Soulminder

by Timothy Zahn

In this new book by the author of Blackcollar and the #1 New York Times-bestselling Heir to the Empire, Timothy Zahn imagines a technology that could alter our perception of life and death forever.

For Dr. Adrian Sommers, a split second of driving while distracted leads to tragedy-and obsession. His family destroyed, he devotes his entire being to developing Soulminder, a technology that might have saved his son as he wavered on the edge of death. Sommers's vision is to capture a dying person's life essence and hold it safely in stasis while physicians heal the body from injury or disease. Years of experimentation finally end in success—but those who recognize Soulminder's possibilities almost immediately corrupt its original concept to pursue dangerous new frontiers: body-swapping, obstruction of justice, extortion, and perhaps even immortality.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Ebooks, Dystopia, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fantasy

326 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Timothy Zahn attended Michigan State University, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in physics in 1973. He then moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and achieved an M.S. degree in physics in 1975. While he was pursuing a doctorate in physics, his adviser became ill and died. Zahn never completed the doctorate. In 1975 he had begun writing science fiction as a hobby, and he became a professional writer. He and his wife Anna live in Bandon, Oregon. They have a son, Corwin Zahn.

Reviews

[CS · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bullet Review:

More episodic in nature, the premise of this collection is "What if instead of dying, you get a second chance?" While many of the stories are mere mysteries in the vein of several plots in Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot", the book does take time to bring up some real mind benders.

Lacking in female presence and favoring Zahn's intricate, well-thought out plots, this book is one of a type I don't see much these days but were prevalent in the 60's and 70's. 4-stars is probably too high, but 3-stars is definitely too low.

Finally, a summer of love read I DO NOT hate.

Full Review:

Dr. Adrian Sommers and Dr. Jessica Sands are working on the "Soulminder" machine - a device that maps your "Mullner Traces" (I imagine it as a "fingerprint" or "driver's license") so that if you die, instead of your "soul" going to the great unknown, it is trapped and held. Initially, the device was created out of Sommers' desire to save his 5-year-old son, who tragically died in a car accident, but it quickly gets warped into a way to steal bodies, commit crimes, perform torture, and imbibe in illegal substances.

One thing I want to make abundantly clear is that this book is more of an anthology; the stories do feature crossover characters and similar surroundings, but the chapters aren't really chapters in your typical book sense.

I am an undeniable Timothy Zahn fangirl. I have been to at least 4 of his book signings, and I pretty much own every one of his books at this point. My love for all things Zahn started with Heir to the Empire, but it evolved to his other sci-fi explorations as well with the Conqueror's Trilogy, Deadman Switch, and more.

Soulminder is one of his more recent releases, and it's a departure slightly from Zahn's typical story: the one with good, well-thought out, competent characters who face off with some "bad guy" (who may not be all that bad after all) in an intricate plot. This is more like if your writing teacher gave you the scenario: Imagine a world where you could come back from the dead after having your "soul" held in limbo. It's very much a book I remember reading a lot of from back in the 60's, 70's and 80's, but doesn't seem to appear much these days.

This was a fun journey, just to see how Zahn would answer that question - which scenarios could he come up with and how would they flow? We still have Zahn characters - competent types who think logically and can be swayed with logical, cogent arguments from other characters - and we definitely see the Zahn Plotlines too (he has said he plans out his plots in an outline form, and that attention to detail shows because for the most part, his plots make sense). Zahn's scenarios were ones that I pretty much expected - body stealing, torture, murdered - but I will say, I feel that the topic could have been pushed harder, explored more thoroughly.

Are we "playing God" like the Reverend Harper suggests by holding a person's "soul"? What really is the "soul" in this case? What do the Mullner traces mean? What are the physical repercussions of being held in limbo? Are they similar to a person being in a coma? What if the body could not be repaired - is it euthanasia for releasing the "soul"? Or is that murder? Does cancer exist anymore?

What does this mean for people who fall below the poverty line and cannot afford Soulminder technology or the massive funds needed to repair a body? Would the government be required to provide this under Health Care coverage? Who is subsidizing it?

What happens when Sands and Sommers die and the company is out of their hands? What does it mean having so little government control over the technology? Is there any other industry or precedence for this?

How do other cultures perceive Soulminder? Muslims? Hindus? Buddhists? Sikhs? Others that I can't even think of? Is it an abomination or a blessing?

These are just a few questions I came up with after reading this book. It would have been nice to see more of them addressed, though for the Soulminder Thought Experiment, I am willing to negotiate that having the book generate the questions in me is nearly as important as it addressing the questions itself.

Up until this point, my Summer of Love Challenge has been somewhat of a bust; I am glad that "Soulminder" kept me interested and intrigued. It may not have pushed things far enough, it may have relied more on Zahn's standard plots, but I was always intrigued in where the story was going and wanted to read more. (Hence why I could finish in a little over a week!) This probably won't be for everyone, but if you want to do a thought experiment, give this a whirl!

