Gateway

This is an interesting, readable story about the enormity of space exploration and the overwhelming fear of the unknown. In the future, when Earth is dangerously over-crowded and underfed, an asteroid has been discovered that was once a spaceport for an ancient alien race, now vanished from the

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galaxy. Although these aliens, called the Heechee, are gone, they have left behind many of their faster-than-light spaceships. Human pilots can enter coordinates to travel routes previously charted by the Heechee, but they have no way of knowing how long the journey will take or what they will find at the other end. They can't even control the ship once it's set on course; they can only go along for the ride.

Desperate prospectors elect to take a trip, or several, in the hopes of a terrific payout: an important scientific discovery or the recovery of abandoned Heechee technology that can benefit humankind. Such a discovery can make a prospector so rich that he never has to work again. One of these hopeful prospectors is Robinette Broadhead, who has paid for his ticket to Gateway with lottery winnings, but once he arrives, he is seized by a paralyzing terror of going out in one of the ships. The ways to die are numerous. A ship could emerge inside a supernova, or land on a hostile planet, or the journey could take so long that the prospectors run out of food. Many ships don't return at all. Still, Robinette forces himself to go, and tells his harrowing story to his computerized psychiatrist after returning from one of the trips a rich but fundamentally damaged man.

Gateway is a terrific "what-if" story with enough suspense to keep the pages turning. While this reader was left with many unanswered questions, that only inspired me to pick up the sequels in the Heechee Saga.

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Humans have discovered an ancient and abandoned space depot on an asteroid. The ships will take passengers to set headings and bring them back automatically. Since they can't be reverse engineered, the Gateway Corporation allows "prospectors" to take ships out. There's about one chance in four

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they'll never come back alive--but there's also a chance they could come back rich. This is set in a dystopic society where to not be rich means you can't get "Major Medical" (catastrophic heath care) let alone "Full Medical" (greatly extended youth and life) and to be poor means a short, unpleasant life. Getting to Gateway means being lucky enough to get there to have a stake, and unlucky enough you're desperate enough to want to take your chances there.

The first person narrator, of the novel, Robinette "Bob" Broadhead is a prospector who struck it rich. We alternate chapters between the present--told in present tense--with his computer psychologist delving into his psych, and his past as a prospector with Gateway.

Well-written, literate and more concerned with the psych than most science fiction, there is a series of novels dealing with Gateway and this one certainly makes me want to try the next.

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While the novel is considered a classic in SF, it shows its age. The prose left me unmoved most of the time and some of the futuristic technology portrayed in the book does not come across as exciting any more.

There are two good points in favor of this book. The first is a stab at imagining human

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computer interaction when computers are getting darn close to being sentient, as slowly revealed in the protagonist's interaction with his electronic psychiatrist. The other is abundant, but interspursed, discussions of interesting astrophysical phenomena. Still, in my opinion, the book is weighed down by the (intentionally) unpleasant "hero".

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Highly recommended if you are into the sci-fi of the 70s. It captures the reader from the first page and you just end up wanting to know more and more and more about the understory so you can't stop reading.

I will say this about the main character...I did not like him very much. I don't know if

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this was the author's intent but to me he came across as a jerk. If I met this guy on earth in the future, I'd be really tempted to beat him up (if I were a violent person).

so here's a brief synopsis with no spoilers:
Millions of years in the past, a species known as the Heechee existed throughout space and then just disappeared. As of the time of this book (there are two more to follow), nobody knows why they disappeared, and no one knows even what they looked like. All that is left of the Heechee are legends based on the artifacts of this civilization ... and to find these, one has to first get to Gateway. This is a kind of asteroid-type place discovered totally by accident, and what was novel about this place is that it seems to have been a base of some sort containing over 1000 Heechee ships...each programmed to go to a particular destination and hopefully return. But here's the problem: no one can understand the technology to know where any ship is going to go or how long the trip will take. In some cases, the ship might be out for a few days and return but in others, a ship might never come back. Worse -- a ship might return but the crew dies for some reason, not being aware of the possibilities of what they're traveling to.

