Well, not a big haul this month, though I got mostly through another
I could have featured, but will do next month.

The usual disclosure: The links are Amazon affiliate links which
could in theory earn me something if you bought something through
one.

==
Uncanny Collateral (Valkyrie Collections Book 1)
by Brian McClellan
https://amzn.to/3SMgI53

After raving about McClellan's new "Glass Immortals" series a few
months back, I decided I would move forward one of his urban fantasy
books that had been in the queue for a while. It's a solid work,
and I'll be reading the follow-up, but I think Flintlock Fantasy
is still a stronger suit for him.

Alek Fitz is a collections agent of a sort. If you sell your soul
and then try to welsh on the deal, Alek is the one they send to do
the extraction. He's not thrilled with the job, but as he's an
actual slave (despite such being henceforward illegal) he doesn't
have a lot of choice in the matter. It's a job with the occasional
rough & tumble, so the bit of troll in his heritage comes in handy
from time to time. There aren't many perks to his situation, but
one of the few is getting to sort through magical artifacts left
lying around a case's aftermath and ensuring that a select few get
lost when he has to return the rest. That's how he acquired his
best friend, a centuries old Jinn trapped in a ring he salvaged.
Being a prisoner limits her power quite a bit, but still she is
very handy to have around.

Now, however, there's a new wrinkle in the soul collection business:
A lot of the souls harvested by Alek and his peers have gone missing
from the nether-world and Death himself has hired Alek's agency to
track the party responsible (very curious, as Alek is not at all a
detective) and get them back (more along his usual line). It turns
out to all be very hush-hush and politically delicate, but if Alek
comes through, Death himself will owe a favor..

This is one of those Urban Fantasy settings that's basically identical
to ours on the surface, except people kind of know something is
going on, but try not to think about it too much, but you probably
know a guy who knows a guy if you want to sell your soul or whatnot,
and the Feds have an agency to cleanup the bigger messes.

The point of view is standard first-person Chandleresque, and Alek is
an agreeable guy to hang around with. He's also got an arc going on
that is probably going to end up exposing a lot of secrets, and I
will be back to see how it plays out.

Ruby Fever: A Hidden Legacy Novel
by Ilona Andrews
https://amzn.to/3rEs2ob

Hidden Legacy is basically Andrew's superhero universe, although
they don't call it that. After a super-serum was discovered in the
eighteenth century, those who survived exposure to it acquired great
powers which they were able to (usually) pass down to their children.
Despite that, by fiat, the world they inhabit is very similar to
our own, just as it it for Marvel & DC. These books are also, like
the Kate Daniels series, action romances. Previous books followed
the eldest sister of the newly established House Baylor, the last
few have followed the adventures of younger sister Catalina Baylor,
a Siren, and the obstacles her House faces in general, along with
the particular travails being in love with a politically fraught
Weaponeer entail.

Now, the former speaker of the Texas House has been murdered, and
the Warden of Texas, who would normally take the case, has been
sidelined by a magical attack. It falls to Catalina as his deputy
to sort things out, defang the wider conspiracy, deal with the
Russian Empire, rescue her lover's mother, take in her evil grandmother
and locate a very valuable and skittish spider. It's all done in
the signature Andrews style, and as always, good fun.

This book would appear to conclude Catalina's story, and if the
series continues, I would expect the youngest sister (who had a
pretty funny & epic moment at the end here) to take up the mantle
of lead character.

Skybound: Book Two of Fate's Anvil
by Scott Browder
https://amzn.to/3EpU4Lt

I mentioned a few months ago that some authors looked to have completely
vanished during the pandemic, and Browder was one that I couldn't find
any information on. In the event, someone here was able to establish
that he was, in fact, still active and serializing this book on Patreon
under a different pen-name. Now it is complete, and available on
Amazon.

