+++
title = "Soulminder - Timothy Zahn"
date = 2018-12-13

[taxonomies]
tags = ["books", "en-au", "timothy zahn", "sci-fi"]
+++

[GoodReads summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21822375-soulminder):
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.

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{{ stars(stars=2) }}

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.