So at Gateway, you can take a course on how to be a "prospector" and get into one of these ships and take your chances that it will take you somewhere where you will find the extremely valuable Heechee artifacts. It is to Gateway that the main character, Robinette Broadbent (Bob) comes after winning a lottery that takes him out of the food mines in Wyoming. He has had a Heechee fascination since he was a kid and this was what he really wanted to with his life. So Gateway, the novel, is his story, told in two different settings: with his AI shrink on earth some years after his time at Gateway, and while actually on Gateway. I'm not going to go into any more of this book, because you really need to read it to understand the story.

I have had this sitting on my shelf for nearly 2 years and what a mistake that was! Very highly recommended.

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I was quite impressed with my first Pohl. I find myself a bit more interested in psychiatry after having read the book! The idea of a machine analyst is quite pleasingly impersonal to me. Bob is in pain. It is Sigfrid's job to make Bob aware of what is causing Bob pain, to bring it out in the open

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for Bob, get Bob to examine it, cry over it, live with it. Bob has buried the pain and it is literally eating him. He is as dysfunctional as they come.

One really got a clear understanding of what a prospector's life was like on Gateway. Truly, it is the uniqueness of life in such a place that gives the novel such draw. From fish to experienced adventurer, the idea of taking alien ships out that nobody understands how works to either die or strike it rich with alien artifacts—this is completely engrossing stuff.

The Heechee mystery was fascinating, and the artifacts that the prospectors were recovering were ingeniously devised to leave you more Heechee hungry than you were at first. I most certainly will be continuing the Heechee series. The amount of hard science is just enough to not be a turn off, but a turn on.

I loved the little one page classified ads, classroom and scientific notes, and prospector mission reports that were sprinkled throughout the book to break up the episodes of Bob on Gateway and Bob with Sigfrid.

I really thoroughly enjoyed myself until the last hundred pages or so—I found those to be a bit depressing. The ending was not at all what I had expected, and it really threw out some deeply scientifically intriguing stuff there at the end.

One line sticks with me. It speaks ironically to the sum of Pohls narrative. It is delivered by Bob to Sigrfrid at a critical point in his therapy: "Poor goddamn son of a bitch, me, all kinky and awful, beating his meat and thinking about being screwed by his girl's lover." Shortly after, it is revealed that Bob's mother never physically touched him much when he was a child. When he was sick, she would take his temperature rectally—thus he associates love with having things up his arse. I honestly believe we are witnessing the strange humor of Pohl.

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I was eager to read this because of a bunch of reasons: it won a buttload of awards (Nebula, Hugo), it's part of the SF Masterworks (an amazing collection) and I loved [Space Merchants] (written together with [[C. M. Kornbluth]]).

So why the 3.5 stars? Because the main character annoyed me (the big

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baby Robinette that's afraid to do anything, but loves to screw anything that moves and cry and over-dramatise things) and I couldn't connect with him. This made about half of the book unbearable and boring for me. The book is half in the past (before Rob/Bob/Robinette struck gold) and half in the present when he's filthy rich and visits a robot therapist (called Sigfrid) - this bit amused me at first, then started to get in the way of the main story then got boring and annoying because it was pretty much the same.

I personally would've loved more in the way of actual sci-fi, more details about the Heechee (the alien civilization) and a lot fewer therapy sessions. I liked the ads, letters, mission reports and snippets of conversations that were interspersed in the story, giving more substance to the world around the main character. Not much, as the whole book was very very centered on him.

So there you have it. A decent read, but one that I'm not going back to in the future - also, I'm not sure about trying the next book in the series, given that it continues his story.

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Space scares me.

Scratch that.. When I am on the beach, I do not fear drowning in the ocean. It is not what happens to my body after I am dead that frightens me. I don’t really fear the numerous little nibbly biting things that will slowly devour my corpse until nothing remains.

Space is similar. I

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do not fear decompression. I don’t really fear the floating forever bit with no boundaries or edges, just an expanse of nothingness with no explanations or hope of understanding in my lifetime. There is an unknown number of little nibbly biting things who may or may not want to eat my corpse, but they will never have the opportunity due to lack of accessibility by proxy of statistical impossibility/unlikelihood.