Book One, _Skyclad_ saw Morgan Mackenzie precipitated, bathtub, loofah
and all from our world into an RPG world where she, by the nature
of her arrival, is thrown onto the naked combat magic path of the
local System's character sheet. Despite some humorous elements
and the character's mandatory nudity, it actually turned out to be
a good fantasy adventure, albeit one with some first novel faults.
Morgan, and a number of other world-walkers, found themselves enmeshed
in the beginnings of an epic war between the forces of the Oracle,
and an evil slaver empire, and if the book focused too much on
Morgan's leveling-up, there was plenty of potential.

This time around, the expedition Morgan found at the end of her
wilderness trek are using her magic to help build their world's first
skyship to bypass the valley's closed pass while the city they left,
if not exactly defenseless at least noticeably less defended, is now
under attack and in an epic trek across the desert, a world walking
general is building an army which may turn things in the Oracle's
favor..

While I enjoyed this second book (which is less Morgan-centric),
it does not entirely live up to that potential. At times it seems
focused on the wrong things. For instance, the business with
building the airship drags on and on, but we barely get to see it
in the air. Similarly, the introduction of the Horse Knight takes
way too long, and slows down getting to the book's final battle.
In comics there is the term "decompressed storytelling" which
describes how what would once be told in a single issue now takes
six, and I get a bit of that feeling here. There *is* progress,
and we learn a bit about while, yes, the Empire is evil, there are
reasons for some of it, but on the whole it feels like less happened
than should have.

One Piece, Vol. 40 (40) Paperback April 6, 2010
by Eiichiro Oda
https://amzn.to/3fS4RUA

One Piece, Vol. 41 (41) Paperback April 6, 2010
by Eiichiro Oda
https://amzn.to/3Eu8VVq

One Piece, Vol. 42 (42) Paperback April 6, 2010
by Eiichiro Oda
https://amzn.to/3yrIXOm

Speaking of comics.. I'm continuing to enjoy One Piece, though I
also continue to find myself often unable to really follow the
battle scenes with my Western comics eyeballs. These volumes are
part of the "Water Seven" arc where the Straw Hats come to the
famous titular city for repairs to their beloved ship "The Merry
Go" only to find out that the the damage is too severe to be fixed.
This leads to a rift between Luffy & Usopp which remains still
unresolved when World Government politics intervenes and crew member
Nico Robin is kidnapped (or is she?).

We learn a bit more about the gaps in world history and Nico Robin's
back-story, and along the way there are sea-locomotives, scrappy
shipwrights and ship-breakers, and the usual manga-bizarre adversaries.
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

On Friday, 14 October 2022 at 23:31:08 UTC+1, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
> Well, not a big haul this month, though I got mostly through another
> I could have featured, but will do next month.
>
> The usual disclosure: The links are Amazon affiliate links which
> could in theory earn me something if you bought something through
> one.
>
>
> ==
> Uncanny Collateral (Valkyrie Collections Book 1)
> by Brian McClellan
> https://amzn.to/3SMgI53
>
> Alek Fitz is a collections agent of a sort. If you sell your soul
> and then try to welsh on the deal, Alek is the one they send to do
> the extraction. He's not thrilled with the job, but as he's an
> actual slave (despite such being henceforward illegal) he doesn't
> have a lot of choice in the matter. It's a job with the occasional
> rough & tumble, so the bit of troll in his heritage comes in handy
> from time to time. There aren't many perks to his situation, but
> one of the few is getting to sort through magical artifacts left
> lying around a case's aftermath and ensuring that a select few get
> lost when he has to return the rest. That's how he acquired his
> best friend, a centuries old Jinn trapped in a ring he salvaged.
> Being a prisoner limits her power quite a bit, but still she is
> very handy to have around.

Do people sell their souls to the traditional buyer,
the Devil, or are there other buyers? Asking for
a friend. :-) Also, being a magic Jinn trapped in
a ring, presumably the jewellery kind, sounds like
slavery, unless the possessor of the ring is carefully
respectful of the prisoner's independence. Presuming
that freeing them from the ring is impossible, or
perhaps inadvisable, e.g. they have a rampage of mass
destruction and genocide planned if they get free.

