The Ship Who Sang - Criticism

Criticism

In a 2010 essay, "The Future Imperfect", published in Redstone Science Fiction, disability rights advocate Sarah Einstein criticizes the Brain & Brawn Ship series, representing science fiction in general, for its use of disability. 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."