Lost Books: The Ship Who Sang

I firmly believe that those who love to read have the responsibility to share the books they’ve found and loved with others.  Some of the books I love the most are those that you won’t find on the featured shelf at Barnes & Noble. Sometimes you won’t find it at a new book store at all.  I make a point to comb through used book stores to see what I can find.  I actually didn’t find this book there, I got it from a friend, who has so many books herself she could open her own used book store.  The book in question is The Ship Who Sang by Ann McCaffrey.  Some would say that calling anything by Anne McCaffrey a “lost” book is a grievous offence.  I personally would agree, but the point of these Lost Book posts is more to share books that are no longer in the spotlight, and this beautiful story from 1961 certainly qualifies.

The late Anne McCaffrey (1926-2011) was a prolific writer with many diverse stories, but she is best known for the Dragonriders of Pern Series.  However, that is not the series I am going to talk about here.  The stories I’m talking about are the stories of Helva, the ship who sang.  To be precise, the book The Ship Who Sang is a collection of interconnected novellas.  The edition I have, as published in 1969 contains the following: The Ship Who Sang (1961), The Ship Who Mourned (1966), The Ship Who kill (1966), The Dramatic Mission (1969), The Ship Who Dissembled (1969), and The Partnered Ship (1969).  There are others, but as of the writing of this post I have not had opportunity to find them.

Set an unspecified time in the future, these stories have one unique aspect from the typical space exploration stories of the era: the shell people.  In a world where space travel is possible, there are still some things science and medicine can’t fix.  Some people are still occasionally born horribly deformed.  The sort of person who would live a short, painful, and unproductive life.  Now, if the mind behind that deformed body is strong and receptive, (as determined with an encephalograph) then the parents of those infants have an interesting option open to them.  At the age of three months, a series of surgeries can begin where the body is installed in a titanium shell, and the brain is connected to electronics.  The pituitary gland is modified to keep the body from outgrowing the shell, and the infants begin lessons.  Shell people can have all kinds of jobs.  Helva in particular becomes a Central Words BB Scout Ship.  The BB stands for Brain/Brawn.  Helva would be the brain.  She literally is the ship.  It’s hull is her skin, it’s sensors her eyes and ears.  The brawn is a mobile human partner.  The two work together on almost any sort of mission you could imagine.  The stories all follow Helva.  Each individually follows the story of one of her missions.  The plot and conflict of each individual story about the challenges she faces on the mission, but taken together, the story is about one very human woman, searching for her place in a vast and confusing universe. This woman just happens to have the body of ship.  I highly recommend this book.  Follow Helva over the course of several years, as she meets and loses several brawns.  Some of whom have issues just as deep as Helva’s can be.  Follow one young woman across the stars as she learns who she is, what she wants, and looks for a partner and friend to spend her life with.  If my word isn’t enough, then take Anne McCaffery’s.  “Helva is one of my favorite characters.” -Anne McCaffery