[Carly · Rating 3 out of 5]

~3.5

Adrian Sommer hasn't been the same since the car crash that destroyed his family. Ever since, he has been obsessed with a single project: the creation of a device that he calls "Soulminder." Sommer believes in the soul as a single, indivisible entity that is expelled from the body during death. If the soul can be trapped and held, then perhaps it can be safely preserved while a body is healed. Then those impossible, untimely deaths--like the death of a child after a car accident--can be staved off a little longer.

Sommer is convinced that Kirlian photography--what he terms "Mullner traces" after James Mullner--can be used to attract and capture the soul. With the help of the engineer Jessica Sands, Sommer creates his device, which in turn leads to the creation of a (for-profit) company, Soulminder. But the rather simple-minded and idealistic Sommer has no premonitions of where his invention will lead, from body-switching serial killers to witnesses who can speak in court about their own murders, to recreational body-visits and more. Soulminder is less a novel than a series of short-stories connected by a single premise. It starts with the creation of the device and then begins to explore the use--and misuse--of a device that holds within it the absolute power over life and death.

Soulminder is an enjoyable read, but I think I ended up with more questions about the assumptions of the story than the dilemmas that Zahn poses. Zahn's definition of the soul is never made clear, but it seems to include most aspects of personality and all memories other than muscle memory. If so, then where does the hippocampus or subcortex or the rest of the cortex fit in? In addition, there is the complexity of when the soul is released. The story seems to conflate physical trauma with brain death: as far as I can tell, the soul flees whenever the body dies, which means that for various bodyswitching tasks, the Soulminder techs damage the body to the point of death over and over. And if the Soulminder techs are indeed damaging the body so that the soul will flee, what happens with all the cumulative harm they do? I really wish that Zahn had explored these issues.

The picaresque structure of the book means that most of the cast changes each chapter. However, rather surprisingly, it was the main characters that felt particularly flat to me. Jessica Sands acts as the perfect foil for the protagonist Sommer, and basically exists to suggest the ideas and beliefs that Sommer finds morally abhorrent. Sommer, on the other hand, seems to act as the mouthpiece for the author, but unfortunately, I found our opinionated, self-righteous moral arbiter rather tiresome. While I found myself constantly disagreeing with Sommer, the story itself seemed to treat everything he did as ethical, even when the same actions are considered unacceptable when performed by others. My favourite character was the cynical security advisor, who managed to combine an interesting mixture of jaded practicality and idealism.

Soulminder's entire premise is an exploration of the grey areas and slippery slopes of the technology, and I think Zahn has a lot of interesting and thoughtful points. At the same time, the use of Sommer as the mouthpiece of morality limited my patience with the plot. I think my biggest disagreement with Sommer is a belief that is never really challenged within the story: that Soulminder's monopoly over the technology is not only possible, but is somehow the best of all alternatives. Sommer and Sands "want to maintain control over how our invention is used," and the threat of governmental control is treated as the self-explanatory ultimate evil.

Right.
Because I totally trust a monopolistic, for-profit company more than the government.
(And no, that doesn't imply that I trust the government.)

The assumption seems to be that the "best" outcome is for our righteous and moral hero to have absolute power, and that governmental control, even through legislative limits, is the greatest of all evils. To do Soulminder justice, it does indeed struggle sporadically with this issue, but only through the protagonist's self-doubts about whether "absolute power corrupts absolutely." The scenario doesn't even strike me as particularly likely, as I can't imagine such an explosive technology would remain monopolistic for long, and competition would have made moot many of the issues that Zahn presents. In fact, my conclusion from the book is that such technology should be extended to as many people as possible, for it is at its most terrifying when it is concentrated.

At the same time, Zahn's vision is thoughtful and acute. He challenges beliefs without ever quite stepping into dogmatism. Despite certain issues with his perspective, I think the book got me thinking about some of the complexities he describes, and the ways that an apparently benign technology can be twisted and perverted into a terrible and absolute power over life and death.

Excerpted from my review on Booklikes

~~I received this ebook through NetGalley from the publisher, Open Road Integrated Media, in exchange for my honest review.~~

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this book through Goodreads First Reads.

The idea of the story was interesting enough and the writing was decent, even though I thought some use of words to describe a way a character spoke became repetitive, overall I thought it was forgettable. There was really nothing wrong with it but once I finished the book I didn't think much more about it and just moved on to read something else. It's unfortunate when I feel this way about a book and I feel I should say more about it but nothing else really comes to mind.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fix-up novel, an expansion of a series of novellas that Zahn wrote for Stanley Schmidt's Analog magazine in the late 1980s - early '90s, so some of the political observations and much of the level of technology (notably phones and computers) is a little jarringly anachronistic for a near-future set book. It progresses across a number of years, but the society and technology seem to remain static. I thought the "soul" concept was never well-explained, as it was more of a personality-memory-consciousness recording that was being minded, nothing mystical or of a higher power about it, like Robert Sawyer did with The Terminal Experiment or Connie Willis incorporated in Passage. Zahn doesn't spend much time pondering the death or souls concepts but instead looks at the legal and ethical aspects and potential permutations of hijacking bodies to commit crimes (or escape punishment for doing so) or to prolong life by body-swapping and how unscrupulous corporations and governments and individuals could capitalize on such practices to their own advantage. The points of view switch to different characters across the seven story sections, with the core developers of the process and leaders of the Soulminder, Doctors Sommer (Sommers on the back cover summary), Sands, and Blanchard, as well as sec chief Everly, company linking them. It's a well-written, interesting, and thought-provoking progression of puzzlers, but not too deep or ground-breaking.

