Possivelmente a série Heritage Universe de Charles Sheffield. Esta série é definida em um universo quando há um grande número de artefatos alienígenas antigos. Um deles chamado "Paradoxo" tem o efeito que você descreve de apagar a memória de alguém. No quarto livro da série Convergência , dois exploradores (e um robô senciente) exploram o artefato.
O artigo da wikipedia descreve cada artefato. Aqui está parte da descrição do Paradoxo:
The artifact known as Paradox is known to have been discovered by Ruttledge, Kaminski, Parzen, and Lu-lan, but may have been discovered many times before. The interior of Paradox contains a powerful lotus field, which erases all memory of any biological or electronic device entering the field. Ruttledge and Kaminski were discovered by Parzen and Lu-lan a few days after entering malnourished and with the mental ability of a newborn infant. Lu-lan and Parzen chose to confirm what happened by sending in one more person. After drawing lots, Lu-lan returned after three days with his memory completely empty, though his somatic knowledge was intact. Paradox has since been declared off limits to all but specially trained investigators.
Paradox externally appears as a slightly luminescent "soap bubble" with a diameter of 50 kilometers, with iridescence similar to that of a real soap bubble. Based upon the transmission of radiation sent through the structure of Paradox, it appears to be complex in the interior. It is thought that it might be a four-dimensional extrusion in space and time of a body of much higher dimension. The purpose of Paradox isn't known, but it has been speculated that the purpose is to blank the memory of other large, intelligent Builder artifacts.
O primeiro livro da série foi Verão .