With the ocean and space, both are wrought with the essential danger of asphyxiation. Decompression and lack of oxygen in space is not too far removed from increased pressure and lack of oxygen under water. They are all minor details when you get to that level.

What gets me sweating about the ocean/space is just the damnable expansive loneliness. On earth, the ocean represents a finite but tangible removal from all things I know. It is fear manifested. In space, it is the infinite and intangible removal from the same things. In both cases, the simplicity of the fear is nothing more than distance and nothingness. I can’t say it is manifest as there is NOTHING THERE.

Frederik Pohl’s Gateway is great science fiction. It’s focus is on Robinette, would be (nearly accidental) space explorer. Rob was living on the Gateway asteroid and pushing random buttons on alien space craft to see where they will go on autopilot. Each trip from Gateway to the unknown could mean instant death as he pops out of hyperspace into a sun going super nova, or could be safe, but 30 days longer round trip than his food supply will allow. It is a crap shoot.

Coming back to Gateway alive is not enough to earn you a living though. Just returning only pays enough for you to continue to breathe on the asteroid, air costs money, and those who can pay, can leave or be pushed out an airlock. In space, time matters more than on earth. every second it life that someone sold you. Survival is obviously fantastic, but coming back with scientific data that is new and useful is better, as it could earn you bonuses and make you a rich man or woman.

The Gateway novel takes some getting used to and is the only novel in the Gateway series formatted in the way it is. The book primarily flips between Rob Broadhead in his psychiatric sessions on earth (rich as a king) and his flashbacks to Gateway (poor and desperate). the book is filled with off-page notations, side conversations, and bulletin board posts in the asteroid. These can be distracting at times, but in the long view i believe help set the mood. All other books in the series are standard format, real-time, so if you want to read the series but are getting thrown off by the mixed in subtext just ignore these pages.

The last chapter of this book blew my mind and caused all of these space fear thoughts to be rehashed after years of successfully being ignored. It’s damned amazing and makes you rethink what torture truly could be, in relation to those you love. Sometimes the pain in your head is worse than anything you someone could do to you with a knife.

Highly recommended book for sci-fi aficionados.

--
xpost RawBlurb.com

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I enjoyed this book immensely. It was a bit dated, but I think that the book captures space exploration much better than other books, that its a crapshoot and theres not guarantee. My one complaint, and its not so much about the book, is that it took the narrator so long to actually go out

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exploring! I started reading it an hour before bedtime, and I kept going one more chapter, just waiting for something to happen (the waiting was very interesting, and the story wouldn't be what it was without it). Needless to say, I finished the book that night and was not a pleasant person the next morning

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This is the second book in a row that I've read in the science fiction genre that included a psychologist main character. The book did not fascinate me as much as I'd hoped it would. However, I gave it a pretty strong rating because of the very end which was quite clever.

One of the reasons that I

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picked up the book is that it seemed to be a book that would include a lot of space travel which I ordinarily enjoy reading. However, it actually has much less space travel and more pre & post space travel elements. This was a let-down for me.

The author spends a lot of the book dealing with psychology. Through the analysis of the main character the reader learns more of the plot. I wish that the psychology portion of the book had been shorter. In fact I found myself wishing I could just skip those chapters and "get to the good stuff!"

Based on this book, I probably won't continue to read this series of books. However, I did find the book compelling at times.

My biggest quibble is that at around the penultimate chapter, the author dallies in a few mature themes. I don't think that it added to the story much. I got the feeling like you get in a movie when the main character says a few bad words just to get the proper rating. But, in the case of this book, I was a little mystified at the inclusion. Like I wrote, it didn't add much.

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The tale is told in alternating chapters. In one series, Bob (short for Robinette), the hero (more an anti-hero), relates, more or less chronologically and certainly soporifically, his adventures as a prospector in the outer reaches of the universe, trying to find artifacts of a long-extinct race

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of space pioneers called the Heechee. In the second series, Bob, having clearly succeeded in his prospecting career, chronicles his sessions with a robo-shrink, who is trying to heal the emotional wounds that are the price Bob has paid for his success. So the “Gateway” is twofold: a portal to the stars and an entry into the psyche – kind of like Dutch doors. Both series are interspersed with one-page squibs that consist of futuristic classified ads extracts of lectures & interviews, and snatches from user manuals of various kinds. These are presumably intended to provide comic relief. They fail. The primary narrative is sluggish and not particularly imaginative. The psych sequences are amusing as spoofs of Freudian practice, but, ultimately, are undermined by the Freudianism that pervades the character development. This book won both a Hugo and a Nebula (how in the world?) and spawned a video game, which I hope gave more pleasure than its progenitor.

