The Ship Who Sang - Anne McCaffrey

The Ship Who Sang
Anne McCaffrey
Del Rey
Copyright: 1969 (I think?)
978-0552091152

The Amazon.com product description:

Helva had been born human, but only her brain had been saved and implanted into the titanium body of an intergalactic scout ship. But first she had to choose a human partner, to soar with her through the daring adventures and exhilarating escapades in space.

Not the most exciting of descriptions, but worth looking past and reading the book. The Ship Who Sang is the first book in the Brain Ships series. I have to admit that for a long time, this hasn't been one of my favorite Anne McCaffrey novels. However, I'm not sure why at this point. When I was reading it this time, I loved it!

The Ship Who Sang is classic Anne McCaffrey science fiction - Story and Technology well blended. As well, it's aged very well. Little of the story seems dated - although there are a couple of elements near the beginning that I found to be a bit uncomfortable.

A couple of aspects of how things function seem to be contradicted by how it works in the later Brain Ships books like The Ship Who Searched, but some of that can be explained by how much time has passed between the settings of the books I think.

A second note with The Ship Who Sang is that there is a short story forming a sequel of sorts in the anthology Get off the Unicorn. At the moment, other than knowing that the name of that story is "Honeymoon", I can't remember anything more about it - or rather, the things I do remember about it would class as spoilers for this book. Safer not to say anything I think.

Either way, a read I really enjoyed, with a reminder that there is more in this universe as well. I'm looking forward to reading/re-reading some of the other stories too.