save Man, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, July/August, July 2012
Neighborhood Watch, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, January/February, January 2013
Prometheus, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, May 2013
FICTION SERIES
The Paradise Project
Hearts in Darkness
The Paradise Project
The Last Temptation of Katerina Savitskaya
Wilderness Were Paradise Enow
Thus Spake the Aliens
Probability Zero
Going Home
Jurisimprudence
When All Else Fails
Tin Angel
When does a tool become a colleague?
They both heard the sirens.
Angel’s eyes went wide. “Automobile accident, drunk driver uninjured in custody, man dead at the scene, pregnant woman, coming here, possible internal injuries, unconscious.”
Dr. C. Thornhart Benson looked sharply at his new protegee, momentarily surprised. She grinned and pointed a finger to her eyes. He smiled in spite of himself. Her eyes were infrared as well as optical receivers, and she was, of course, linked into every digital device in the hospital, including the comm net. He wouldn’t have to wait for the call. Too bad about whoever it was, but this was an opportunity to see what Angel could do.
“Let’s do it,” he said. They had been about to leave his stuffy, cluttered third-floor office at the medical center after a few minutes of paperwork and decompression following evening rounds on his patients. Instead, he put down his journal, Angel put down a half-finished stocking cap she was knitting, and they headed toward the emergency room.
He wanted to be there when the patient came in, not only to do what he could to help, but also to see how Angel would handle the situation. If the experiment called Angel was to work, she’d have to learn this side of the business.
The wail of sirens faded as the ambulance approached the hospital. Why, he wondered, did they still let people drive precybernetic cars? Inevitably, some of them did it drunk.
“That ambulance knows its business, Angel,” he remarked as they left the elevator for the first subfloor. “No need to wake everyone; the siren’s done its job once the ambulance hits the emergency room driveway.”
Angel nodded with such a human look of concern on her face that he had to remind himself that she wasn’t even alive in the usual sense. Her repertoire of appropriate verbal and nonverbal patterns of communication was extensive but, he knew, required only an insignificant part of the optical core memory stored in her chest.
Approximately where her heart would be, he realized.
They could “can” diagnostics, anatomy, and pharmacology in a database and drop it into her brain, but experience was something else; a collection of someone else’s anecdotes just wasn’t good enough; too much missing. So the Artificial Intelligence Consortium that made her decided she should have an internship just like any other doctor. Of course, one of his long-time patients was part of the consortium, and when they’d needed an advisor to teach their creation the human side of medicine, they’d talked him into it.
They’d made her bright, cheerful, tireless, and innocent. He was a childless widower. It had been pretty much a case of love at first sight. Hell, he thought, he’d fallen in love with cars, an airplane, even the great old oak desk his grandfather had left him. So, his attachment to Angel had been completely predictable.
They reached the entrance to the emergency room, and he held one of the heavy swinging doors open for her.
“Well, let’s go.”
“I’ll follow you, Dr. Benson.” She winked and tossed her head, sun-touched platinum polymer threads cascading around perfect shoulders. “Age before beauty.”
“Hrrmph!” He went through the door first, grinning in spite of himself.
He nodded to the ER physician, a moonlighting dermatology resident who’d been only too happy to let Benson take over a major trauma case as he and Angel charged into the prep room, stripped to shorts and T-shirts, and shrugged into scrub suits. Then it was out to the ambulance entrance to wait for the stretcher. The woman’s vitals were already displayed on the high-res overhead. Shock.
“Probably hypovolemic,” Angel said, her voice full of concern. “Nearly two liters of Ringer’s lactate in her . . . starting to stabilize.” She frowned. “Thorny, I’d better tell you this now. It’s Linda Coombs.”
“Oh, God!” Thorny winced and shut his eyes. He’d saved her life once before, twenty-five years ago, when she’d almost strangled on her own umbilical cord in one of the more difficult deliveries a G.P. ever got to do these days—by virtue of his being in her parents’ living room when she made her somewhat early entrance into this world. This meant Terry was dead, he realized. He’d been at their wedding just last year. Good kid, ran his own security service. . . .
Angel’s hand was on his arm. “Are you . . .?”
“I’ll be fine. Thanks for telling me now. Better than recognizing her on the stretcher.”
As he spoke the doors slid open and things became a blur. He and Angel followed behind as the stretcher drove itself into the trauma room with its silent burden, and paramedics hovering around like ghostly bees around a red flower. Linda’s nose and mouth were covered by an oxygen mask, and a cervical collar encircled her neck. A blood-stained white sheet partially covered her limp body, which was connected at multiple puncture sites to bags of intravenous fluids hung on tall poles. The portable heart monitor, connected by multicolored wires to electrode patches stuck onto her exposed chest, beeped in a disturbingly fast and irregular rhythm. Thorny motioned to the scanning table, and they slid her onto it, tubes and poles following in an orderly ritual that only looked like mass confusion.
