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story identification - Identify series of books about a hero chasing a body switching potion between planets




Can someone remind me of the name of the author, the name of the hero and the name of the series if any? Adventure Sci-Fi books, short by today's epic standards ( = about same length as Heinlein's shorter youth books), probably published late 50s?, early 60s? by Bantam? or Del Rey? I think at least 30, possibly more than 40 books in the series. Not comic books. The author is not a well-known writer. At least, I don't remember seeing the name on any other books, ever.


Subject: a man who can move and respond to threats extremely fast learns about a secret potion that allows a person to change bodies with someone else and thus control them. A powerful organization does not want the secret to be known, because they use the potion to control politicians on many planets. The organization's goons are people who had surgeries to remove their emotions, and function like organic computers. They can communicate over interstellar distances and follow and murder anyone who learns the secret. I remember the following detail about the potion: there are two nearly identical molecules that have to be assembled in a certain sequence. Two of the components had to be switched around and that determined who would be dominant and who would be controlled during the mind switch / body swap.


Every book finds the hero on another planet with new adventures, and usually taking another deep-sleep-passage to another world, fleeing his pursuers. The background story about the secret potion is dished out little by little in each book.


One book in the series starts like this: hero is on very hot planet, diving for valuable marine life, catches a deadly fungus disease and is rescued last moment in exchange for his catch...


One of the themes that returns often is that the hero is an excellent knife fighter. Of course he's a womanizer. In the second (or close to 2nd) book in the series, he's involved with a woman who rules a planet. To travel to another world, he usually takes the cheapest dead-sleep passage, and there's always a 10-25% risk you won't wake up from that.




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