Becalmed in Hell - Larry Niven

 This short story first appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction in July 1965.

It has the same characters from the   "The Coldest Place". and carries off from that.

This is the second story that I understand Larry Niven had ever published.

 

The novelette revolves around the first manned mission to Venus.

Venus is a hostile environment with temperatures of 612 degrees & pressures up to 92 atmospheres.

Howie is one of the human crew members. The second character, Eric is the "Brain" of the ship.

 

Though the mission itself of exploring the planet is interesting, it's only briefly mentioned. The meat of the story centres on

the relationship between Eric & Howie.

 

Eric isn't AI. He appears to be human  .... or rather a brain & a nervous system which is connected to the ship. It seems that Eric was involved in a terrible accident years ago which almost killed him. Engineers were able to "save" him by hooking his brain and nerves to a spaceship.

Here is a description of poor Eric.

 

"Eric’s central nervous system, with the brain perched at the top and the spinal cord coiled in a loose spiral to fit more compactly into the transparent glass-and-sponge-plastic housing. Hundreds of wires from all over the ship led to the glass walls, where they were joined to selected nerves which spread like an electrical network from the central coil of nervous tissue and fatty protective membrane."

Toward the end of the mission, Eric reports  to Howie that he is unable to 'feel' the ramjets they need to get home. These jets are connected to the nerves that once moved his legs. In order to check the ship for any mechanical problems they are forced to land on Venus. Howie however, finds nothing wrong with the jets and starts to suspect that Eric is suffering from a paralyzing psychosis.

 

Howie presents a hypothesis: "I think you've got a case of what used to be called trigger anesthesia. A soldier who kills too often sometimes finds that his right index finger or even his whole hand has gone numb, as if it were no longer a part of him... Subconsciously you've stopped believing that the rams can feel like a part of you, which they were designed to do. So you've persuaded yourself that you don't feel anything." 

This story is really interesting given its date of 1965. The film 2001 a space odyssey by Arthur C Clarke was released in 1968. Both use sentient ships.

The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey is another great example as are many of the novels of Ian M. Banks.

 

"The ship who sang" is particularly interesting.

Anne wrote these stories in the 1960's

They feature one person, Helva, who becomes brainship XH-834

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