I'm old. According to neuroscience, my brain is shrunken and full of holes. That's my current excuse for the inability to recall names and titles. (Actually, I've always been terrible at names. At least one dead actor has to be pushed out every time I'm introduced to someone new.) So I keep forgetting the titles and authors of books I want to use for reference or read again or recommend. Maybe some of you, at any age, have the same problem. Google's bloody useless as it functions on processing current fads and what I'm looking for is generally old and obscure. I wondered whether we can help one another find our lost books. I've been racking this poor shrunken brain, trying to remember two novels I read about 40 years ago - which means Clue 1. published before 1980 and Clue 2. they would both be under the Fantasy/ Science Fiction/ Speculative category. One was about a coup or revolution in a fictitious South American country, told by an American. There was quite a lot of dying involved, and a fairly elaborate description of an afterlife where everyone got to write their own Heaven and play the role they chose. Clue 3. may be inaccurate: I think the author is male and his name begins with K The other novel, very possibly by the same author, was about a device that captured and recycled the souls of dead people, even after the Earth was no longer populated by humans. The same two souls keep coming together, life after life, in different relationships. Very spooky!
The second book wasn't The Alejandra Variations, was it? By Paul Cook. Sounds similar, but probably not, because I don't remember it taking place after humans were all dead (?) if I interpreted that correctly. I really dug the premise of that book.
No idea on these, but you certainly aren't alone. There's one I've been trying to refind for decades. Also pre-1980-ish. I would swear the name of the book is Tesseract, but the books I have found with that title are 100% not the book I remember. The story is a kind of portal fantasy that starts when two granola-ish characters, a man & women in a relationship, buy an old door from a junk shop that turns out to be a literal portal. It takes them to a place where the only thing I remember well is that there are big polar bear looking things (that are not actual polar bears) that serve as riding animals and the wearing of anything gold (the metal) is a symbol of a slave/master relationship. That's all I got, and I'm pretty dang sure I'm wrong on the title since it never turns out to be the right book.
It occurs to me it could also be Dinosaur Beach, by Keith Laumer. Referring to Oxymaroon—sorry Wrey, I got nothing on yours. Dinosaur beach is a time-travel story that ranges into the distant past (obviously) and also the distant future, and indeed the same 2 souls do keep coming together.
Oh well. Unfortunately I don't know the books that have been asked about, but there's a book (or short story) I'd love to read. I've only one time read a synopsis, about twenty years ago, and it stuck in my mind: It's about two aliens, who have a wager going on. The first challenges the other to get Earth to self-destruct with a first order change (the changing of one letter in the name of a person). A scientist gets his name changed and all kinds of complications come out of it (the scientist is suspected to be a Russian spy) and sure, Earth comes to the brink of self-destruct. Then the second alien challenges the first to reverse the effect - also by a first order change.
No, it was literally the souls that were being used a source of energy. I would have sworn it was called something like Soul Catcher, but I'd mixed it up with the Frank Herbert book of that title, which I must have read around the same time. (Which stands to reason, as that was one of my intense SF interludes.) OTH, the Cook one sounds very interesting, so thanks!
Not that I know about, but looking for it, I came upon your thread about the robot, which reminds me of an Asimov story, which was most likely one of the I, Robot series... That sounds weird enough to be Spider Robinson.
That's entirely possible, but it didn't feel like his stories usually do. I should check into it though, thanks.
The OP, the last question, this is the premise of Hawkman and Hawkgirl in the DC comics universe. The two are from Egypt originally, they pissed off a priest of Set and he cursed them to be re-incarnated repeatedly and doomed to find each other repeatedly only to be kept apart/die. Scott
That doesn't sound like something I would have read, even as a child. I only ever bought Classic comics - Ivanhoe, Les Miserables, Count of Monte Cristo. Saved a lot of effort later on, not having to read great big books about people I didn't like.
Another one to check, but the title doesn't sound right. I remember a Spider Robinson story in probably Analog about aliens coming to earth looking to draw energy of some kind from the local life-forms, but being severely disappointed that Earthlings don't seem to give off the kind of energy they need, until suddenly here comes a drunk on all kinds of drugs staggering home and he's emitting massive amounts of it. I remember he fires off a bunch of hallucination balls at them and it sobers him up completely. I believe it was called Overdose. Fun stuff!
There was a short story about that, dude in Vietnam took a huge purple pill of some unknown hallucinogen and got waylaid on his way back to his unit by an alien whom he proceeded to hallucinate to death. Might have been Spider Robinson, although I know him almost exclusively from the Callahan's books. @Wreybies, that book sounds familiar to me as well but I'm drawing a blank.