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I read this because of the Hugo and Nebula it received. Maybe it was a weak year. Gateway struck me as a somewhat ho-hum tale with an unlikeable lead character. It also has not aged as well as some other classic SF.

The climax/reveal/twist is good enough to make the book a worthwhile read. It

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depends on some theoretical physics that would have been a bit of a hot topic when Gateway was written. Maybe that bit of trendiness was enough to merit the awards at the time.

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Just one point as this book has been described many times – why the f*** is there no movie? Why do we have to bear the superhero trash when we are gifted books like this? If you don't read this, then don't even think of reading science fiction. Seriously.

The main character was so despicable that I couldn't get emotionally invested in the story. I came to dread the end of the chapters that took place on Gateway and in space, because I knew another chapter with the robo-psychologist would follow. These chapters probably were designed to allow the

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author to flesh-out the protagonist's character, but I just found them boring and repetitive.

A powerful, sad ending. Horrifying actually. I won't be checking out any more HeeChee novels after this.

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This is my favorite of Pohl's books. The concept for FTL space travel (i.e., we find a bunch of old alien ships that still work, but we have no idea how or where they are headed when the head out from our solar system) is original, and it opens up immense possibilities for storytelling. I haven't

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yet read any of the later Heechee books, which have gotten generally mixed reviews. The future society envisioned in this book is one where all but the very wealthy live short miserable frightening lives. The lucky ones get to take their chances on space travel, which is quite literally like playing a high stakes lottery, with huge payouts for the lucky, and ugly unpleasant deaths for everyone else. The narrative form is quite effective, alternating flashbacks (of the protagonist Robinette Broadhead's adventures in space), with his present day therapy sessions with "Sigfrid von Shrink," a computerized psychotherapist. The two story lines ultimately converge on the outcome of his third space prospecting mission, a mission that left him rich, famous, and profoundly depressed. Broadhead is certainly a flawed protagonist. By the end of the book we have a pretty good understanding of how he got to be the way his is, but I for one was not able to find much sympathy for him.

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Earth of the future is a rather inhospitable place. With populations soaring and without the technology for faster-than-light travel, humanity is outstripping the resources available to it on Earth. Society itself is demonstrates the dire straits in that only the super rich live comfortable lives,

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with a huge majority of the population relegated to dangerous, menial jobs mostly surrounding the cultivation of food products. For these disenfranchised masses, there is one beacon of hope - becoming a Gateway prospector.

During the exploration of Venus, mankind first became aware of the Heechee - an ancient, race that produced highly advanced technology some of which still survives in the caves and warrens they built throughout the galaxy. From Venus, a lone explorer discovered Gateway, and asteroid littered with over 1,000 Heechee ships capable of traveling phenomenal distances, but with controls designed and understood only by the Heechee. Taking a trip on Heechee ship was a serious risk, about 20% of prospectors were lost. But the rewards were fantastic - a single successful trip could set a prospector up for life. Such was the draw of prospecting.

Into this environment steps Robinette Broadhead - a lottery winner who dreams of parlaying this lottery winnings into the real score: a prospecting find. There's only one problem; he's a coward. He's terrified of actually getting into a Heechee ship. The fact that he might die a horrible death in the great blackness of space has paralyzed him into inaction. So he muddles through his existence on Gateway by taking menial jobs that pay enough to sustain him, and he finds a sugar mama who scored enough to lead a comfortable life on Gateway, but not enough to lead a comfortable life on Earth. She, too, is scared of taking another risk and their fears feeds of each other leading both to merely exist.

Woven into the story of his time on Gateway, is a series of Bob's sessions with Sigfrid von Shrink, Bob's computer psychiatrist. We know that Bob eventually goes out on a prospecting mission and scores big, but something devastating happens during at least one of those missions and those repressed memories are the root cause for Bob's litany of couch sessions. The the central question is what happened on that last mission?

