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{{work}}
In [[The Future]], infants with severe birth defects are placed in self-contained life-support shells in which they will spend their entire lives, and are trained to become the "brain" of a starship, into which they will be connected in such a way that the ship is effectively their body.
McCaffrey first visited the setting in a series of short stories written in the 1960s, collected in ''[[The Ship Who Sang]]'' in 1969.
The setting was revived in the 1990s by [[Baen Books]] for a series of co-written novels: ''PartnerShip'' (1992, with Margaret Ball), ''The Ship Who Searched'' (1992, with [[Mercedes Lackey]]), ''The City Who Fought'' (1993, with [[S.M. Stirling]]), and ''The Ship Who Won'' (1994, with Jody Lynn Nye). These were followed by ''The Ship Errant'' (1996, a direct sequel to ''The Ship Who Won'', by Jody Lynn Nye solo) and ''The Ship Avenged'' (1997, a direct sequel to ''The City Who Fought'', by S. M. Stirling solo).
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{{tropelist}}
* [[Artificial Limbs]]: One of the characters in ''The Ship Who Searched'' is a research scientist whose field is prosthetic limbs.
* [[Badass Bookworm]]: Both the Brains and the Brawns.
* [[Brains and Brawn]]: In name if not in spirit; each "brainship" is assigned a "brawn" who acts as companion, ambassador and muscle for the immobile ship. Averted because brawns are also required to be pretty smart.
* [[Can't Have Sex Ever]]: A problem for any brain and brawn pair who fall in love, which is one reason the administrators try to avoid it happening. In ''The Ship Who Searched'', {{spoiler|the protagonist, after becoming very rich, deals with the problem by commissioning a remote-controlled full-sensory human body}}.
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* [[Future Music]]: In ''The Ship Who Sang''.
* [[Go Mad From the Isolation]]: In one of the short stories, hijackers capture several brainships and remove from each the life-support shell containing the "brain", leaving the shellperson inside unable to see, hear, or otherwise sense anything outside the shell. At least one goes mad before rescue arrives. In direct response to this incident, subsequent shells are designed with integrated audiovisual inputs.
* [[Handicapped Badass]]: Helva of course.
* [[Kill Me Now or Forever Stay Your Hand]]: In one of the short stories, brainship Helva learns that one of the crewpeople at her home spaceport has fallen in love with her. He tells her that he's afraid if she lets him get too close to her, he'll succumb to an urge to crack open her life support unit, killing her, in an attempt to get at the real her (a thing that has happened before in comparable cases). She deliberately eggs him on, confident that she knows him well enough to be sure he won't go through with it. {{spoiler|She's right; he doesn't.}}
* [[Klingons Love Shakespeare]]: Or rather methane-breathing [[Starfish Aliens]] do.
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* [[Man in the Machine]]
* [[Mindlink Mates]]: Helva and Niall end up as this in "Honeymoon".
* [[Moral Dilemma]]: In the beginning of ''Ship Who Sang'' there is a well-shown portrayal of the ethical controversy that would arise if such technology really appeared in an apparently more or less liberal society.
* [[Name's the Same]]: There are two shellpeople named Simeon - one appearing in ''Partner Ship'' and the other in ''The City Who Fought'' (also having a cameo in ''The Ship Who Won''). Both are managers (albeit for different locations) and even their designations are fairly close - VS-895 and SSS-900-C, respectively
* [[No Conservation of Energy]]: Played with in ''The Ship Who Won''.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Science Fiction Literature]]
[[Category:The Ship Who...]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ship Who..., The}}
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