story identification - Kid wants to pilot space liner, is too ugly

This is a story from sometime in or before the early 1980s. The gist is that there's a kid who spends his whole life dreaming about being the pilot of a space-going passenger craft. However he can't because all the pilots are tall, handsome, square-jawed and so on, and he's a complete six-stone weakling and ugly as sin, albeit very skilled.

However he triumphs in the end because it turns out that these ships are actually piloted by guys like him, hidden in the bowels of the ship and plumbed in to the computers, and the good-looking fly-boy types are actually all as dumb as rocks and just there for show, and to make the passengers feel comfortable.

I have a feeling that this might have been a one-off strip in 2000AD comic, although it could also have been in an SF anthology of some kind. Ringing any bells ?

Answer

Sounds a lot like the Brain & Brawn series from Anne McCaffrey et alii (Wiki link)

The premise is that children who are deformed but with otherwise healthy brains can be transplanted into "shells" (a reinforced life support cylinder for the brain only), they become the "brains" of the ships. They are partnered with "brawns" who provide the physical part of the deal.

Comments

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