A recent-ish-ish BBC radio production of _The Wizard of Oz_
altered that story to include points that I didn't want in it
but that may have been legitimate. I think environmentalism
was in it somehow... and they had a bit where Dorothy gets
control of the Winged Monkeys and she orders them to take
her home, but they can't. Consequently they are magically
tortured by the spell that enslaves them, and Dorothy's friends
have to tell her that she's doing wrong and she must stop.
The Winged Monkeys originally have a back story; they're jerks.
Or possibly they're a racial caricature that escaped me.
Or, just monkeys.

You can see their situation as punishment by community
service or as what happens when the people in power have a
grievance against somebody. But by the end of the story, they
are no longer enslaved. I'm comparing unrestrained Winged
Monkeys to an unrestrained Jinn with a chip on their shoulder
as a social problem. But Oz does have people in political
authority either wielding great magical power or having
powerful allies, so the monkey problem isn't insoluble.
The Jinn problem may be.

In article <6b8ef69e-cf35-40c7-b51d-3c6df863354bn@googlegroups.com>,
Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> wrote:
>On Friday, 14 October 2022 at 23:31:08 UTC+1, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
>> Well, not a big haul this month, though I got mostly through another
>> I could have featured, but will do next month.
>>
>> The usual disclosure: The links are Amazon affiliate links which
>> could in theory earn me something if you bought something through
>> one.
>>
>>
>> ==
>> Uncanny Collateral (Valkyrie Collections Book 1)
>> by Brian McClellan
>> https://amzn.to/3SMgI53
>>
>> Alek Fitz is a collections agent of a sort. If you sell your soul
>> and then try to welsh on the deal, Alek is the one they send to do
>> the extraction. He's not thrilled with the job, but as he's an
>> actual slave (despite such being henceforward illegal) he doesn't
>> have a lot of choice in the matter. It's a job with the occasional
>> rough & tumble, so the bit of troll in his heritage comes in handy
>> from time to time. There aren't many perks to his situation, but
>> one of the few is getting to sort through magical artifacts left
>> lying around a case's aftermath and ensuring that a select few get
>> lost when he has to return the rest. That's how he acquired his
>> best friend, a centuries old Jinn trapped in a ring he salvaged.
>> Being a prisoner limits her power quite a bit, but still she is
>> very handy to have around.
>
>Do people sell their souls to the traditional buyer,
>the Devil, or are there other buyers? Asking for
>a friend. :-) Also, being a magic Jinn trapped in

You apparently can sell to Lucy (who is actually a pretty cool gal
in this context) or other traditional buyers. I don't think there
was a lot said other than the bought souls were going missing.
There's some mumbo-jumbo about shades, souls & spirits that justifies
the plot:

Ferryman watched me for a few moments with those disconcerting
eyes, then produced a lighter from his pocket and tapped
it on the table. I wouldn't have imagined Death as a nervous
smoker. He said, "Do you know the difference between a soul,
a spirit, and a shade?"

From the way he said the words, I assumed they were technical
terms rather than nebulous ideas. "I know what a soul is.
The others sound above my pay grade."

"They are. Your spirit is the thing that exists before and
after your time in this mortal realm. When you're born,
it's split into two pieces--the soul and the shade. The
soul comes with you into mortality. The shade remains here."
He gestured to the darkness around him. "Part of my job as
Ferryman is to reunite soul and shade and send the entire
spirit off to wherever it's meant to go."

All of this was news to me. I had wondered what goes on
before and after death--I'm still human, after all. But the
Other doesn't always make sense in human terms, so thinking
about it too much is often a good route to a bad headache.
"You're an administrator?"

"I'd probably romanticize it a little more than that, but
essentially, yes."

I pursed my lips at the explanation, annoyed that he wouldn't
give me a straight answer. "Then," I asked again, more
emphatically, "why are you here?" In the back of my head,
Maggie had gone quiet. From her ring, I could feel her
presence like a person with their ear pressed against the
door.