Bob is very much an anti-hero in the Thomas Covenant vein. He takes very little action that could be considered noble. Like Covenant, he assaults the one person who cares for him. Like Covenant, he has opportunity after opportunity to step up and be a man, but he continually shirks responsibility and relies on snide comments to weasel his way out of situations. And (in a somewhat shocking revelation), he equates love with having something stuck up his ass.

I thought the book was good. It's not as oppressive as Covenant, and Broadhead doesn't stay as worthless as long as Covenant did - only two hundred pages as opposed to Covenant's 1200.

Read 1/2008

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I thoroughly enjoyed this classic Sci Fi tale, which stands the test of time against supposedly more sophisticated fiction. The mysterious Hee Chee have abandonded artifects all over the gallery. Humans have discovered a spacestation, Gateway, where hundreds of ships have been abandoned. Although

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they don't know how to operate or guide the ships, there are no shortage of volunteers to take the ships out on potentially lucrative runs that are equally risky since there is no way of controlling the ship's destination.

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The gateway gives you the option to go to outer space and maybe becomes a millionaire and world-famous. But it also makes it really easy to get killed. The heechee, a long-dead species, left the gateway with many ships that can take you to the other side of the universe. There's only one caveat,

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you can't control them in any way, and if you run into problems you'll be the only one who'll know about.

Amazing wondrous book, one of my top reads ever. Full of excitement, the unknown, and some pohl's unique sarcasm.

Should be enjoyable by most, and its a relatively short read.

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This science fiction work was awarded both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1978. Apart from its abbreviated length, I found it be well deserving of the awards. The novella is set in the somewhat distant future, in which the Earth, with a population of 25 million souls is suffering from food shortages

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and converts hydrocarbons not into energy, but into food. Picture a “Soylent Green” society. To alleviate overcrowding, colonies have been founded on Mars, Venus and Luna.

While establishing the underground Venus colony, the remnants of a previous civilization are discovered. A “prospector” finds a self guided alien spacecraft which transports him to Gateway, some type of alien way station at which hundreds of self guided alien ships are stored. The story revolves around life at Gateway and the process of using the alien (Heechee) ships (they are capable of interstellar travel) to explore the galaxy. The pilots of these one, three and five man ships are compensated based upon the importance of their discoveries. Each trip contains a very high likelihood of mortality, but the rewards are great.

The story is told through a Gateway “prospector” named Robinette Broadhead, a former food miner who has earned his way to Gateway through a lottery. The chapters alternate between his “current” psychiatric sessions and flashbacks to his time on Gateway.

The premise of the story is excellent and the story is well developed. The chapters dealing with the psychiatric sessions are not nearly as entertaining however, and almost amount to filler. This brings us to the length of the work. At 275 pages, the book is relatively short to begin with, however, fully 60+ pages are comprised of “exhibits” which are interspersed throughout the story. These exhibits take the form of Gateway bulletin board postings, pages from what appears to be a Gateway orientation manual, and various trip reports and scientific findings. Many of these are largely filler, the remainder deserve only cursory attention. In addition, there are roughly thirty chapters, each of which begin and end in the middle of a page. You are left with what is actually a book with 150-175 pages of text. Throw out the psychiatric sessions and you are largely left with what could easily be compressed into a lengthy short story. The book can be read in its entirety in 5-6 hours.

There are several sequels to Gateway and I will possibly follow up the story, but suspect that two or three could have been combined into one standard length science fiction novel.

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I first read this book my sophomore year in high school when I started wolfing down every bit of sci-fi I could get my grubby adolescent hands on.

I remember I loved the Heechee Saga, but in the way of old memories (and having read all of the available books at once), things got fuzzy so I could

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only "sorta kinda" tell you what the story arc is about.

Delightfully, the suck fairy has not found her evil little ways into this book. A sci-fi classic, this book remains relevant and doesn't feel dated the way a lot of older books can.

It's 99% character development. The world in the future isn't a pretty place, with too many people, where life is cheap, but living is expensive. Humanity has stumbled across the artifacts of an advanced space faring species, and is trying to discover more about it, but that's only the backdrop of the book.

