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Gateway (S.F. Masterworks) (Paperback)

by Frederik Pohl (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Gollancz; New edition edition (13 May 1999)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1857988183
  • ISBN-13: 978-1857988185
  • Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 2.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 24,796 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #2 in  Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Authors, A-Z > P > Pohl, Frederik

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Product Description

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

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.

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Gateway (S.F. Masterworks)
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Customer Reviews

50 Reviews
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 (31)
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 (7)
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 (6)
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 (3)
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (50 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A real classic, 2 Mar 1999
By A Customer
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!

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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars It's a Masterclass in SF Writing, 11 May 2004
By Rod Williams "hairybloke@aol.com" (London) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   
‘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.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars An easy read, an average story, 18 May 2007
By Mr. I. A. Macpherson "Macca" (Leamington Spa, Warwickshire) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Whilst reading this book I did find it quite compelling, and found it easy to get into and read through. The premise is interesting and some of the ideas are really excellent.

The parallel telling of the main character's psycho analysis in the present time along with flashback retelling of the story leading him to that point is quite well constructed.

I think the main problem for me is that there aren't really any "answers" to much of the story. This was predictable and in a way made me feel like the characters in the book - in the end we're none the wiser as to where the ships came from, what they were really for etc. The big reveal at the end was good, and really made a good play on a physics theory regarding the relativity of time that explains why the central character is so tortured by what happened.

There are some, to my mind, pretty pointless sub plots - one in particular regarding the main characters latent homosexual feelings that really didn't seem to do much for the plot. I guess this might be a bit to do with the age of the book but it seemed a bit clunky by today's standards.

Overall it was an interesting read, but quite simplistic and straightforward compared to a lot of SF novels by today's authors - still perhaps that's no bad thing.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars A "classic" to avoid
So - this book won the Hugo and Nebula awards? It's not easy to understand why, at least nowadays. Maybe it was in some way innovative in 1977, most probably it was, but now it... Read more
Published 23 days ago by Patrick Borer

3.0 out of 5 stars Fairly average considering the awards
This book was the winners of Hugo, Nebula and John W Campbell awards. I can only think it must have been a relatively poor year. Read more
Published 9 months ago by John M

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Book
I have been going through some of the classic sci fi novels all the hugo and nebula winners and this isn't a dissapointment I just wish I could get a copy of the sequels in the... Read more
Published 16 months ago by S. Mckirdy

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic Pohl
In this series Pohl combines his best loved themes, hard science, psychology and mankind. His hero, Robinette Broadhead, represents the best and the worst of mankind and is... Read more
Published on 3 Dec 2006 by G. Laird

3.0 out of 5 stars Lacking somewhat, but a compeling read
The plot was annoying and irratating at times, with sessions on the pshycyatrist bench, and classified adds etc. added in (that usually added nothing to the book). Read more
Published on 3 Oct 2006 by R. J. Beed

1.0 out of 5 stars Bonobos in Space
Though the basic idea is quite interesting, sadly the book does not offer much more. The story can be told in one sentence. Read more
Published on 13 Jun 2006 by Michael Schmid

5.0 out of 5 stars Every man has his breaking point
It's deep into the future. Life on earth is pretty terrible. In an effort to escape the misery Robinette Broadhead chooses to play a cosmic game of Russian Roulette on Gateway -... Read more
Published on 12 May 2006 by C. Foster

5.0 out of 5 stars Imaginative human drama
I really enjoyed this book and have gone on to read Man Plus which is by the same author and was also very good. Read more
Published on 5 April 2006 by C. Oflaherty

5.0 out of 5 stars Say hello to mr. Freud.
This is a peculiar novel. For 300 pages you think you're reading a SF novel and it's only in the last 13 pages that you become aware of the fact that all along it was mainly about... Read more
Published on 19 Sep 2004 by Jan Dierckx

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Space Adventure!
Probably like many other Amazon customers, I too am trying to read the Millennium SF Masterworks series. Read more
Published on 4 May 2004 by R. A. S. Brown

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