The Ship Who Searched

by Anne McCaffrey

Other authorsMercedes Lackey (Author)

Paperback, 1992

Status

Available

Call number

Fic SF McCaffrey

Publication

Baen (1992), Mass Market Paperback, 320 pages

Description

Successful SF writer Anne McCaffrey and hot fantasy author Mercedes Lackey collaborate on this heartwarming tale of a little girl's search for a long-dead race of starfarers--set in the same universe as McCaffrey's bestsellers The Ship Who Sang and PartnerShip. When seven-year-old Tia falls mysteriously ill while on an archaeological dig with her parents, she attributes it to the EsKays, a race whose artifacts are scattered throughout the galaxy, but whose fate remains an enigma.

User reviews

LibraryThing member SunnySD

An unusual childhood and a rare and ancient alien disease combine forces to make Tia a perfect candidate for the brainship program. She may be a courier with a brawn and a ship of her own, but Tia has a special mission - finding the Eskays. A goal that just might prove to be fatal.

I think Tia may

be my favorite Brainship.

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LibraryThing member fastfinge

I've noticed a strong pattern in all of the Anne McCaffrey books I've tried to read. If she wrote the book herself, I never like it. If, however, the book
has a co-author, I usually find it at least good. This book, co-authord by an author who's solo works I've already liked and read, is excelent.

I've read
all of the other books in the ship series, and this is by far the best of the bunch. If you don't plan on reading the entire series, at least read this
book. It stands just fine by itself; don't worry that it's book 3. The rest of the series isn't bad either, but I could take it or leave it.

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LibraryThing member silentq

Decided to re-read this after watching the movie Agora since the
main character in the book is also called Hypatia, after the main character of the movie. The history given is slightly different in each case though.
This is my favourite of all the Brain-Brawn books, McCaffrey writes them all with

co-authors but Lackey was already a favourite of mine before I found this book. It made me cry, again, Hypatia's story is very sad at the beginning. She's paralyzed by an alien virus when she's 7 years old and living with her parents at an archeological dig on a barren world. Usually severely disabled people or ones with birth defects are installed in and connected to space ships or stations at birth, but an exception was made for her. She bonds with her Brawn as they do courier service for the Institute, tracking down artefact theives and plague sources. This read through, I caught the fact that the name of the investment company which Hypatia uses is made up of the last names of other authors, including another co-author in this series, as well as Tanya Huff.

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LibraryThing member LisaMaria_C

This is another of the "Brain and Brawn" series created by Anne McCaffrey in The Ship Who Sang. The premise behind the books is that in a future time, severely handicapped people are given a chance at a fulfilling life by becoming cyborgs: an entire city or a ship becomes their "body" that they

control.

Only that first book is solely written by McCaffrey--the others in the series are co-written by her or by others. Of those other books, this is my favorite--I love it just as much as the first, and this is among my favorite stories by either McCaffrey or Lackey. The reason is Tia, the "brain" part in this novel; I find her an appealing character, and I loved how this book dealt with her dilemma as a person cut off from touch but not the emotions of love.

This book also presents quite a departure for Mercedes Lackey--almost all her work is fantasy, not, like this one, science fiction. If you want to try more by her, Sacred Ground and Children of the Night, though not as popular as her Valdemar books, are in a contemporary setting--urban fantasy. Arrows of the Queen is her first Valdemar book, the series which she's best known for, just as for McCaffrey she's most famous for her Pern books, which begins in Dragonflight.

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LibraryThing member Karlstar

I enjoyed the first few books in this series. Even though the concept of a pair - ship+pilot is too similiar to the dragon+rider concept in her other novels, its still an interesting one and she makes an interesting story out of it.

LibraryThing member wyvernfriend

Though sometimes outdated by modern tech, it was published in 1992. Written by two of my favourite writers, this is one of my favourites of the Ship Who sequence.

Hypathia Cade is a young precious kid who lives with her family on a small archaeological dig. The worst possible thing happens when she

contracts a virus that causes her to become paralysed from the neck down. At seven she really isn't a candidate for the Brain project, where young children with incurable conditions are offered a chance to become enclosed brains who are living computers who run ships and other large complex spaces. She adapts well and finds herself finding a lot of freedom among the stars. She's only missing one freedom.

I read it when it first came out and re-reading wasn't an unpleasant experience. I also loved the names of the Investment firm: Friesner, Sherman, Stirling and Huff... I got a smile while thinking where they got those names from!

Enjoyable, if a little dated.

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LibraryThing member suteko

This was a lot of fun to reread. Like all of Ms McCaffrey's books it was well worth reading more than one time. I am working my way through this series again and remembering why I adore her BB books.

LibraryThing member gypsysmom

I first discovered McCaffrey by reading The Ship who Sang and this book which is sort of a sequel was pretty decent but did not resonate as much as the original. (I heard McCaffrey read from The Ship who Sang when she came to the Winnipeg SF Convention years ago and I still remember how she choked

up as did a lot of us audience members.)

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LibraryThing member ashroc

Very enjoyable space opera

LibraryThing member EmScape

In McCaffrey's Brainships universe, children who are born with an immobilizing or other severe disability are raised and educated to be the 'brains' that steer Starships. They are also assigned a "Brawn" to be their companion and assist with activities that can only be done by a person with a

functional body.
Our protagonist, Hypatia, is older than most children assigned to this program when a virus causes her to become immobile (not a spoiler, per se, as it happens in the first couple chapters and if you've read any previous book in the series, you could tell this was going to happen). She and her caregivers have to fight to get her in the program, but she takes to it like a natural. Having actually had a functional body for the first few years of her life, she has a different experience than her other fellow Brainships, which makes it difficult to match her with a Brawn.
Hypatia ("Tia") is a great character, and it's fascinating to follow her as she adjusts to her new world and attempts to carry on her parents' archaeological work in discovering other alien species. This is probably my favorite in the Brainships series and Mercedes Lackey does a great job of building on McCaffrey's world.

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LibraryThing member zjakkelien

The ship who searched is about the brain ship Hypatia, or Tia. She is an exceptional brain ship, because she was quite old when she became a shell person: 7. She is interested in archeology and finds a brawn who is interested in the same. Together they get into a few scrapes...

The book was written

in typical McCaffrey style, not over-emotional, but compelling nonetheless. I love this world with people who become ships and I like seeing how they interact with the world. The story itself is not overly brilliant, it is more a collection of adventures that show off the world, much like the first book. Only in this book, the adventures are more connected. I thought the ending was a bit too happy, but other than that, this was a very nice book.

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