[Yzabel Ginsberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

(I got a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

3.5 stars.

Mostly I liked the dilemmas that the Soulminder invention itself presented: a tool born from a dream, from a ruined family, in the hopes of helping other people, but whose use quickly gets perverted for recreational or even oppressive means. The aime behind the Soulminder project was almost too innocent, so much that I could only see it getting twisted at some point or other.

The novel explores some of those aspects (there would be more) through a series of "chapters" that read more like connected short stories. Soulminder and its creators, especially Sommer, remain a connecting thread, but they're not necessarily the main protagonists. This structure was surprising at first, but I quickly got used to it, as it allowed me to see the whole project through different sets of eyes: its scientists', its doctors', its patients', those of people trying to abuse it, too...

The downside was that a lot of characters felt flat, not developed enough. Perhaps understandable for minor characters who did not appear a lot; less forgiveable when it was Sommer and Sands themselves, as red threads, who did not manage to make me more invested. At times, their duo may have read too much like a convenient device, one unknowingly opening doors to abuse so that the other could point out what could go wrong (and was proved invariably right). On the other hand, I took quite a liking to Frank Everly, whose take on security matters and efficient, though jaded views made more vivid in my opinion.

Soulminder is also one of those weird kinds of books that you quickly get tired of, in that you don't feel like reading more than a few pages at once... and then you find yourself getting back to it half an hour later, wanting to read more no matter what. I have no idea what this is called, or if it even has a name, but it's how it felt for me.

This said, I still enjoyed it as a whole.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book is an instant genre classic. An inspiring mix of Michael Crichton's mastery of the science in science fiction and Robert Heinlein's mastery of the sociology of the future, this book tells the story of an invention that changes the course of the future and how humanity reacts to it.

The protagonist reflects Ian Malcolm's classic line, "...your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should." He creates an amazing invention that will save millions of lives and revels in his success only to have the reality of the ways people will misuse the technology brought rudely to his attention. Then he steps up and takes responsibility and does his best to ameliorate the damage that has been done and prevent further abuses.

The characters are rich, fully developed and likable. I appreciate that after the initial story is fully told, we get to hear the unfolding from new characters. This is a great book and left me with a full day book hangover!

[Marlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published at Reading Reality

Soulminder completely surprised me, and I mean that in a good way. It’s the first thing I’ve read by Timothy Zahn, but I doubt it will be the last.

This one makes you think, one of the goals that science fiction often aspires to but does not always achieve.

What if you could live forever? What if anyone could live forever, if they were rich enough, or lucky enough (or unprincipled enough)? How would society change if signing up for immortality was just an extension of your health insurance?

Soulminder is a story about the road to Hell being paved with excellent intentions. Even humanitarian intentions. But it also shows how, as another saying goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. (And I realize I’ve probably corrupted the quote, but with good intentions).

Dr. Adrian Sommers spends ten years of his life searching for a way to preserve the human essence, call it life force or soul, while the body is being repaired. He sees it as a way of sparing other parents the anguish he suffered when his little boy died, not because he had a deadly disease, but because he suffered in his injuries in an accident where conditions meant that they couldn’t be reached in time.

If his Soulminder existed, David’s “soul” could have been trapped until his body could be rescued and treated.

The tragedy for Dr. Sommers is that when he finally brings his dream to fruition, it turns into a nightmare. A nightmare that presents him with daily ethical dilemmas and puts him in the direct path of every governmental bureaucracy and intelligence agency on the planet.

His engineer partner doesn’t care about the ethics, she just wants to make money and grab her own slice of immortality.

So Sommers watches as his dream is perverted from a better way to treat accident victims and cancer patients into, among other things, a way of creating mindless slaves and a rent-a-body industry.

Until he finally manages to draw a line in the sand, and make it stick. No matter what the cost. Money and power are, after all, not worth selling his soul.

Escape Rating A-: This is a hard story, because everything goes wrong. Even worse, it all goes wrong in ways that are easy to predict once the snowball starts rolling down the hill. It’s the cycle of action and reaction that kept me enthralled.

I knew things would only go from bad to worse, but it’s the way they go that’s inventive. Immortality as a commodity was, perhaps is, bound to produce some serious inequities, but the ways in which the original device is perverted sometimes beggar the imagination. Until they happen in the narrative, and then the reader thinks, “of course they would”.

