James White was born to a Catholic family in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on 7 April 1928, and spent part of his early life in Canada.

[2][5] He became a science fiction fan in 1941, attracted particularly by the works of E. E. "Doc" Smith, which featured good aliens as well as evil ones, and of Robert A. Heinlein, many of whose stories concern ordinary people.

("Walt") Willis, and the two helped to produce the fan magazines Slant (1948–1953) and Hyphen (1952–1965),[2][6][7] which featured stories and articles by noted authors including John Brunner, A. Bertram Chandler, and Bob Shaw.

[3] He said that getting published was fairly easy during the 1950s, as the World War II restrictions on paper were ended, and there were at least 12 science magazines in Britain and about 40 in the United States.

[4] His first published short story, "Assisted Passage", a parody of 1950s Anglo-Australian emigration policies, appeared in the January 1953 edition of the magazine New Worlds.

Ace Books' science fiction editor, Donald A. Wollheim, thought the original ending was too tame and suggested that White should insert an all-out space battle just after the climactic courtroom scene.

When diabetes had severely impaired his eyesight, he took early retirement in 1984 and relocated to the north Antrim resort town of Portstewart, where he continued to write.

[15][16] Additional short stories set in the Sector General Universe ('"Countercharm", "Tableau", "Occupation: Warrior", and "Custom Fitting") appear in other collections by White.

[2] Sector General is a gigantic multi-species hospital space station founded as a peace-making project by two heroes from opposite sides of humanity's only full interstellar war.

[15][18] In the fourth book the Galactic Federation decides that the emergency service which the hospital offers to victims of space accidents and planetary catastrophes is the most effective means of making peaceful contact with new spacefaring species, which allows the series to expand its range of plots, characters and settings.

[29] Other collections include:[2] Paul Kincaid described White as a second-rank writer who occasionally produced first-rank works, and attracted a devoted but not wide audience.

[34] Chris Aylott wrote that White's plot construction and writing, including occasionally clumsy exposition, are typical of the Golden Age of science fiction in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s.

[35] Algis Budrys concluded his review of The Watch Below with "... this is very nice writing when considered simply as prose and as an attempt to involve the reader's emotions.

"[36] However, when reviewing All Judgment Fled he wrote, "I suspect that he generates so much tension within himself while writing a book that he literally cannot bear to come to grips with crucial scenes.

[45] The judges are professional authors and editors, and have included Mike Resnick, Orson Scott Card, Lois McMaster Bujold, Peter F. Hamilton, Christopher Priest and Robert Sheckley.