TY  - BOOK
AU  - Simak,Clifford D.
AU  - Jackson
TI  - The Shipshape Miracle
T2  - Produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, January 1963
AV  - PS 
PY  - 2020///
CY  - Salt Lake City, UT
PB  - Project Gutenberg
KW  - Science fiction
KW  - Short stories
KW  - Diamond mines and mining -- Fiction
KW  - Space ships -- Fiction
KW  - Life on other planets -- Fiction
KW  - Castaways -- Fiction
KW  - Cyborgs -- Fiction
N1  - Release date is 2020-02-06; Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net; Original publication data not identified
N2  - "The Shipshape Miracle" by Clifford D. Simak is a science fiction novella written during the early 1960s. The story centers around Cheviot Sherwood, a castaway stranded on an uninhabited planet, contemplating his fate while unknowingly harboring a wealth of diamonds. The book explores themes of identity, humanity, and the merging of man and machine through its foundational premise of a sentient spaceship.  In the narrative, Sherwood finds himself in a precarious situation after his spaceship breaks down, rendering him marooned. While grappling with his isolation, he unexpectedly encounters a mysterious black ship that reveals itself to be alive and capable of thought. The ship, which has merged with the consciousness of its human creator, offers Sherwood a way out. However, it soon becomes clear that Sherwood himself might become a part of the ship's existence, as the entity has been searching for someone like him—one who would not be missed in the world. The story culminates in a tension-filled realization of what it means to lose one's humanity in the pursuit of survival and a deeper exploration of the idea that not all miracles are beneficial. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
UR  - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61333
ER  -