And Sommers keeps saying that it can’t go on, or further down the path to hell, and then buries his head in the sand again. He’s a smart man but seldom owns up to the fact that his partner is keeping him distracted on purpose. It’s easier just to let her.

The political infighting, and the moral quagmires, kept this story interesting. Occasionally, it felt like the episodes of various events weren’t completely connected. They felt like snapshots more than a complete narrative, but the overall picture was stark and clear.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have heard so many great things about this author, who has written more than forty science fiction novels, but I was disappointed with Soulminder.

It tells the story of an invention by Adrian Sommer and Jessica Sands of a method to isolate the soul from the body. The "Soulminder" - like a heart-lung machine, works to “trap” the essence of a person who has died, so that if the body can be repaired, the soul can then be put back into it. The Soulminder becomes mankind’s ticket to immortality.

It’s an idea that’s instantly popular and in demand, and immediately creates complications. Because it is an expensive procedure, is it fair that it only be available to the rich? Should its use be subject to government controls? What are the implications for religious beliefs?

In a short time, the ethics of the Soulminder becomes even more complicated. It begins to be used for witness testimony, with the dead temporarily borrowing a body of a volunteer to tell the court who killed them, during which time the soul of the body being borrowed is held in the soul trap. The rich and bored decide that borrowing bodies is a good way to experience extreme sports or extreme drugs. Criminals now have a new way to hide: they can steal other bodies in which to place their souls, killing off the original owners. Terrorist government regimes come up with the idea of torturing people, killing them, and then bringing them back to torture them again. In short, the possibilities for the use and especially the abuse of the Soulminder are endless.

Sommer is desperate to return the Soulminder to its original life-saving medical purpose, and to eliminate the corrupt or deleterious uses of his invention. Does he have to destroy it entirely, or is there some other option?

Evaluation: The narrative really felt flat for me. The issues raised by Soulminder should have been interesting from an intellectual standpoint, but they were just paraded out one after another in a meh-like fashion, and I never got excited about them. Nor did I get invested in the characters. Most of what we learn about Sommer and Sands is that they work too many hours and they “growl” a lot (as in, "‘Oh certainly,’ he growled” or “‘I’m not sure,’ she growled." A search through my e-book edition yielded 39 instances of growling….) There were a few allusions to the fact that people who, having gone through the soulminder, reported a tunnel with light at the end, but of course, since they come back to life, they in essence abandon the tunnel, so that possibly-intriguing plot line gets abandoned as well.

Rating: 2.5/5

[Jacob Canale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Soulminder was an amazing book. Timothy Zahn provided a massive and addictive plot by introducing a wide variety of character, side stories, and points of view about the main story. Through deep description and intense plot twists, the author managed to tie all of this books aspects together in the end. I enjoyed this book because of its ingenious combination of political drama, action packed events, character self-struggles and world-changing decision making. This was the perfect mixture of science fiction and the cold reality of greed and political corruption. The abuses and corruption of the Soulminder equipment within the story were deeply disturbing, but fixed by the innovative mind of main character Dr. Adrian Sommer. All in all this was a great book with a mind-boggling ending.

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a series of interconnected stories with reoccurring characters, Timothy Zahn follows Dr. Adrian Sommers from a self-absorbed, albeit altruistic inventor to the head of company that constantly needs to think through the implications and consequences his success has wrought on the world. Along the way he gains some invaluable allies that care for the concept and dream of Soulminder as he does. In the end this allows him to succeed in his last mission to preserve the escence of his dream. A work that will make you think through the implications of new technology and the impact they have on the world.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

When it comes to stories outside the realm of Star Wars, Timothy Zahn writes some pretty interesting sci-fi tales. Soulminder is no different. However, Zahn’s approach to the story is unique. Rather than focusing on a single character or a strange civilization, he tackles the outcome of an invention. The crux of the story is what happens when you invent something so revolutionary that it changes the entire world? More importantly, how do you keep said invention from being misused? In Soulminder, they create a device that can store souls. The applications for the device are limitless, as are the abuses of such a powerful technology.

As an important as the invention of Soulminder is, there’s still a main character. Adrian Sommer is a doctor and a bit of a bleeding heart. The premature death of his son in a nasty car accident drives him to create a device that could have saved his son’s life. With the help of a talented electrical engineer named Jessica Sands, and years of trial and error, they manage to create a soul trap. With it, they can trap a soul when it leaves a person’s body. With the help of modern medicine, they’re able to repair a damaged body, and then transfer the soul back in, thus giving people a second chance on life. The invention makes them rich and famous, but with those trappings comes a heaping mountain of responsibility.

