The Ship Who Sang (1969) is a science fiction novel by American writer Anne McCaffrey, a fix-up of five stories published 1961 to 1969.

Taking that option, physical growth is stunted, the body is encapsulated in a titanium life-support shell with capacity for computer connections, and the person is raised for "one of a number of curious professions.

As such, their offspring would suffer no pain, live a comfortable existence in a metal shell for several centuries, and perform unusual service for Central Worlds".

[11] After medication and surgery, general education, and special training, shell children come of age with heavy debts which they must work off in order to become free agents.

They are employed as the "brains" of spacecrafts ("brainships"), hospitals, industrial plants, mining planets, and so on, even cities—in the books, primarily spaceships and cities.

A brainship is able to operate independently but is usually employed in partnership with one "normal" person called a "brawn" who travels inside the ship much as a pilot would.

McCaffrey explained the origin of the brainship premise to SFFworld in a 2004 interview: "I remember reading a story about a woman searching for her son's brain, it had been used for an autopilot on an ore ship and she wanted to find it and give it surcease.

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).

"[16] The 1960s stories feature one shell person, Helva, who becomes brainship XH-834: All but the novella "Dramatic Mission" are novelettes, short fiction in 7500 to 17,500 words.

[a] The American Library Association in 1999 cited The Ship Who Sang and the two early Pern trilogies (Dragonriders and Harper Hall), when McCaffrey received the annual Margaret A. Edwards Award for her "lifetime contribution in writing for teens".