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The protagonist of the 1969 novel and all the early stories is a
cyborg, Helva, a human being and a spaceship, or "brainship".
The five older stories are revised under their original titles as the
first five chapters of the book and the sixth chapter is entirely
new.[1]
During the 1990s McCaffrey made The Ship Who Sang the first Author Anne McCaffrey
book of a series by writing four novels in collaboration with four Cover artist Jack Gaughan (first)
co-authors, two of whom each later completed another novel in Country United States
the series alone. By 1997 there were seven novels, one old and six
more recent.[3] They share a fictional premise but feature Language English
different cyborg characters. Genre Science fiction
Publisher Walker & Co.
Publication 1969
Contents date
Fictional premise
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The Brain & Brawn Ship series is set in the future of our universe and in McCaffrey's Federated
Sentient Planets. The parents of babies with severe physical disabilities — but fully developed and
exceptionally talented brains — may allow them to become "shell people" rather than be euthanised.
Taking that option, physical growth is stunted, the body is encapsulated in a titanium life-support
shell with capacity for computer connections, and the person is raised for "one of a number of curious
professions. As such, their offspring would suffer no pain, live a comfortable existence in a metal shell
for several centuries, and perform unusual service for Central Worlds."[12]
After medication and surgery, general education, and special training, shell children come of age with
heavy debts which they must work off in order to become free agents. They are employed as the
"brains" of spacecraft ("brainships"), hospitals, industrial plants, mining planets, and so on, even
cities – in the books, primarily spaceships and cities.
A brainship is able to operate independently but is usually employed in partnership with one
"normal" person called a "brawn" who travels inside the ship much as a pilot would. A brawn is
specially trained to be a companion and helper, the mobile half of such a partnership. The nickname
is relative: the training is long and intense and the brawns must be brainy people in fact. Commonly
the brain and brawn are paired at will and, for a fee, a brainship may terminate an assigned
partnership.
McCaffrey explained the origin of the brainship premise to SFFworld in a 2004 interview. "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 surcease. 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."[11]
Helva scored well on encephalographic tests and her parents chose the shell option. She would be a
brainship, an elite of her kind. "Brainships were, of course, long past the experimental stages" in her
time. Supposedly, "the well-oriented brain would not have changed places with the most perfect body
in the universe."[12]
The story closes with brainship Helva singing "Taps" at the funeral service for her brawn Jennan.
Decades later, son Todd McCaffrey called it "almost an elegy to her father".[13] About that time, she
called it her own favorite story, "possibly because I put much of myself into it: myself and the troubles
I had in accepting my father's death [1954] and a troubled marriage."[9] She has also called it "the best
story I ever wrote", one that still makes her cry.[11] She chose it to read aloud as Guest of Honor at the
annual science fiction convention Eurocon 2007.[14]
Reception
Joanna Russ noted the steady increase in McCaffrey's command of her craft over the writing of the
stories, saying "one of the pleasures of reading Ship is watching it progress from some rather awful
gaucheries through the middling treatment of middling ideas to the final two sections in which the
author at last begins to dramatize scenes with ease and some polish." Russ concluded that while the
book suffers from a failure to rewrite the earlier work into a coherent whole, "Even at its silliest the
book has a contagious joyfulness."[15]
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Criticism
In a 2010 essay, "The Future Imperfect", published in Redstone Science Fiction, disability rights
advocate Sarah Einstein criticizes the Brain & Brawn Ship series — as a stand-in for science fiction in
general — for its use of disability.[16] Regarding one novel in the series, The Ship Who Searched
(1992) by McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackey, Einstein observes that in fact we have