Half of the fun of the novel is seeing the simple idea become a complex monstrosity. There’s the way the device can be twisted for less than savory applications. There’s the political and legal fallout of the invention. Then there is the result of all these avenues crashing down on the inventors and forcing them to deal with the chaos they’ve unleashed. Given that the story doesn’t focus too much on deep characterization, the Soulminder device remains the primary driving force of the book. In fact the novel is very segmented in its delivery. The first part of the story is the development of the device. The second part is the formation of a company to support the invention. The third part focuses on the initial misuses of the device by other countries. The fourth part delves into further misuses and the out of control adoption by society. The fifth and sixth parts of the story setup the endgame, showing just how far things have gone, and forcing the inventors to try and wrest control back of their invention before the world is irrevocably changed for the worse.

The one bad thing about the story is the characters. They’re pretty shallow, and not a lot of time is spent on developing any of them. Adrian gets the most attention, and later on some new characters are brought in, but it’s never a character driven story. Hardly any of the characters get any physical descriptions whatsoever. Nevertheless, the story still gets by pretty good on the strength of the Soulminder device and its fallout. Again, this is a very plot driven story.

On the plus side, the segmented structure of the book makes this a very easy read. You can read the first few chapters and by the end of chapter two, it feels like a complete story. Each chunk has a nice beginning, middle and end as the overall idea of the Soulminder device progresses in its application. Toward the third quarter of the book, the focus character completely changes, making it feel like an entirely different story. Of course it eventually ties back in with the other characters, but it’s an interesting change up. On one hand the change of viewpoint character is off putting and maybe a little clunky, yet it is also refreshing.

In the end, seeing this device go from inception to out of control misuse is a very entertaining journey. Zahn explores how world changing ideas are not always a good thing. Sometimes brilliant ideas are just the start of a massive headache. The bigger the innovation, the more dangerous the outcome because change isn’t always a good thing and people don’t always change for the better. When you’re playing around with souls, you start playing around with some very dangerous concepts. In Soulminder, Zahn does an excellent job of exploring that concept and the horrors it can unleash. I give it a four out of five and recommend checking it out. It’s worth reading.

[Benjamin Espen · Rating 5 out of 5]

For Dr. Adrian Sommer, a split second of driving while distracted leads to tragedy—and obsession. His family destroyed, he devotes his entire being to developing Soulminder, a technology that might have saved his son as he wavered on the edge of death. Sommers’s vision is to capture a dying person’s life essence and hold it safely in stasis while physicians heal the body from injury or disease. Years of experimentation finally end in success—but those who recognize Soulminder’s possibilities almost immediately corrupt its original concept to pursue dangerous new frontiers: body-swapping, obstruction of justice, extortion, and perhaps even immortality.

Soulminder is a little different that the other books of Timothy Zahn that I have read. I picked it up in late December, and I started reading it immediately, but it didn't hook me. I turned to other things, then I came back to Soulminder in March. The more I read, the better it got. This book is not a page turner, but rather a slow burner.

Part of the reason for that is the structure. This work was expanded from a serialization in Analog magazine, with three of the chapters adapted from that previous publication. Accordingly, this isn't a traditional novel, with a continuous flow, but rather is more like a collection of novellas with common characters and a common theme, sometimes with separations of many years in between the events each chapter.

Another reason why this book is different is that it is a different kind of science fiction. For a long time, my working definition of hard sci-fi has been: the method of good "hard" science fiction leaves the reader usefully instructed in certain principles of physics or biology after reading a story that otherwise closely resembles a Western. Many of the best works in the field use this formula, but it isn't the only one that works.

Isaac Asimov had a three-part typology that explains some other ways:

In 1953, Isaac Asimov published an article titled "Social Science Fiction" in Modern Science Fiction. In that article, he stated that every science fiction plot ultimately falls into one of three categories: Gadget, Adventure, or Social.

Gadget: The focus of the story is the invention itself: How it comes to be invented, how it works, and/or what it is used for. The invention is the end result of the plot.

Adventure: The invention is used as a dramatic prop. It may be the solution to a problem, or it may be causing the problem itself, but the main focus is on the caper and how the invention's presence helps or hinders it.

Social: The focus of the story is on how the presence of the invention affects people's daily lives, whether for good or for ill. The chief distinction between this and the other two types is that the presence of the invention influences the plot rather than causing it or being the goal.

Soulminder is social science fiction in Asimov's model. There isn't any attempt to describe the scientific principles of Soulminder for the very simple reason that there aren't any. This is a technology that doesn't exist in our world, and we don't have anything that even vaguely approaches it. Thus, we can't learn about soul transfer like we learn about linguistics in The Way of the Pilgrim, or about orbital mechanics and extra-planetary habitats in The Martian. What we can learn about is what our world might be like if a technology like this existed.

The depth at which Zahn explores this question impressed me more and more as I read through Soulminder. My first hint that Zahn was up to something really interesting came in chapter two. Dr. Adrian Sommer, co-inventor of Soulminder, is on a televised panel with several religious media figures to debate the merits of his technology. Since I have a background in moral theology and moral philosophy, I found the stances each expert took to be plausibly within the range of acceptable opinion in their respective faiths, but mostly I found the whole exchange a little boring, since it was mostly a rehash of existing controversies in our world. However, it turns out the debate was really just a red herring for the really interesting question that comes up while Dr. Sommer is sitting in the green room during a commercial break: one of his clients has been caught in the soul trap after suffering an entirely expected third heart attack, but he also has an organ donor card and the hospital is about to start harvesting his organs, since he is legally dead.