Thorny still found it hard to believe this was the same exuberant, vivacious young woman he’d last seen in his office not quite a week ago.
Forcing himself into objectivity, he watched Angel do a quick visual examination for external injuries. Linda’s chest was bruised, with some swelling above her left breast, and she had a golf-ball sized lump in the middle of her forehead.
“Beginning scan.” Angel said, and the bistatic resonance sensor head beneath the table glided to the top of Linda’s head and began to move slowly down the length of her body. As the imager started its examination, Angel resumed hers.
“Pupils equal, round, and reactive. No blood in the ears or nose.” She continued while one of the ER nurses—Sarah Miles, a robust, almost angrily competent black woman who Thorny knew slightly—drew blood for the analyzer.
“Type AB negative,” Angel announced. “The blood bank has it—it’s on its way.”
The nurse shot a quick look at Thorny as she prepared to do a twelve-lead electrocardiogram, and her eyes widened a bit when he nodded. “How the—?”
Thorny held up a hand. “Later. Let’s get those electrodes on.” He’d been assured that the medical center staff had been briefed about Angel, but seeing her in action was, it seemed, something else.
The imaging camera stopped abruptly at the level of Linda’s shoulders. “No fractures or bleeding,” Angel declared. “We can take off the collar.”
Now it was Thorny’s turn to stare. Angel smiled and the holoscreen monitor above the table snapped on. Thorny noted the image was blue tinged—probably the blue laser power setting, since the ultra-high res screen with the interference patterns was digital. The unit was a bargain when the center got it ten years ago, although it was bulky and hard to maintain by current standards, but it beat the hell out of what he’d had when he started in practice. In rapid sequence standard views of the skull and cervical spine appeared, rotated 360 degrees, and were replaced by images of the brain. Of course, he realized, Angel controlled its operation through her optical interface. For that matter, the images she showed would be strictly for the benefit of the human staff.
The imager resumed its slow path down Linda’s body and Angel moved her hands quickly over Linda’s pregnancy. The tiny sensors and transducers in her fingers and palms could, Thorny remembered, sense pressure through ultrasound and electrical fields through microwaves.
“No fractures or bleeding,” she repeated, “except—.” Her hands caressed the abdomen once more. “The placenta has partially separated, and there’s some intrauterine bleeding. The size of the fetus is consistent with a gestation period of 34 weeks.” She paused, then looked at Thorny. “I’m sorry. No fetal heart beat or cerebral activity.”
Thorny felt a brief pressure in his own chest. Even though they were too late to save her baby, Linda still had a chance. Needing to do something to restore his clinical detachment, he glanced up at the overhead monitor. “Her blood pressure is—”
“—Eighty-five over fifty.” Angel completed his sentence without looking up. Thorny winced; he’d forgotten.
Angel’s fingers brushed across Linda’s chest. “No pneumothorax or any significant bleeding—mildly depressed sternal fracture—the left fifth, sixth, and seventh ribs are broken. The aorta seems intact. Her heart—” Suddenly Angel froze; utterly, inhumanly, motionless.
For a heart-rending second, Thorny thought she had malfunctioned, and realized that he might have to lift her out of the way, somehow, and take over.
But she started speaking again, her mouth moving while the rest of her body remained eerily rigid. “Her left ventricular function is very poor. I’m not sure how to explain that.”
Thorny sighed in relief, and remembered how often he’d told her; “When in doubt, don’t just do something, stand there.” Apparently, she’d taken that literally. He shook his head, pushed his attention back to the patient, and wrinkled his forehead.
“I’m not sure either. Her grandmother died of heart failure at sixty, and her mother at forty-two, though that was complicated by smoking. But Linda never had any signs of a heart problem. I—”
Suddenly, Angel was a blur of motion.
“She’s in v-fib!” Nurse Miles shouted. “No pulse!”
Even before the sentence was completed Angel had grabbed the defibrillator paddles, and charged the machine.
“Clear!” Angel ordered, and everyone obeyed instantly. Chalk one up for a humanoid robot, Thorny thought; people might have hesitated if something that was obviously a machine had issued that order.
Angel delivered the electrical shock to Linda’s chest. Thorny peered anxiously at the heart monitor—and exhaled thankfully as it started beeping again. Nurse Miles pressed her index and middle fingers against Linda’s neck, and smiled slightly. “Good pulse.”
