The Ship Who Sang

"The Ship Who Sang" (1961) is a short story by science fiction author Anne McCaffrey about the brainship Helva. "The Ship Who Sang" (1969) book is a collection of Helva short stories. Readers also use the phrase to refer to the entire Brain & Brawn Ship series.

Plot summary

The Brain & Brawn Ship series takes place in the distant future, when parents of children who are born with severe physical handicaps but highly developed minds are given the option of allowing them to become "shell people"; encapsulated as children in a titanium life-support shell and specially trained for tasks that a "normal" human would be unable to do. These children, after coming of age, are employed in various manners (in the books, mostly as interstellar spacecraft brainships or as the "brains" of cities) to work off the debt of their creation and training. They are all partnered with "Scouts" or "Brawns", humans specially trained to act as a companion or helper. The title derives from the fact that they are the mobile half of the partnership; their inability to go where "soft-shells" can is occasionally annoying to shell people, but not something they would exchange for the added abilities they are granted.

"The Ship Who Sang" (1969) collection (ISBN 0-345-33431-0) follows the adventures of one of these children, Helva, who when installed in her ship becomes XH-834. The stories recount her early infatuation with her first Brawn, Jennan, her period of mourning after his death, and her mature relationship with another Brawn, Niall.

tories in the Ship Who Sang collection

*"The Ship Who Sang", 1961
*"The Ship Who Mourned", 1966
*"The Ship Who Killed", 1966
*"Dramatic Mission", 1969
*"The Ship Who Dissembled", 1969

Other Novels in the Brain & Brawn Ship Series

Co-authored by Anne McCaffrey:
* "PartnerShip" (1992) with Margaret Ball, ISBN 0-671-72109-7
* "The Ship Who Searched" (1992) with Mercedes Lackey, ISBN 0-671-72129-1
* "The City Who Fought" (1993) with S.M. Stirling, ISBN 0-671-87599-X
* "The Ship Who Won" (1994) with Jody Lynn Nye, ISBN 0-671-87657-0

Separately authored:
* "The Ship Errant" (1996) by Jody Lynn Nye, ISBN 0-671-87854-9
* "The Ship Avenged" (1997) by S.M. Stirling, ISBN 0-671-87861-1

Omnibus editions:
* "Brain Ships" (2003) (includes "The Ship Who Searched" and "Partnership") ISBN 0-7434-7166-0
* "The Ship who Saved the Worlds" (2003) (includes "The Ship Who Won" and "The Ship Errant") ISBN 0-7434-7171-7
* "The City and the Ship" (2004) (includes "The City Who Fought" and "The Ship Avenged") ISBN 0-7434-7189-X

Miscellanea

There is a brief reference to shell ships in McCaffrey's "Crystal Singer" series (Killashandra travels in a shell ship at one point)

The books published in 2003-4 are reprints/collections of earlier volumes printed.

This series is occasionally seen as being controversial because of the creation of "shell people" out of handicapped individuals.Fact|date=July 2007 As with some other McCaffrey literature, her treatment of the subject becomes more nuanced as the series progresses.
This "controversial" treatment of handicapped individuals (if it ever truly was controversial) is laid to rest in later novels, such as "the ship who searched", who was only placed in a "shell" after contracting an illness that left her totally paralysed. Unable to make any voluntary movement at all, she chose to become a "shell person" as otherwise the rest of he life would be as a prisoner in a totally unresponsive body.
The future portrayed appears enlightened enough to only use "the shell" as a last resort to preserve life, while at the same time allowing the individual so encased to have a fulfilling life, extended many times over the normal life span. The shell person is, however, conditioned over their growth to be content in their role, to avoid certain ways of thinking. A "shell-person" is able to perform tasks that are personally gratifying to the individual, and beneficial to society as a whole. The medical technology hinted at suggests that all but the most severe conditions could be treated using artificial organs and limbs, and that in general a "shell" was seen only as a last resort, the "ultimate life support machine." In addition, later books introduced an android body available for purchase by "shell-people," which would enable them to experience the complete range of human activities.

The series addresses issues typically associated with cyborgs in literature, such as embodiment and mortality.

Author information

In an interview with SFFworld, McCaffrey claims that "The Ship Who Sang" is her favourite story, "possibly because I put much of myself into it: myself and the troubles I had in accepting my father's death and a troubled marriage." [Citation
last = Rambraut | first = Dag
title = Interview with Anne McCaffrey | date = 2000-05-08
url = http://www.sffworld.com/interview/49p0.html
accessdate = 2007-07-06 ]

When asked how she came up with the idea, McCaffrey says, "I remember reading a story about a woman searching for her son's brain, it had been used for an autopilot on an ore ship and she wanted to find it and give it . And I thought what if severely disabled people were given a chance to become starships? So that's how "The Ship Who Sang" was born." [Citation
title=Anne McCaffrey: Heirs to Pern | newspaper=Locus Magazine
date=November 2004
url=http://www.locusmag.com/2004/Issues/11McCaffrey.html ]

References

*Haraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in "Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature". New York: Routledge, 1991: 149-181.
*Hayles, N. Katherine. "The Life Cycle of Cyborgs: Writing the Posthuman." In "Cybersexualities: A Reader on Feminist Theory, Cyborgs and Cyberspace", edited by Jenny Wolmark, 157-173. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.