On the one had, Dr. Sommer's client probably deserves a chance to be put back into his body once his infarcted heart has been dealt with. On the other hand, at least four people will benefit from the technically dead client's organs. On the gripping hand, it isn't at all clear that the client's heir/protege has pure motives when he insists that the legal precedents around organ donation be followed. This is very, very applied ethics.

And Dr. Sommer has a decision to make. He very much wants to do the right thing, even when he frequently doesn't know what that is. So he makes his decision, and he goes on, through the rest of the book, doing his best to make sure the moral monsters of the world can't take advantage of the power over life and death that he has created.

Earlier in chapter two, Dr. Sommer tries to enlist the help of the Reverend Tommy Lee Harper, a fiery televangelist who is staunchly opposed to Soulminder and all its works. Dr. Sommer suspects that Harper is a man of integrity, and Sommer is right, Harper has so much integrity that he won't help Sommer defend a technology Harper thinks is fundamentally wicked, and contrary to God's plan, no matter what the earthly stakes are.

Sommer closed his eyes briefly. “It’s not out of bad mice or bad fleas you make demons,” he quoted quietly, “but out of bad archangels.” “You and C.S. Lewis make my point for me,” Harper nodded. “Soulminder is an archangel, Doctor, so far as earthly creations go. I’m very much afraid that it’ll be beyond your ability to keep it from becoming a demon.”
...
For a long minute Harper gazed past Sommer, at the lights of the city stretching to the horizon. Then, slowly, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dr. Sommer,” he said, “but I can’t help you.” The knot in Sommer’s stomach retightened. “Why not?” he asked, fighting to keep his tone polite. “You see the evil in what Marsh is doing—” “But you ask me to support one evil to keep another from happening,” Harper interrupted him. “I can’t do that.”

The ethical dilemma at the hospital bed, and Zahn's portrayal of Rev. Harper, a man who would simply have been an obscurantist villain in many a book, convinced me that Zahn had written something truly compelling, a moral thriller.

Once I got into it, this book just kept getting better and better. The schemes, grift, and oppression that come into being just because Soulminder exists are breathtaking. Much of it is even plausibly high-minded. The professional witness program, spearheaded in my own great state of Arizona, offers up the bodies of volunteers to the souls of murder victims so that they can testify at their own trials. Justice will be done. However, it is never that simple, especially since only souls that had been rich enough in life to pay Soulminder's fees can be captured and returned, and professional witnesses tend to be the same kind of people who volunteer for drug safety trials. And that is the kind of program the United States governments run. There are plenty of less savory places in the world, and they have Soulminder facilities too. Harper's prediction has a lot going for it.

While I appreciate the moral realism with which Zahn approaches the likely consequences of soul transfer technology, I was also pleasantly surprised by some subtle philosophical points that seemed rather Thomist. For example, the body matters as much as the soul. If you find yourself in someone else's body, you can inherit their habits, emotions, and memories as well. Depending on who that person was, you may find yourself with some unwelcome side effects, like the crime lord who stole the body of a pious young Catholic who happened to share a resemblance, and then discovered that he unexpectedly felt guilty!

If you can persevere through an opening that is admittedly a bit slow [the first chapter was originally written in 1988 or 1989], you will find a work of surprising depth. Not exactly space opera, but worth your time.

[Matthew Renz · Rating 3 out of 5]

About a quarter of the way into the book I was wondering if I was going to finish it. The premise I thought was brilliant, but I found the execution lacking (in the beginning portion of the book). By the end of the book I could hardly put it down. We follow the ethical struggles of Adrian Sommers as he tries to implement this new life-saving technology into society. Sommers wants to use the ability to store people's "souls" while their body is repaired for good. Others want to abuse this ability for their own selfish ambitions.

All in all I enjoyed it. I think it is worth a read. If you're like me and find the first quarter or so pretty slow and poorly written, hang in there! The rest gets better!

[Marko · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's been a while since I read Zahn's novels, but they remain sort of a fallback for me: I happily pick one up every now and then as a break from my other reading. In Soulminder, Zahn develops a very typical what if? scenario that traditional science fiction is all about: what if we could trap human life force (or soul) from escaping the body when it dies - thus giving doctors more time to fix the body up and then restore the "soul" to it?

The novel explores the idea mainly through the eyes of a single protagonist, Dr. Adrian Sommers, who co-invents the device, driven by the death of his own son who might have been saved if only such technology had exited. The story spans a time period of about two decades and basically shows different episodes - occasionally through the eyes of other people affected by the technology - of how the Soulminder affects the society as a whole and how different forces start to distort it beyond its original intent.

