Product Description

Wealth ... or death. Those were the choices Gateway offered. Humans had discovered this artificial spaceport, full of working interstellar ships left behind by the mysterious, vanished Heechee. Their destinations are preprogrammed. They are easy to operate, but impossible to control. Some came back with discoveries which made their intrepid pilots rich; others returned with their remains barely identifiable. It was the ultimate game of Russian roulette, but in this resource-starved future there was no shortage of desperate volunteers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #44150 in Books
• Published on: 1999-05-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Some SF writers have astonishingly long productive careers. Frederik Pohl started in 1940 and with Cyril Kornbluth co-wrote such classic 1950s satires as The Space Merchants. He won Hugo and Nebula awards for the 1977 Gateway, a major novel combining classic SF excitement with psychological depth and now reissued in Millennium SF Masterworks. The compelling central idea is Gateway itself, an asteroid base stuffed with abandoned interstellar ships built by the mysterious, elusive alien "Heechee". These tiny vessels can travel on autopilot to countless unknown destinations. Some human passengers return with fabulous technologies and scientific insights, others empty-handed. Many more die from incomprehensible hazards at journey's end, or from lack of food or air in overlong round-trips. So the atmosphere of the human community at Gateway is uniquely edgy, halfway between a gold-rush town and Death Row. Pohl's unheroic hero Broadhead has both good and bad luck in Heechee craft, emerging with riches and terrible loss. We learn the shattering story of what happened in successive flashbacks, while the engaging, scene-stealing AI psychology software called Sigfrid patiently tries to put Broadhead together again. Gateway is witty and humane, full of clever insights, ingenious asides and claustrophobic drama. Its sequels are less impressive. --David Langford

About the Author
SALES POINTS * #9 in the Millennium SF Masterworks series, a library of the finest science fiction ever written * Winner of the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and the John W. Campbell Award * 'An outstanding work ... highly recommended' -- Library Journal

Customer Reviews

A real classic
I've just noticed that this is due to be published in the SF Masterworks series, wiith the original US paperback cover, even!

I read this about 20 years ago, not long after it came out in 1977, and again a couple of times since. Probably my favourite Pohl book. It's the story of a man named Robinette Broadhead, his struggle to survive and make it rich in a world where most people are poor. On an asteroid named Gateway, a long-gone species of aliens called the Heechee left a thousand of their spaceships. No one knows how they work, but it is possible to operate them, to go to preprogrammed destinations elsewhere in the galaxy. Sometimes the crew bring back valuable discoveries. Sometimes they come back dead, or not at all. It's also the story of Broadhead's guilt at letting something terrible happen to his girlfriend, Klara, and how he learns to deal with that.

What makes the story for me is a mixture of things - Pohl's use of sidebars to give us a picture of the world the story is set in, for instance. The sense of mystery created by the fact that no one really knows what they're doing with the Heechee ships. His telling of the story in the form of flashbacks interspersed with sessions with Broadhead's psychoanalyst (who is a computer programme). Even the way it ends so suddenly, in just a page or so, when the actions that Broadhead spends years regretting flash by in a blur...

Well worth anyone's money, I'd say, and certainly an appropriate addition to the SF Masterworks series.

If you enjoy this, go on & read the other Heechee books, such as Beyond the Blue Event Horizon & Heechee Rendezvous - Pohl has created a fascinating Universe to set these stories in!

A MASTERCLASS IN HOW SCI FI SHOULD BE WRITTEN.
From the initial premise to the final resolution this novel was powerful, imaginative stuff. Revolving around the central idea that a spacestation full of abandoned alien spacecraft have been found, and which human prospectors are trying to exploit, it paints a dark and sinister tale. For, though the alien craft can be used to travel to preset destinations, nobody actually knows where most of those destinations are, or whether they will ever come back. The perils of this hi tech Russian Roulette range from flying straight into a boiling sun, to simply running out of whatever fuel these ships use. It is a tale about fear of the unknown, and overcoming that fear for greed.

The central character Robinette Broadhead is a complex person teetering dangerously on the edge of sanity, and his tale is interwoven with counselling sessions with his computer therapist Sigfrid who manages to steal every scene in which he appears.

It is a long time since I was able to lose myself in the mystique of a sci fi novel like this. Questions such as who were the Heechee who built these ships, where did they go, and what awaits humans who try to make use of their barely understood technology will keep you turning the pages to the very end.

I cannot stress how highly I regard this book. Buy it now or forever wonder what you missed.

It's a Masterclass in SF Writing
‘Gateway’ is composed of a series of psychiatric sessions, punctuated by the story, told in flashback, of the patient, and the events which made him rich and brought him to the psychiatrist’s couch.
Our protagonist, Robinette Broadhead, makes an interesting hero. It’s a tribute to Pohl’s powers of characterisation that Broadhead - essentially what one may describe as a coward, and who at one point beats up his girlfriend - comes across as a likeable and sensitive character.
Gateway is an asteroid, somewhere within the orbit of Venus, which, millions of years ago, was a base for the long-vanished HeeChee. The HeeChee left behind several hundred (still-working) ships, each capable of automatic return trips to a series of preset - but unknown - destinations.
Some prospectors returned with valuable HeeChee artefacts or scientific data. Others returned dead. Some never returned at all.
Broadhead gambles his lottery-won fortune to buy a trip to Gateway and the Russian Roulette chance of flying to an unknown destination to discover something that would make him rich enough to solve all his problems.
Obviously since we know Broadhead did become rich and is now in therapy (under the treatment of Sigfrid, the AI psychiatrist) his problems were not solved.
The beauty of this book is that we are left - as we generally are in life - with unresolved issues.
Had there been no sequels, this would undoubtedly stand as a masterpiece, but the three ensuing books, in which the mysterious HeeChee are discovered, and their disappearance explained, erode the mystery which is such a valuable part of this novel.
As a stand-alone, it leaves one with that poignant feeling that the book is continuing without you somewhere.
Every character seems fully rounded, and all are skilfully presented as people with flaws, with faults, and no one lives happily ever after. It is not, however, bleak. It is an optimistic view of human aspiration and endeavour.
The most intriguing character is the HeeChee race itself, and in this novel at least, Pohl carefully avoids the temptation to put flesh on their bones. He does not even provide the bones. Nothing is known of them, other than what can be deduced from their abandoned ships and tunnels.

Without doubt, Pohl’s best work to date.

Sequels: Beyond The Blue Event Horizon: HeeChee Rendezvous: Annals of The HeeChee.