"Because souls are missing."

I watched him carefully, waiting for the and attached to
the end of that sentence. Missing souls were my job, but I
got the very clear sense from his cageyness that this wasn't
the run-of-the-mill "old debtor took off running" kind of
job. Something was up. If he didn't have my attention before,
he definitely had it now.

"From where?"

"From the vaults of a number of your clients."

I scoffed. "Is that possible?" As far as I had ever been
aware, once Beelzebub or whoever got their claws onto your
soul--sometimes with my help--that soul was theirs until
further notice. It had never even occurred to me that they
could be stolen.

"It is possible," Ferryman answered, "and it has happened."

"Is there an illicit trade in souls?"

"There isn't. The souls literally don't have value in this
life. Once they've been reunited with the shade and move
on as part of the whole spirit, then they have value. The
reason you have a job," he said, pointing one long finger
at me, "is because the physical possession of a soul upon
the death of the mortal vessel is extremely important in
determining where the spirit winds up." Ferryman sighed,
clearly getting tired of my line of questioning. "I'm here
because most of your clients have been robbed. So many are
affected, they've asked me to be their proxy. Is that
satisfactory?"

>a ring, presumably the jewellery kind, sounds like
>slavery, unless the possessor of the ring is carefully
>respectful of the prisoner's independence. Presuming
>that freeing them from the ring is impossible, or
>perhaps inadvisable, e.g. they have a rampage of mass
>destruction and genocide planned if they get free.

Alek didn't put Maggie in the ring, and has no power to free her.
She also isn't compelled to help him, but she likes him (not that way)
and enjoys interacting with the world, even if indirectly. (She also
knows that if a way to undo the inprisonment spell turns up, Alek will
help her track it down).

>
>A recent-ish-ish BBC radio production of _The Wizard of Oz_
>altered that story to include points that I didn't want in it
>but that may have been legitimate. I think environmentalism
>was in it somehow... and they had a bit where Dorothy gets
>control of the Winged Monkeys and she orders them to take
>her home, but they can't. Consequently they are magically
>tortured by the spell that enslaves them, and Dorothy's friends
>have to tell her that she's doing wrong and she must stop.
>The Winged Monkeys originally have a back story; they're jerks.
>Or possibly they're a racial caricature that escaped me.
>Or, just monkeys.
>
>You can see their situation as punishment by community
>service or as what happens when the people in power have a
>grievance against somebody. But by the end of the story, they
>are no longer enslaved. I'm comparing unrestrained Winged
>Monkeys to an unrestrained Jinn with a chip on their shoulder
>as a social problem. But Oz does have people in political
>authority either wielding great magical power or having
>powerful allies, so the monkey problem isn't insoluble.
>The Jinn problem may be.

My memory from the only Oz book I read is that the flying monkeys
are bound to a magical cap somehow, and the holder of the cap gets
to set them a limited number of tasks. I don't recall how that state
came about.
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