Overall, it is a nice enough read, albeit I have to say that the lack of a strong over-arching story hurts it a little bit and it seems that Zahn could have made an effort to go a little bit deeper into the sociological and psychological changes that a technology like Soulminder would bring with it. As it is, the story is more "broad strokes" than an in-depth exploration of an idea.

Still, a good read!

[Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a huge fan of Mr. Zahn's work. Soulminder seemed a bit of a departure from his normal sci-fi. The premise of the book is intriguing for sure, and the writing, as always, is superb. The book is set up similarly to his Cobra series, with short chapters and forays into glimpses of the character's lives. I found myself wanting more of the story at the end of each chapter. It's a good read, I would recommend it.

[Janine Spendlove · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm probably biased since there's a character in this book named Colonel Janine Spendlove, but I loved it! Great read, made me think, and had an incredibly satisfying end I never would have predicted.

[Castle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was definitely a weird one for me. I was totally addicted to the concept of the book. The Soulminder machine trapping souls and society taking advantage of it. Loved that. There was also a lot of Biblical references and I always enjoy that. I was also very attached to the Character. The main character, Adrian Sommers, was a great character. A bit of a pushover but had strong morals. Everly was super cool character because he was an awesome at his. He was the head of security for Soulminder. Jessica Sands was annoying to me. I thought she would be the villain of the arc. But in the third act she disappeared. Blanchard was a cool character too. She had strong morals as well. The fact that people’s souls could switch into different bodies was a super cool idea. The reason I gave it four stars is because I was confused at certain points. Zahn kept pushing the reader around to new characters within chapters and it would leave me somewhat lost. I was always trying to figure out how these new characters had anything to do with Adrian. There was a really cool chapter with Nic and his wife Rosabel. That was probably my favorite chapter with the secondary characters. I found the ending a little bittersweet. I really liked Adrian Sommers big plan to kill himself, release the trapped souls into the light and to sacrifice himself as well. I didn’t like the fact that his friends save him from Soulminder and place him in a new body. That was the twist. Everyone in the world thinks that Adrian is dead but himself and his crew. But what about the Jacobi? Wouldn’t he know the truth? That was left open ended? Was his soup left in Soulminder? Did he go to the light? Aren’t people looking for Jacobi which is now the body that Adrian is using? That left me confused. Overall, I really did enjoy this book. I wouldn’t mind reading a sequel to this universe.

[Julio Biason · Rating 2 out of 5]

What if souls really exist and we could capture them, store them, and then return them to the body? That's what this book is about (in a way, it's pretty close to "The Discovery" by Netflix).

In one hand, the book is not about the fact that we have souls (or where they go after we die, and things like that), but how one tool, dreamed by someone, could be explored and turned into something completely different, and how that dreamer would feel about the misuse of his tool. This is a really interesting way to build characters in a story.

On the other hand, I have this feeling that the author used the word "soul" just to create a fake controversy over the stories. If it was called "Brain tracer" or "Memory storage" -- which is what the device does, in the end --, half of the book would fall apart, because there would be no direct association with something it is mostly used by religions -- which, again, is used as a plot device to create controversies inside the book.

As a side note, I got the feeling that either the author had ulcers while writing the story or was hungry while writing, 'cause most of the characters suffer, in a way or another, with stomach problems: "felt a knot in his stomach", "made her stomach churn" and things like that.

Also, chapters are too episodic, and it gave me the feeling that the story wasn't wrote for a book, but for some TV series.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really cool book and concept. This is the first non-Star Wars book I have read of Zahn and I found it entertaining. The writing gets the job done. It isn't amazingly eloquent but it works fine. There was plenty of the slightly overdone potboiler tropes. Lots of characters barking out laughter or snarling at people or biting off every word as they talked. It gets a little distracting but I was able to overlook it.

The book is set in a future in which modern medicine has discovered a way to essentially keep a person's soul in a sort of stasis while the body is repaired. The idea isn't that immortality has been achieved necessarily but rather a way of staving off accidental death.

Following from this, Zahn does a nice job exploring the inevitable moral, philosophical and legal objections that might be levied against a machine that can essentially remove the human soul and store it. What implications does that hold for our souls? Or for our bodies? It's an interesting exploration of these issues.

If I had one criticism, it would be that the book feels a little overly compartmentalized. We start with issue number one and this leads to issue number two and then three and four and so on. I just wish there had been more overal cohesion and big picture.

Still, a really good book. I took a chance on this one and I wasn't disappointed.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is ok.
I started reading this book because I've read a lot of Zahn's Star Wars novels so I was curious about what his non-Star Wars scifi was about. I appreciate that he tends to keep his writing PG and avoids any overt torture scenes or sex scenes and doesn't use any vulgarity. But in this books case, I feel like it hindered the point he was trying to make. He seems to be going for a look at the dark side of mankind and how good things tend to get corrupted by mankind. I feel like this book sits in a weird place of being appropriate for a kid to read but the themes and politics would have been boring to me if I was a kid reading this.

