Singing and Sailing through the Cosmos

~~~Background on Author~~~
Anne McCaffrey was born in Massachusetts and educated in Virginia and new jersey, before attending university in Cambridge. In 1947, she graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, having majored in Slavonic languages and literature. She married in 1950 and had three children, divorcing after 20 years in 1970. It was at this time that she emigrated to ireland where she still resides today.

Her writing career took off in 1968 when her 1967 novella length short story, "Weyr Search", then won that year's Hugo Award for best short story. Not only did it win her instant recognition, but she became the first female writer to win this prestigious award. This story was the first of the Dragon Riders of Pern stories, and was later expanded into the first part of Dragonflight, her first published novel. Despite being an especially prolific writer, she is best known for the Pern series which first made her famous. This is a shame, as her other standalone and series of novels are wide and varied. Such is her skill and diversity, that in 2005, she was appointed to 22nd Grandmaster of Science Fiction by the Science Fiction Writers of America at the Nebula awards, and inducted into the Science Fiction hall of fame in 2006.

~~~The Book~~~
The Ship who Sang tackles a lot of hot issues regarding disability. The author takes no sides politically, but rather the story focuses on the enhanced capabilities of his disabled heroine and her adventures. The book begins with a family discovering their new-born daughter is profoundly disabled in body. The infant is thoroughly assessed and discovered that while her body is twisted and distorted and all but useless, her mind is active and alert with a very keen mind within. The parents take up the option of having their young child educated within a special programme that is highly controversial. It is a programme that not only educates the children, but prepares them for their futures, where their fragile and broken bodies are extended through interfaces so that space stations or space craft become their new bodies in essence. Helva grows up to become a ship, and one that is capable of deep space travel thanks to the complexties of its "brain", Helva. For the human brain is far more complex than any machine could be and thus capable of of far more, enabling advances for all of human society. Within her ship, Helva sits encased behind a wall, suspended in wires and nutrient fluids, safe from harm, all the while feeling and seeing through her ship's sensors, speaking through the speakers, and while she travels, broadcasting her song. We follow Helva's physical journeys through space, singing her joys and sorrows, and her emotional journey as a young woman. One who meets her first brawn (the pilot assigned as her companion), and falls into forbidden love, only to experience the depths of sorrow when he is killed and she is unable to prevent it.One who learns that living and loving is both joy and sorrow, and so moves from the last of her childhood, to an adult. This is a coming of age story, centred on a most unusal heroine, who is as human as anyone ever was, despite her "handicaps" and assisted living mechanisms.This makes it more than the sci fi romp it is on the surface, to one that has real depth, challenging one's perceptions of those who are differently abled. Indeed, such is the skill of the writer, that as one reads, we forget that the main character is disabled; she merely is as she is, and we see the warm and funny person beneath the shell.

~~~My Thoughts~~~

I first came across Anne McCaffrey not through her Pern series, but rather through her book Restoree and then this book, which were both sat upon my aunt's shelves. I was impressed then with the depth of her writing, and felt immediate kinship with Helva. I was astonished to learn it has been first written and published in 1969, as it had not dated at all despite the intervening 20 years. Reading it again recently, astonishingly it still has not dated, putting to shame many of the offerings of more modern writers. Intelligent space opera, with futuristic space ships and space stations powered by sentient minds and human souls, romance, and adventure, this is a book that introduces its readers to a whole new universe.