Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 9 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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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A MASTERCLASS IN HOW SCI FI SHOULD BE WRITTEN., 3 Jul 2000
By A Customer
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.
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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
‘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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