It's written essentially as 7 short stories about a scientific invention which all connected to the creator of the invention. The invention allows people who die to have their soul caught in a box and then returned to the body if the body is repaired. Kinda cool concept but I didn't feel like he didn't bring any new insight(for me) on the human condition or morality which is what I think he was trying to do. The characters are boring, generic.

I feel like his Star Wars stuff is better.

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this one up on a whim because I’ve enjoyed Zahn’s Star Wars books and this one sounded interesting. And it definitely is that.

It’s not exactly a typical novel, probably at least partially because the first several chapters were originally released as short stories. It’s not really a character story, but more of a philosophical one. One that makes you think.

Dr. Adrian Sommers who lost his son in a car accident, devotes his life to developing Soulminder—a technological marvel that temporarily captures the human soul to be reunited with the body once the body has been repaired. A device that could have saved his son’s life.

But not everyone thinks of Soulminder as simply a medical miracle. There are other ways to use it, and the ways it is corrupted get worse and worse. Sommers was warned that Soulminder could become a demon. And now he has to decide what to do about it.

It’s bizarre, yes, but very fascinating, and really makes you think about ethics, death, the immortal soul, and what it truly means to be alive. Definitely worth the read.

[Xane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent, but not quite exceptional. After reading Thrawn, I needed reassurance that Zahn's characters and plots could still thoroughly grab and hold my attention, and here Soulminder delivers. The characters are all interesting and have logical, fleshed-out motivations. The plot is divided into six different "chapters" that play out more like chronological, interconnected short stories that mostly follow the same characters over a long period of time. This means that we get to skip the busywork of having to see everything that happens and instead we are able to flash forward to whenever something exciting is happening. It was quite evident that Zahn was able to put a lot of time and thought into a very interesting premise. Overall, quite an enjoyable, thought-provoking read.

[JJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review contains spoilers for Chapter 1.





This book was fascinating. More so for its structure than for its content, in my opinion. The book centers on the invention of a medical marvel. A method for storing the "soul" or "life-force" or whatever you want to call it, after death is discovered. You soul is held in stasis until your body can be healed and then it is reinserted and you continue about your life. All of this happens in the first chapter of the book. The rest of the book delves into all the social, religious, governmental, and ethical dilemmas that stem from such a transcendent technology in the decades after its invention. What was created as a medical device to prevent unnecessary deaths is transformed in a hope for immortality, a tool for justice, a new form of slavery, and multiple other forms that were never foreseen by its creator. If you have any interest in the ethics of medicine or life in general, this is a very interesting read.

[G$$ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of the middle chapter felt like extensions of what-if scenarios rather than directly connected to a coherent story, but they were still thought out with things I hadn't considered. Like almost a series of short stories around the theme of what's possible with Soulminder. The last chapter wrapped the plot up with some nice, wholesome twists, which I appreciated.

Sands's character seemed too malleable to me, she was a single-purpose driven character in the beginning, then overriding the humanitarian efforts, but then comes around in the last chapter? I don't buy it.

Liked it overall - like most sci-fi suspension of disbelief required for the existence of Soulminder itself.

[Tom Shinners · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was like an entire season of the show black mirror, but every episode is about the same technology being misused in a new way. The soul/consciousness is suddenly able to be caught and stored as it leaves a dying body, and put back in after the body is repaired. An interesting idea, and intended to benefit people as a medical tool. But people almost instantly corrupt and take advantage of the technology. I enjoyed this book a lot, even though it was quite a bit different from the usual space faring sci-fi i expect from Zahn.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid, easily read, sci-fi. This is not to say that it is a simple or light book, but that it is well written and the author has taken care to make the readers understanding paramount without dumbing anything down. The premise is interesting and handled well without wandering into some of the more annoying directions it could have gone. I really liked the way it ended, fulfilling and not entirely predictable.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is science fiction with a bit of suspense/action mixed in. The premise is awesome and very frightening. The author does not spare the reader from the possibilities of abusing the "Soulminder". The characters are good, but I did feel like the two main characters, Dr. Sommer and Dr. Sands, could have been fleshed-out better. Some of the things they said and did seems to contradict their personalities. Still, a good read.

[Dalen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 3.5 for me, but gets rounded up to 4 given the total rating is 3.67. It feels like a throwback where the author comes up with an idea and then plays with the ramifications of that idea for the rest of the book. The developments were believable, and it had some good commentary on how good intentions do not make a system immune to abuses. Characterization was a bit flat, but overall it was an enjoyable read.

[Matevž · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zahn keeps delivering good reading :D

I must admit a had Zahn filed under the guy who wrote the Thrawn series (which I liked a lot) and never considered any of his other books.
I got this gem in a Humble Bundle and it was extremely nice.
Interesting idea, well developed plot that developed right until the end of the book.

Highly recommended.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Takes an interesting premise (the singularity has arrived, but it involves souls) and explores the implications through a series of short stories with recurring characters. The characters develop, but each chapter (I almost typed episode) stands alone if you know the premise.

Several stories are haunting.