Red Cross Space Hospitals
In 2020, the video game Among Us got in trouble for accidentally violating the Geneva Conventions Act. On its med bay, the sci-fi game had displayed "the emblem of a red cross with vertical and horizontal arms of the same length on, and completely surrounded by a white ground," all without authorization from the right international treaties.
They changed the red cross to a blue one, successfully averting any war crimes.
Either the rules are different for book illustrations, or the Geneva Conventions weren't paying much attention to any publishers across the entire second half of the 20th century. Red crosses are all over the white space stations, spaceships, and spacesuits of retro medical sci-fi.
Fred Gambino's quarantine unit spaceship appeared in Stewart Cowley’s 1979 collection Spacewreck: Ghostships and Derelicts of Space. Like all of the illustrations used in the famed Terran Trade Authority art books, it was a different book cover first, created for a 1978 edition of Harry Harrison's Plague from Space.
Dean Ellis illustrated the first edition of James White's 1979 novel Ambulance Ship, and there it is! That's the ambulance ship, no doubt about it.
Future editions held a few more red crosses, from the barely visible one on Peter Andrew Jones' ornate 1980 cover –
– to the typically majestic John Harris cover from 1985.
Keep all those artists and authors in mind, because they'll all make repeat appearances due to the simple fact that medical-themed spaceships tend to emerge from a very specific set of stories.
The biggest is James White's Sector General series. White's setting of a hospital space station that promotes peace through interstellar emergency services is a pretty great story generator for science fiction that's as exciting as it is pacifist, so it's not surprising it lasted across 12 novels and a bunch of short stories published between 1957 and 1999.
But there are a healthy handful of other medical space adventures from this time period. Rick Sternbach did this 1981 cover for Lee Correy's Space Doctor, for instance.
In addition to Plague From Space, Harry Harrison penned Spaceship Medic, the only title in this roundup to focus on a singular medical professional and therefore prompt its illustrators to slap all their red crosses on a spacesuit.
Dean Ellis did another red cross spaceship for another author with a handful of medical sci-fi stories to his (pen)name, Murray Leinster, for the 1971 edition of The Mutant Weapon.
Much like Piers Anthony's Prostho Plus and Giant Teeth illustration, James White's Sector General dominates the conversation when it turns to red crosses in retro spaceship illustration.
John Harris did a lot of Sector General covers. Here's one of my favorites, for Hospital Station in 1986:
As always, though, it's hard to go wrong with John Harris. Here are more (though not all) of his Sector General illustrations.
Dean Ellis turned out a few Sector General covers, too. His 1970 cover for the first title in the series, Hospital Station, might be my favorite of them.
The alien on this 1981 cover to the second book, Star Surgeon, really reminds me of Wayne Barlowe's work, but Dean Ellis is the one credited on the copyright page.
Interestingly, though, Wayne Barlowe did do this cover for the third title in the exact same 1981 Ballantine series reissue. Notice the difference in the look of the space stations - this one's a lot more Barlowe.
Either Dean Ellis was told to imitate a Barlowe alien, or the art director added an actual uncredited Barlowe alien alongside an Ellis station. Or that Star Surgeon copyright page is wrong, and Barlowe deserves all the credit.
Regardless, Ballantine was aiming for a continuity that they seem to have immediately dropped after these two covers, since the only editions Ballantine released around this time for the first or the fourth titles were Dean Ellis spaceships with no aliens at all.
Another Sector General-related art mystery is this John Berkey illustration.
My normal source for finding cover art information is ISFDB, and my search engines of choice are Google Lens and TinEye. None of them helped me for this particular artwork.
When I asked my Tumblr followers, however, one of them pointed me to this John Berkey fansite - scroll to the very bottom, and you'll see it was used as the back cover to a folder released in 1977.
However, John Berkey has done four Sector General covers in his career that I think might shed light on the origin of this artwork. We can rule out three of them, since they were done in the late 1990s.
But the final Berkey cover is from 1974, for Major Operation. Here's the original artwork:
It seems possible that Berkey could have done the big space station as a rejected cover for this title, or as a cover for another Sector General that came out at the same time and just hasn't been documented online (rare, but it happens!) – Berkey would have then had the artwork lying around, ready to repurpose a few years later for the folder.
Either way, kudos to that fansite for surfacing an otherwise forgotten John Berkey illustration!
There are plenty of other Sector General space stations worth including here, but this post is already way too long, and I don't have high quality images, anyway. Here's the biggest available version of Vicente Segrelles' 1977 cover to a Dutch edition of Major Operation. I love the tether on this one (even if the lack of gravity means it shouldn't be hanging like that).
We'll wrap up with a few more random red crosses. Here's one that I credited to David A Hardy year ago, but now I can't confirm if it's him or what it was used for. The only info this Flickr page offers is the cryptic phrase "strangestories_asteroid."
The Usborne Book of the Future has a page featuring the red cross spaceship.
I'd be remiss not to mention the subtle red cross that pops up on Angus McKie's classic 1976 cover to The Year's Best Science Fiction No. 8, edited by Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison. This is my favorite skeleton in a spacesuit illustration of all time, and there's plenty of competition.
Ultimately, though, two towering icons of science fiction illustration opted to look beyond the typical iconography when chosing how to identify their futuristic medical vehicles.
The first is Syd Mead, who went with a bold "Emergency 20" on this sleek response vehicle.
The second is John Schoenherr, for his 1964 cover to Murray Leinster's Doctor to the Stars. Ever the iconoclast, he went with two-snakes-and-a-stick option, the caduceus.
Latest paid post: This 2025 update
Music rec: Here's another very good eclectic sound test playlist on Spotify. I'm developing a strange addition to the low russian-roulette chances that I'll get an audio file that's just laser blasts or some similar BS on a playlist that's 90% good music.
Next Time: Grass