Gateway Author: Visit Amazon's Frederik Pohl Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0345475836 | Format: PDF
Gateway Description
From the Inside Flap
Gateway opened on all the wealth of the Universe...and on reaches of unimaginable horror. When prospector Bob Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was the right mission to make him his fortune. Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Robinette Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he is...in a journey into himself as perilous and even more horrifying than the nightmare trip through the interstellar void that he drove himself to take!
THE HEECHEE SAGA
Book One:GATEWAY
Book Two:BEYOND THE BLUE EVENT HORIZON
Book Three: HEECHEE RENDEZVOUS
Book Four: THE ANNALS OF THE HEECHEE
From the Paperback edition.
About the Author
Frederick Pohl has been a SF writer and editor for almost 50 years. He grew up in New York, but now lives near Chicago.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
- Series: Heechee Saga (Book 1)
- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Del Rey; Reprint edition (October 12, 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0345475836
- ISBN-13: 978-0345475831
- Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Pohl's first entry in the Heechee series is really two books in one: a space adventure about pioneers exploring the universe and a tongue-in-cheek look at artificial intelligence through a Freudian prism.
"Gateway" alternates between two storylines. Robinette (Bob) Broadhead, a young man drudging away in an underground food mine on Earth, wins a lottery and uses his earnings to travel to Gateway, a portal that was constructed and abandoned by an unknown species and that contains hundreds of modules which transport voyagers to predetermined locations throughout the universe. Adventurers are paid immense royalties by the Gateway Corporation for any scientific discoveries and for booty, but there are two hitches: nobody has ever been able to figure out in advance the destination for each module and a rather significant proportion of the explorers either return dead or are never seen again.
Pohl ably depicts the claustrophobia of the Gateway colony and of space travel, and he convincingly imagines the fear and excitement that precedes each journey. Once our hero arrives at Gateway, however, he finds himself thwarted far more by his fear of dying than motivated by the desire for glory and fortune; after his training he proves a reluctant pioneer. The accurate and realistic portrayal of this inertia is simultaneously one of the novel's strengths and its downside, since the reader all but experiences Bob's indolence while he gets up enough nerve to set out on a trip: "Most days we simply spent deferring decisions." Living and working in space can be quite tedious.
Between Bob's recollections of his life in Gateway are transcripts of his conversations, years later, with Sigfrid, a computer/robot who serves as his A.I. shrink.
The premise of Gateway is simple enough - humankind has discovered a space station abandoned 500 000 years ago by a technologically superior race (the "Heechee"). Part of the station's equipment is a group of space shuttles with faster-than-light drives. The shuttles have a capacity of 1 to 5 humans. No one can figure out most of the technology in them, but through trial and error, they learn that if a certain panel glows a certain intensity, the ship will make a round trip to.... somewhere. The truly adventurous (or desperate) sign up to ride the vessels out and back and see if they go anywhere of use (i.e. an old Heechee colony that contains some more of the wonderful Heechee artfacts/technology). Of course, because nothing is known of the destination, and because the Heechee were known to be scientists, sometimes the destinations are close to black holes, inside recent supernovae (that were stars 500 000 years ago), or the trip is too long for the occupants' food/water supplies.
The central character is Bob Broadhead, a poor miner who won enough money in a lottery for a ticket to Gateway. Unfortunately for him, he's a self-professed coward - afraid to go back to the mines, yet afraid to try his luck in the Heechee ships. It turns out that the story is more of a character study - we first meet Broadhead in his psychiatrist's office, where he's fabulously wealthy after three trips in the Heechee ships, but with deep emotional problems. The story intercuts between therapy sessions and a first-person account of the actual events leading up to his fame and pychosis.
The strength of the book is the way it maintains suspense and interest - we know what is going to happen to Broadhead, but not how, and not the fates of his friends and associates.
Gateway Preview
Link
Please Wait...