The book is about Robinette Broadhead, a serf on the planet Earth who manages to make it to Gateway to try his hand at being a prospector. The story is told in alternating chapters, either currently while living his prospectors' life and as flashbacks as he discusses life with his "shrink". These chapters mesh remarkably well and the means of advancing the story this way is wonderful.

This book is a standalone (not intending to be the start to a series) and is one of my favorite reads of all time.

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One of my favourite books! The world is well realized, and the structures created to extract the maximum profit from the interstellar explorers have a reality that has impressed the exploitive capitalist in me! Robin and his competitors are very well done. Read it and give it to your friends! ( and

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protect any good ideas you have, as much as possible!)

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The Heechee Saga, of which this is the first book is considered a science fiction classic for good reason. In the not so distant future, mankind has found an alien transportation hub in the solar system. Unfortunately, while we can make it work, we can't understand it. Prospectors take the FTL

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ships of the Heechee and arrive at a random location in the universe and hope to find something valuable. Some strike it rich, others never return. This is the story of one persistent prospector who never quite strikes it rich, but always manages to return alive, somehow.
I've always found this to be a great book to read. The utilization of barely understood alien technology and the randomness of it all keeps it interesting, along with the constant prospect of the possibility of meeting the Heechee or other aliens.

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Sigfrid has a lot of Heechee circuits in him. He's a lot better than the machines at the Institute were, when I had my episode. He continuously monitors all my physical parameters: skin conductivity and pulse and beta-wave activity and so on. He gets readings from the restraining straps that hold

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me on the mat, to show how violently I fling myself around. He meters the volume of my voice and spectrum-scans the print for overtones. And he also understands what the words mean. Sigfrid is extremely smart, considering how stupid he is.
It is very hard, sometimes, to fool him. I get to the end of a session absolutely limp, with the feeling that if I had stayed with him for one more minute I would have found myself falling right down into that pain and it would have destroyed me.
Or cured me. Perhaps they are the same thing.

When Gateway was discovered, the asteroid was empty except for more than a thousand alien ships abandoned long before by the long-dead Heechee civilisation. The ships will only fly to certain pre-programmed destinations, so every trip is a lottery, from which the prospectors may come back dying or dead, or may never be heard from again. The prospectors are paid on results so they hope to return alive with Heechee goods or valuable scientific information about their destination, as they are paid on results, and will be in line for royalties if they find useful alien tech that can be reproduced and manufactured.

The story alternates between Robinette Broadhead's reminiscences about his time as a prospector living on Gateway, and accounts of his therapy sessions with a machine therapist years later when he tries to get over his overwhelming feelings of guilt. It was interesting to have an avowed coward as a protagonist, but I am surprised that Rob ever went out to Gateway at all, knowing the odds against becoming rich, or even surviving. On the other hand, his previous job in the mines was also a dangerous one, and mining had led to the deaths of both of his parents, so maybe it wasn't until he made it to Gateway that he felt he had any choice in how he lived his life, and only then realised what a coward he could be when he did have the choice.

In the Gateway chapters I was aware that Rob was leaving things out,and that sometimes he seemed to misinterpret things, but it was the therapy chapters that really brought this home, and made me understand that Rob was not a deliberately unreliable narrator, but just subconsciously avoiding mentioning certain things, or making connections related to the traumatic events that he couldn't face up to. My only disappointment with this book was that the therapy sessions didn't uncover as much of Rob's past as I had hoped. I was expecting to find out more about what happened with his ex-girlfriend Sylvia back on earth, and why he had his first mental breakdown after they split up, but that was left vague, compared to the trauma caused by the death of his mother and what happened on his last prospecting trip on Gateway.

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My opinion is nothing new, but let me say it anyway :) Full of mystery, this book will keep you turning pages. That's its magic in my opinion. You don't see this level of mystery in SF all that much, and this book uses this plot device like a knife.

Mankind has finally discovered an alien race, but they themselves are nowhere to be seen, only their technology. Volunteers can strap themselves into the machines they left behind and hyperspace to some random place where they might find treasure, and become rich, or die trying.