Ted Nolan wrote:
> Robert Carnegie wrote:
>> Ted Nolan wrote:
>>> Well, not a big haul this month, though I got mostly through another
>>> I could have featured, but will do next month.
>>>
>>> The usual disclosure: The links are Amazon affiliate links which
>>> could in theory earn me something if you bought something through
>>> one.
>>>
>>>
>>> ==
>>> Uncanny Collateral (Valkyrie Collections Book 1)
>>> by Brian McClellan
>>> https://amzn.to/3SMgI53
>>>
>>> Alek Fitz is a collections agent of a sort. If you sell your soul
>>> and then try to welsh on the deal, Alek is the one they send to do
>>> the extraction. He's not thrilled with the job, but as he's an
>>> actual slave (despite such being henceforward illegal) he doesn't
>>> have a lot of choice in the matter. It's a job with the occasional
>>> rough & tumble, so the bit of troll in his heritage comes in handy
>>> from time to time. There aren't many perks to his situation, but
>>> one of the few is getting to sort through magical artifacts left
>>> lying around a case's aftermath and ensuring that a select few get
>>> lost when he has to return the rest. That's how he acquired his
>>> best friend, a centuries old Jinn trapped in a ring he salvaged.
>>> Being a prisoner limits her power quite a bit, but still she is
>>> very handy to have around.
>>
>>Do people sell their souls to the traditional buyer,
>>the Devil, or are there other buyers? Asking for
>>a friend. :-) Also, being a magic Jinn trapped in
>
> You apparently can sell to Lucy (who is actually a pretty cool gal
> in this context) or other traditional buyers. I don't think there
> was a lot said other than the bought souls were going missing.
> There's some mumbo-jumbo about shades, souls & spirits that justifies
> the plot:
>
>
> Ferryman watched me for a few moments with those disconcerting
> eyes, then produced a lighter from his pocket and tapped
> it on the table. I wouldn't have imagined Death as a nervous
> smoker. He said, "Do you know the difference between a soul,
> a spirit, and a shade?"
>
> From the way he said the words, I assumed they were technical
> terms rather than nebulous ideas. "I know what a soul is.
> The others sound above my pay grade."
>
> "They are. Your spirit is the thing that exists before and
> after your time in this mortal realm. When you're born,
> it's split into two pieces--the soul and the shade. The
> soul comes with you into mortality. The shade remains here."
> He gestured to the darkness around him. "Part of my job as
> Ferryman is to reunite soul and shade and send the entire
> spirit off to wherever it's meant to go."
>
> All of this was news to me. I had wondered what goes on
> before and after death--I'm still human, after all. But the
> Other doesn't always make sense in human terms, so thinking
> about it too much is often a good route to a bad headache.
> "You're an administrator?"
>
> "I'd probably romanticize it a little more than that, but
> essentially, yes."
>
> I pursed my lips at the explanation, annoyed that he wouldn't
> give me a straight answer. "Then," I asked again, more
> emphatically, "why are you here?" In the back of my head,
> Maggie had gone quiet. From her ring, I could feel her
> presence like a person with their ear pressed against the
> door.
>
> "Because souls are missing."
>
> I watched him carefully, waiting for the and attached to
> the end of that sentence. Missing souls were my job, but I
> got the very clear sense from his cageyness that this wasn't
> the run-of-the-mill "old debtor took off running" kind of
> job. Something was up. If he didn't have my attention before,
> he definitely had it now.
>
> "From where?"
>
> "From the vaults of a number of your clients."
>
> I scoffed. "Is that possible?" As far as I had ever been
> aware, once Beelzebub or whoever got their claws onto your
> soul--sometimes with my help--that soul was theirs until
> further notice. It had never even occurred to me that they
> could be stolen.
>
> "It is possible," Ferryman answered, "and it has happened."
>
> "Is there an illicit trade in souls?"
>
> "There isn't. The souls literally don't have value in this
> life. Once they've been reunited with the shade and move
> on as part of the whole spirit, then they have value. The
> reason you have a job," he said, pointing one long finger
> at me, "is because the physical possession of a soul upon
> the death of the mortal vessel is extremely important in
> determining where the spirit winds up." Ferryman sighed,
> clearly getting tired of my line of questioning. "I'm here
> because most of your clients have been robbed. So many are
> affected, they've asked me to be their proxy. Is that
> satisfactory?"

_Uncanny Collateral_'s "shade" brings to mind IT's enigmatic "shadow"
nomenclature for matter aberrations on Wanderer.

