SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I read this series when I was a kid, maybe about 28 years ago. I recall that people didn't use ships to transport from one star to another because it was ridiculously expensive. Instead certain people with an excessive amount of some quantity (ki?) could take over the body of some living being on a distant planet and in that way carry out missions on the distant planets without travelling there. I think in the later books they started using brain dead people for ethical reasons. Also some aliens were discovered that didn't have whole numbers of ki? so they could take over an alien for a longer time, maybe forever? The last book in the series was about another galaxy which was about to hit ours and they were trying to prevent the incoming aliens from wiping out our galaxy.

Sorry I couldn't give more info, that's about all I remember, not sure if it's completely accurate, I have a hard time remembering things from last week let alone 28 years ago.

Sounds like Mindswap.

Sounds like a cool series! Was it long ?

I think the series was about 5 books. I looked at the Sheckley book, and it seems about right, but it didn't look like a series. Did I just miss the sequels?

It sounds a little like a Piers Anthony series starting with Cluster but not exactly.

Yes, that must be it. Although Mindswap sounds like a more interesting book now.

I completely agree, although I really enjoyed the Anthony books roughly 30 years ago for me.

I think this group is going to be dangerous for my reading list.

I read a sci-fic book about 8-10 years ago and it was probably published around then. I don't remember the title or author (I think it was a female author). It was about a spaceship that finds another ship that seems to be abandoned. However, they later find people (or people appear) on the ship that are very old and appear to be sick or dying. I really don't remember any details, but the people they find turn out to be an alien race that is pretending to be incapacitated/dying but have very negative intentions towards anyone who happens to come upon them. Does this ring a bell for anyone?