Get Off the Unicorn is a 1977 collection of short science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 by Anne McCaffrey

Anne McCaffrey

Anne Inez McCaffrey was an American-born Irish writer, best known for her Dragonriders of Pern series. Over the course of her 46 year career she won a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award...

. Twelve of the fourteen stories were previously published in various magazines and anthologies.

The title is derived by accident from "Get of the Unicorn" in the bestial sense of offspring (get

Get (animal)

The get of an animal are the offspring of a particular individual male animal. It is derived from the term "begat", meaning to father offspring. The term is frequently used in horse breeding and informal animal husbandry to describe the offspring of a stallion.-See also: *Animal breeding*Horse...

). There was "a misprint in the Ballantine roster of unfilled contracts." After inquiries about the misprinted title,

editor Judy-Lynn del Rey

Judy-Lynn del Rey

Judy-Lynn del Rey née Benjamin was a science fiction editor.Born with dwarfism, she was a fan and regular attendee at science fiction conventions and worked her way up the publishing ladder, starting with work at the science fiction magazine Galaxy.Judy-Lynn was friends with Lester del Rey and...

 "asked me what I could do about that theme", McCaffrey says in the introduction.
Contents

• "Lady in the Tower" (1959)
• "A Meeting of Minds" (1969)
• "Daughter" (1971)
• "Dull Drums" (1973)
• "Changeling"
• "Weather on Welladay" (1969)
• "The Thorns of Barevi" (1970)
• "Horse From a Different Sea"
• "The Great Canine Chorus" (1971)
• "Finder's Keeper" (1973)
• "A Proper Santa Claus" (1973)
• "The Smallest Dragonboy" (1973) —later in the all-Pern collection A Gift of Dragons (2002)
• "Apple" (1969) —soon in the first Talents book To Ride Pegasus (1973)
• "Honeymoon" —"ties up the loose end" of the Helva & Niall story about the first "brainship
  Brainship
  A brainship is a fictional concept of an interstellar starship. A brainship is made by inserting the disembodied brain and nervous system of a human being into a life-support system, and connecting it surgically to a series of computers via delicate synaptic connections The brain "feels" the ship ...
  
  ".

Several of these short stories were the bases for novels that McCaffrey completed much later. "Lady in the Tower" was expanded to become The Rowan

The Rowan

The Rowan is the first book in "The Tower and the Hive" series by Anne McCaffrey. It is set in the universe of the "Pegasus" trilogy, against a backdrop of a technologically advanced society in which telepathy, psychokinesis and other psychic Talents have become scientifically accepted and...

and "A Meeting of Minds" was incorporated into Damia

Damia

Damia may refer to:* Damia, a place in Jordan; see City of Adam and Damia Bridge*Damia , a Greek deity similar to Demeter and the Roman Bona Dea...

, both in the so-called Tower and Hive series. "The Thorns of Barevi" became Freedom's Landing, first in the Catteni series

Catteni Series

The Catteni Series is a tetralogy of science fiction novels by Anne McCaffrey. In this universe, humans are slaves of aliens, the humanoid Catteni...

, and "Finder's Keepers" became part of the Talents story

To Ride Pegasus

To Ride Pegasus is a collection of four science fiction stories by Anne McCaffrey, published by Ballantine Books in 1973 and later under its Del Rey imprint....

.