"69 Death Awaits in Semispace"

The intelligence from Solitude! The being from Solitude,
the world on the alien time-plane, the being was capable of
separating its spirit from its body. Though intelligent, the
creature had been described by Reginald Bell as looking like
a sea cow. ...
"It's one of the oddest life-forms I've ever seen!"
someone said when Nathan had left, leaving behind only his
huge body which lay still on the control room floor.
"It isn't quite as odd as on first thought," Rhodan
answered. "The strange part is definitely the ability of
separating the spirit from the body. But that which so
strikingly reminds us of our childhood fear of ghosts surely
has a quite natural explanation."
The others looked at him expectantly.
"Of course," Rhodan continued, "the astral form is
immaterial. That which looks like a cloud to you is not at all
a gas, in case you thought so. The astral form itself is
nothing more than a field whose nature we know nothing about.
It is, in any case, a field with inherent intelligence. What
we see is the effect this field has on its surroundings. It
seems to give off energy that affects the refractive index of
the air around it. In that way it becomes visible to our eyes:
the area where the refractive index has been altered appears to
us as a cloud."
"The oddest aspect of it all, however, is the field's
ability to reflect nearby objects, even to the point of mimicking
them exactly. You have seen how Nathan took on my form and tried
to copy my face. I am convinced that he would develop his talent
into a perfect skill if he ever took enough time with it. Please
don't ask how shocked the Arkonide and I were when we first saw a
spirit-form on Solitude!"
The men were silent. The explanation had been illuminating
but the phenomenon was still impossible to grasp. They all
looked to where they suspected Nathan's spirit to be-out in the
darkness of space where there was nothing whose refractive index
Nathan could affect and become visible. ...
If anyone at all were able to reach Wanderer from here, it
would be Nathan. Not bodily but with the help of its astral form,
which not only could separate from its body but lead a most
independent existence. ...
Nathan looked back at the alien being lying far below in the
grass, unconscious with terror.
"It looks real, doesn't it?" said the stranger, amused. "Even
though it's only a shadow."
Nathan considered the concept of 'shadow'. It could not mean
the bodiless existence because the alien creature had been solid
and real. It, the ruler of this world, seemed to know of another
means of Spirit-Matter transformation.

PS. IT became a sinister character to me after "Blood of Cardif...
blood of Thora... blood of Rhodan."

