The Short Story
Anne McCaffrey had published two stories when she attended her first Milford Writer's Workshop in 1959. Afterward she worked on "The Ship Who Sang", which was published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (Apr 1961) and included by editor Judith Merril in the anthology, 7th Annual of the Year's Best S-F (1962).
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."
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". 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 and a troubled marriage." She has also called it "the best story I ever wrote", one that still makes her cry. She chose it to read aloud as Guest of Honor at the annual science fiction convention Eurocon 2007.
Read more about this topic: The Ship Who Sang
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