Customer Reviews

The Annals of the Heechee (Heechee Saga, Book 4)

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The first book was one of the best sci fi novels I've ever read, the next two were also very enjoyable, but I have to say, this one almost reads either like someone else wrote it using Pohl's notes, or Pohl himself wrote it but only under extreme duress. Characters I had grown to love were reduced in this story to one-dimensional thumbnails. Earlier in the series, I had truly felt Robin's pain, his guilt, and later, I felt a certain satisfaction in watching him struggle through the whole thing and grow as a character, achieving success, and maybe more importantly peace of mind. In this story he was completely annoying and so was his wife. Gaahh! What a shame this was the closer! If you enjoyed the first three books in the story, do what I wish I had done - walk away from this one and forget you ever saw it.

While the first three volumes of the Heechee Sage proved highly engrossing and ingenious, "Annals of the Heechee" fails to live up to its predecessors. All of Pohl's well-devised characters seem reduced here to annoying stereotypes of themselves, repeating their idiosyncracies ad nauseum, rather than growing and changing. Too much of the book is devoted to reciting incidents of the previous books and impromptu science lectures by Albert Einstein. The movement of the plot is slow, and what few conflicts arise are quickly defused.

The book's conclusion is interesting enough (as well as abrupt, in the Pohl tradition), and while it is satisfying to finally find resolution to (most of) the great mysteries of the saga, it is not on par with what one would expect from such a promissing story to date.

This 1987 novel is the fourth in the Heechee series by Frederick Pohl, and it rounds up the stories of the characters from the first three books. It's not really the last one, as Pohl wrote a fifth novel called The Boy Who Would Live Forever. I found, after this reading, that Pohl is a force to be reckoned with in sci-fi. He is bright, often funny, astute and very entertaining. This is certainly one of the more engaging series in any of science fiction.

By the time this novel rolls around, the main character, Robinette Broadhead, has been installed in a machine intelligence program. That is, he had previously died Iin Heechee Rendezvous) and his likeness was digitized and turned into a virtual program on a computer, and this program has all the capacities of a human with the addition that he/it can rive anywhere in the electronic media data streams, and he can manifest himself as a doppel, or realistic image. He lives in gigabit time, meaning he senses and uses the passing microseconds the way we mere mortals use minutes and hours. This seems a bit farfetched but it doesn't detract from the narration of the novel. Pohl explains the mechanics of this sort of thing in the previous novel and again in this one. It's certainly a different point of view, and Pohl is very good at it.

Broadhead, the richest man in the galaxy, travels around as a philanthropist with his still-alive wife Essie and he encounters the Foe, an intergalactic species which are made off pure energy. The Foe (or Assassins) are out to completely change the structure of the universe by collapsing it and expanding it into a new Big bang design, in the hopes of having a universe more suited to themselves. That's a lot of power and a lot of cosmic change. Broadhead, and the military powers that be, try to stop this. Without giving away the ending, let's say that they learn a lot more about the nature of the universe. Pohl uses these novels to share his quirky but interesting views on cosmic geology and physics and energy matters versus material matters etc. it is never boring, as Broadhead explores these things through the help of his supercharged computer program which is called Albert Einstein, one of the other very colorful characters.

I tend to agree with other reviewers who say that this fourth novel doesn't satisfy like thee first three do. Yes, the Einstein program and the regular cast of characters are sometimes almost boring, and a bit repetitive, as is the information given. There are repeats of the overall plots and incidents from the other novels. But what kept me going (and most readers) was the conclusion of the mysteries and the explanations of why the Heechee fled in the first place and who the Foe are and what they want. As always, Pohl can't fail to impress you with his control of the narration. Witty, humane, and fun to read.

This is probably my favorite book in the series. It jumps around a lot and presents the reader with many different ideas and situations that challenge your philosophy on life, the meaning of being human, what humans would act like in a post-singularity existense, what humans would act like in a myriad of different and other utterly unique situations that we may one day be faced with,,,. A book that makes you think but doesn't shortchange you on action and suspense. My favorite kind. It treats you like you are an intelligent person, who, now that you know the characters and set-up, and are probably sci-fi and science literate, can appreciate an author jumping around with many different ideas and scenarios in order to ask the ultimate question at the end of the book. Awesome stuff and very important in the sci-fi canon.

With that said, most readers won't like it. It has flaws and is sometimes uneven and too jumpy. R. Broadhead gets on your nerves and Albert is too much of his little biatch. It doesn't clean up it's 'loose ends'. If you want space opera go somewhere else. If you want thoughtful scifi, give it a try.

I really enjoyed the first two books in this series. They were some great science fiction. The third one wasn't bad either. This novel, on the other hand, was a bit tedious at times. In one part, Albert spent several pages explaining the Big Bang theory. In another part, the main characters were just killing time on a trip across the galaxy, and nothing of consequence really happened. These are just two examples. "The Annals of the Heechee" does neatly tie up many of the loose ends from the previous novels in the series, but the story doesn't really stand very well on its own.