Danke,

In article <20221015b@crcomp.net>, Don <g@crcomp.net> wrote:
>Ted Nolan wrote:
>> Robert Carnegie wrote:
>>> Ted Nolan wrote:
>>>> Well, not a big haul this month, though I got mostly through another
>>>> I could have featured, but will do next month.
>>>>
>>>> The usual disclosure: The links are Amazon affiliate links which
>>>> could in theory earn me something if you bought something through
>>>> one.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ==
>>>> Uncanny Collateral (Valkyrie Collections Book 1)
>>>> by Brian McClellan
>>>> https://amzn.to/3SMgI53
>>>>
>>>> Alek Fitz is a collections agent of a sort. If you sell your soul
>>>> and then try to welsh on the deal, Alek is the one they send to do
>>>> the extraction. He's not thrilled with the job, but as he's an
>>>> actual slave (despite such being henceforward illegal) he doesn't
>>>> have a lot of choice in the matter. It's a job with the occasional
>>>> rough & tumble, so the bit of troll in his heritage comes in handy
>>>> from time to time. There aren't many perks to his situation, but
>>>> one of the few is getting to sort through magical artifacts left
>>>> lying around a case's aftermath and ensuring that a select few get
>>>> lost when he has to return the rest. That's how he acquired his
>>>> best friend, a centuries old Jinn trapped in a ring he salvaged.
>>>> Being a prisoner limits her power quite a bit, but still she is
>>>> very handy to have around.
>>>
>>>Do people sell their souls to the traditional buyer,
>>>the Devil, or are there other buyers? Asking for
>>>a friend. :-) Also, being a magic Jinn trapped in
>>
>> You apparently can sell to Lucy (who is actually a pretty cool gal
>> in this context) or other traditional buyers. I don't think there
>> was a lot said other than the bought souls were going missing.
>> There's some mumbo-jumbo about shades, souls & spirits that justifies
>> the plot:
>>
>>
>> Ferryman watched me for a few moments with those disconcerting
>> eyes, then produced a lighter from his pocket and tapped
>> it on the table. I wouldn't have imagined Death as a nervous
>> smoker. He said, "Do you know the difference between a soul,
>> a spirit, and a shade?"
>>
>> From the way he said the words, I assumed they were technical
>> terms rather than nebulous ideas. "I know what a soul is.
>> The others sound above my pay grade."
>>
>> "They are. Your spirit is the thing that exists before and
>> after your time in this mortal realm. When you're born,
>> it's split into two pieces--the soul and the shade. The
>> soul comes with you into mortality. The shade remains here."
>> He gestured to the darkness around him. "Part of my job as
>> Ferryman is to reunite soul and shade and send the entire
>> spirit off to wherever it's meant to go."
>>
>> All of this was news to me. I had wondered what goes on
>> before and after death--I'm still human, after all. But the
>> Other doesn't always make sense in human terms, so thinking
>> about it too much is often a good route to a bad headache.
>> "You're an administrator?"
>>
>> "I'd probably romanticize it a little more than that, but
>> essentially, yes."
>>
>> I pursed my lips at the explanation, annoyed that he wouldn't
>> give me a straight answer. "Then," I asked again, more
>> emphatically, "why are you here?" In the back of my head,
>> Maggie had gone quiet. From her ring, I could feel her
>> presence like a person with their ear pressed against the
>> door.
>>
>> "Because souls are missing."
>>
>> I watched him carefully, waiting for the and attached to
>> the end of that sentence. Missing souls were my job, but I
>> got the very clear sense from his cageyness that this wasn't
>> the run-of-the-mill "old debtor took off running" kind of
>> job. Something was up. If he didn't have my attention before,
>> he definitely had it now.
>>
>> "From where?"
>>
>> "From the vaults of a number of your clients."
>>
>> I scoffed. "Is that possible?" As far as I had ever been
>> aware, once Beelzebub or whoever got their claws onto your
>> soul--sometimes with my help--that soul was theirs until
>> further notice. It had never even occurred to me that they
>> could be stolen.
>>
>> "It is possible," Ferryman answered, "and it has happened."
>>
>> "Is there an illicit trade in souls?"
>>
>> "There isn't. The souls literally don't have value in this
>> life. Once they've been reunited with the shade and move
>> on as part of the whole spirit, then they have value. The
>> reason you have a job," he said, pointing one long finger
>> at me, "is because the physical possession of a soul upon
>> the death of the mortal vessel is extremely important in
>> determining where the spirit winds up." Ferryman sighed,
>> clearly getting tired of my line of questioning. "I'm here
>> because most of your clients have been robbed. So many are
>> affected, they've asked me to be their proxy. Is that
>> satisfactory?"
>
>_Uncanny Collateral_'s "shade" brings to mind IT's enigmatic "shadow"
>nomenclature for matter aberrations on Wanderer.
>
> "69 Death Awaits in Semispace"
>
> The intelligence from Solitude! The being from Solitude,
> the world on the alien time-plane, the being was capable of
> separating its spirit from its body. Though intelligent, the
> creature had been described by Reginald Bell as looking like
> a sea cow. ...
> "It's one of the oddest life-forms I've ever seen!"
> someone said when Nathan had left, leaving behind only his
> huge body which lay still on the control room floor.
> "It isn't quite as odd as on first thought," Rhodan
> answered. "The strange part is definitely the ability of
> separating the spirit from the body. But that which so
> strikingly reminds us of our childhood fear of ghosts surely
> has a quite natural explanation."
> The others looked at him expectantly.
> "Of course," Rhodan continued, "the astral form is
> immaterial. That which looks like a cloud to you is not at all
> a gas, in case you thought so. The astral form itself is
> nothing more than a field whose nature we know nothing about.
> It is, in any case, a field with inherent intelligence. What
> we see is the effect this field has on its surroundings. It
> seems to give off energy that affects the refractive index of
> the air around it. In that way it becomes visible to our eyes:
> the area where the refractive index has been altered appears to
> us as a cloud."
> "The oddest aspect of it all, however, is the field's
> ability to reflect nearby objects, even to the point of mimicking
> them exactly. You have seen how Nathan took on my form and tried
> to copy my face. I am convinced that he would develop his talent
> into a perfect skill if he ever took enough time with it. Please
> don't ask how shocked the Arkonide and I were when we first saw a
> spirit-form on Solitude!"
> The men were silent. The explanation had been illuminating
> but the phenomenon was still impossible to grasp. They all
> looked to where they suspected Nathan's spirit to be-out in the
> darkness of space where there was nothing whose refractive index
> Nathan could affect and become visible. ...
> If anyone at all were able to reach Wanderer from here, it
> would be Nathan. Not bodily but with the help of its astral form,
> which not only could separate from its body but lead a most
> independent existence. ...
> Nathan looked back at the alien being lying far below in the
> grass, unconscious with terror.
> "It looks real, doesn't it?" said the stranger, amused. "Even
> though it's only a shadow."
> Nathan considered the concept of 'shadow'. It could not mean
> the bodiless existence because the alien creature had been solid
> and real. It, the ruler of this world, seemed to know of another
> means of Spirit-Matter transformation.
>
>PS. IT became a sinister character to me after "Blood of Cardif...
>blood of Thora... blood of Rhodan."
>

