Countercharm

White badly wanted to make the 100th issue of New Worlds, but :". . . I did not have a single alien ailment in my head. In desperation I [built] a story round an Earth-human condition that might have an extraterrestrial equivalent, an ailment of which I had first hand experience, diabetes" (from the 'Secret history of Sector General': see under Non-fiction). Cue insulin injection. "But suppose the diabetic patient was a crab-like life-form, whose limbs and body were covered by a hard shell?" (ditto). Aldiss ('Old Hundredth') and Wyndham ('The Emptiness of Space') were also at their best for John Carnell's editorial centruy.