many more technological wonders than McCaffrey had imagined. The protagonists in the
story would have been much helped, for instance, by a secure communications channel
and a GPS system, both of which I have in my battered old car. But most of all, the heroine
of this book would have been helped by a future shaped by the actions of today’s disability
activists. Because, at its heart, this series of books tells the story of the enslavement of
extremely promising children who have the bad luck to be born—or in this one case alone,
become—disabled.[16]
"The Ship Who Sang", The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1961
"The Ship Who Mourned", Analog, March 1966
"The Ship Who Killed" (https://archive.org/stream/Galaxy_v25n01_1966-10#page/n79/mode/2up),
Galaxy Magazine, Oct 1966
"Dramatic Mission", Analog, Jun 1969
"The Ship Who Dissembled" (chapter title), published as "The Ship Who Disappeared", If, March
1969
All but the novella "Dramatic Mission" are novelettes, short fiction in 7500 to 17,500 words. They
were incorporated in The Ship Who Sang novel (1969) as the first five chapters with a new closing
chapter or short story, "The Partnered Ship".[1][a]
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Separately authored:
The Ship Errant (1996) by Jody Lynn Nye. ISBN 0-671-87854-9 (sequel to The Ship Who Won)
The Ship Avenged (1997) by S.M. Stirling. ISBN 0-671-87861-1 (sequel to The City Who Fought)
These six novels were also issued in omnibus editions of two each.[3][b]
Awards
The fourth and longest story, "Dramatic Mission" (originally published in Analog, June 1969), was
one of five nominees for both the annual Hugo Award and the annual Nebula Award in the Best
Novella category. The Hugos are voted by paying participants in the World Science Fiction
Convention and the Nebulas by members of the Science Fiction Writers of America.[17][18] Both
awards define the novella by word count 17,500 to 40,000.[a]
The American Library Association in 1999 cited The Ship Who Sang and the two early Pern trilogies
(Dragonriders and Harper Hall), when McCaffrey received the annual Margaret A. Edwards Award
for her "lifetime contribution in writing for teens".[19]
Notes
a. Both Hugo and Nebula awards define the novella category by word count 17,500 to 40,000.
Novels are longer, novelettes shorter. The new sixth chapter is catalogued as a short story, or
fiction in fewer than 7500 words. See The Ship Who Sang (book) (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/titl
e.cgi?5537) at ISFDB.
b.
Brain Ships (2003. McCaffrey, Ball & Lackey): The Ship Who Searched and Partnership.
ISBN 0-7434-7166-0
The Ship Who Saved the Worlds (2003, McCaffrey & Nye): The Ship Who Won and The Ship
Errant. ISBN 0-7434-7171-7
The City and the Ship (2004, McCaffrey & Stirling): The City Who Fought and The Ship
Avenged. ISBN 0-7434-7189-X
References
1. The Ship Who Sang (book) (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?5537). The Internet Speculative
Fiction Database (ISFDB).
2. "The Ship Who Sang" (story) (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?40947). ISFDB.
3. The Ship Who Sang (series) (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?3081). ISFDB.
4. Partnership (The Ship Who ...) (https://www.amazon.com/PartnerShip-Ship-Who-Anne-McCaffrey/
dp/0671721097). Amazon. Confirmed 2011-07-27.
5. Anne McCaffrey (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Anne_McCaffrey). ISFDB.
6. Footer to "Dragonsong/Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey" (http://www.denversfbookclub.com/mcc
affrey.htm) (for discussion 2005-03-23). Denver Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Club. Confirmed
2011-07-27.
7. Anne McCaffrey, The Ship Who Sang (1969), New York: Ballantine, paperback edition, 25th
printing, Dec 1993. Front endpapers.
8. "An Interview with Anne McCaffrey" (http://www.karsmakers.nl/metal-e-zine/annem.htm) (1994-
05). By Richard Karsmakers. Gouda, NL: karsmakers.net. Retrieved 2011-07-21.
9. "Interview with Anne McCaffrey" (http://www.sffworld.com/interview/49p0.html) (2000-05-08).
Science Fiction and Fantasy World (SFFWorld.com (http://www.sffworld.com)). Confirmed 2011-
07-12.
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Further reading
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.
External links
The Ship Who Sang (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?3081) series listing at the Internet
Speculative Fiction Database
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