Ted Nolan wrote:
> Don wrote:
>>Ted Nolan wrote:

>>>>> Uncanny Collateral (Valkyrie Collections Book 1)

<snip>

>>> "They are. Your spirit is the thing that exists before and
>>> after your time in this mortal realm. When you're born,
>>> it's split into two pieces--the soul and the shade. The
>>> soul comes with you into mortality. The shade remains here."
>>> He gestured to the darkness around him. "Part of my job as
>>> Ferryman is to reunite soul and shade and send the entire
>>> spirit off to wherever it's meant to go."

<snip>

>>_Uncanny Collateral_'s "shade" brings to mind IT's enigmatic "shadow"
>>nomenclature for matter aberrations on Wanderer.

<snip>

>> "69 Death Awaits in Semispace"
>>

<snip>

>> If anyone at all were able to reach Wanderer from here, it
>> would be Nathan. Not bodily but with the help of its astral form,
>> which not only could separate from its body but lead a most
>> independent existence. ...
>> Nathan looked back at the alien being lying far below in the
>> grass, unconscious with terror.
>> "It looks real, doesn't it?" said the stranger, amused. "Even
>> though it's only a shadow."
>> Nathan considered the concept of 'shadow'. It could not mean
>> the bodiless existence because the alien creature had been solid
>> and real. It, the ruler of this world, seemed to know of another
>> means of Spirit-Matter transformation.
>>
>>PS. IT became a sinister character to me after "Blood of Cardif...
>>blood of Thora... blood of Rhodan."
>>
>
> That one I have no memory of, not even after looking at the Squidlike
> spaceship cover image..

This is yet another story where Bruck's cover art:

<https://www.perrypedia.de/mediawiki/images/e/ee/PR0069.jpg>

jogs my memory better than Morrow's:

<https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/3/3d/PRRRHDNDTH1975.jpg>

In the story Bell (Bully) marginally reprises "He Who Shrank" (Hasse).
Nathan's a two story wonder who never shows up again:

<https://tinyurl.com/muzt6tbp>

Nathan's a Solitudean. The above machine translation - "[Solitudian's]
life's mission [is] to reflect and share their thoughts with each other."
makes me laugh more than a polished translation. Because it strikes so
close to home.

An unrelated, more prolific, character named Ernst Ellert, acts as a
spiritual bully. Ellert's a Mutant Corps member who invades Onot the
Druuf's body.

Danke,

--
Don.......My cat's )\._.,--....,'``. https://crcomp.net/reviews.php
telltale tall tail /, _.. \ _\ (`._ ,. Walk humbly with thy God.
tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.' Make 1984 fiction again.