Customer Reviews

Gateway (Gollancz S.F.)

5 star:		(56)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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. We soon realize that Bob was the only survivor of one of his exploratory missions, and Sigfrid teases out Bob's feelings of guilt while we concurrently learn the details of his past. At its best, these conversations are vaguely reminiscent of Stanislaw Lem's psychological fiction (although nowhere near as cerebral), and Pohl's idiosyncratic sense of humor make many of these sessions fun reading.

These two "before and after" strands twist and twine their cords to an ending that wraps up all the loose ends, explains the mystery of the doomed expedition, and satisfactorily connects both stories. (Perhaps too satisfactorily: the final bit of dialogue between Bob and Sigfrid almost has the feel of a punch line of a shaggy-dog tale written for psychotherapists.) Pohl's wit and his knack for realism ultimately carry the story of these daring--if suicidally inclined--fortune-hunters to other worlds.

Perhaps it's the extensive psychotherapy that turns people off, but I found Gateway to be one of the most moving pieces of sci-fi I have ever read, second to Stranger in a Strange Land. Gateway came about 15 years later, and the 70s were a fantastic time for the genre, in my opinion. Your mileage may vary, but I think it's important that you know where I'm coming from as a reader.

At any rate, I was engrossed by the humanity, or vulnerability, of the characters in this book. It's not something you see very often in the genre. While characters in an Asimov or Clarke novel (God love them) may only serve to move the plot, Pohl lets the plot move around them; the central conflict is within. So this may actually turn off the escapist reader.

But this is still firmly science fiction, as it explores speculative ideas as a necessary part of the story. Nothing today can approximate the Gateway space station; only on a smaller scale, at best. It's a story of desperation that also carries science fiction's famous "sense of wonder." It's something every star gazer has felt, and Pohl nails it.

Unfortunately, he isn't as adept in psychiatry as he is spinning yarns, and the sections with Bob talking to his therapist feel slightly dull compared to the sharpness of Gateway station and its occupants. But only by comparison. It's also one of the few books I've ever re-read.

Read this years ago, haven't forgotten a word. Astounded that nobody's made a movie of it -- can't think of a more cinematic novel. Because of its odd structure and unexpected humor, some might think it just plain strange -- but rarely has the intensity ratcheted up, for me, as highly as in this one book.

Only caveat is this, and let me be absolutely clear:

Do. Not. Read. The. Sequels.

Wow. I just finished this book the other day. Unlike what other people have said Pohl is surely a master of his art. This is what I'd consider Hard Core Science Fiction, much like that of Asimov. The story is written in a great fashion, from the past to future, but never leaves you completely in the dark as to what's going on. I have yet to read the rest of the series, but this is the true meaning to superior science fiction. It was all worth the last line (now THAT'S how you end a book!) I wish I could give more stars.

Although the character of Robinette Broadhead is expertly handled and the frame narrative adds to the suspense, I think the real reason this is one of the greatest sf novels of all time lies in the world Pohl has created. He has taken a silly idea, something you'd expect to find in a pre-Campbell pulp or a Silver Age comic book, and made it perfectly plausible. Imagine how it would have been done then: people discover a mysterious box and find that when you enter you will either die or become rich. It's a cool idea, and a great setup for a story, but it's also terminally silly. Pohl has taken this clumsy deus ex machina box and opened it for us, so that the roulette wheel of Gateway makes perfect sense, and both the risk and the reward become logical, even necessary, extensions of the place. My one complaint: Pohl is too addicted to the practice of ending each chapter with a clever sentence.

This book has some merits. Pohl paints a convincing miners' world by giving us a sense of its grit and stench. The lives of the miners are also handled well. The cramped seediness of their environment stunts their souls and this is crafted both believably and professionally. And, in spite of portraying Twenty-Third (?) century scientists as being unrealistically dense, the mystery of the Heechee is equal to any other creation in science fiction.

However, for all its strengths, this book didn't engage me. I found the angst of the main character both affected and contrived. And while his emotional self-flagellation was not central to the workings of the story, it kept distracting me from the more important elements. Consequently, I couldn't enjoy the story because of my resentment towards the book's heavy-handed artifice.

In this book, Pohl is so intent on teasing a multi-dimensional character out of a uni-dimensional kernel that he overindulges in Freudian excess. The main character is a parody of psychological trauma. His self-consuming guilt is advertised to the reader with all the subtlety of a highway billboard. Just as blatantly, our hero goes through unbelievable mental contortions to evade his real feelings. What we get is not a characterization we can identify with, but a painfully simplistic parody of an emotional breakdown. If despair and survivor guilt were really this superficial, psychiatrists would all be out of work.

Many readers unused to science fiction complain about the genre's tendency towards simple characters. This book illustrates why simple characters in the service of a good story are preferable to "complex" characters purchased with pretension. Grandmasters like Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein rarely created multifaceted or engaging characters. Yet some of these works proved to be classics because characterization was unimportant to the story. Here, a great story is felled by a misguided attempt to inject "dimension" into the hero when a simpler hero would have allowed the complexity of his world to take centre stage.

If you can get past the Hollywood angst, this book is actually a pretty good read with interesting ideas, settings and storyline. But it could have passed from "good" to "great", and it's a shame that its excesses prevent it from achieving something grander.

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. It is well established that many flights are "successful" only in the fact that at least one of the crew returns alive. The therapy sessions and the story narrative are effortlessly intertwined and build up a rich weave of narrative that is difficult to put down.

The future world is plausible, and written in a fashion where little is explained explicitly, but where the reader can fully understand based on context. There is very little science because the inner workings of the Heechee artifacts are not understood. The book's weakness is, in fact, its attempts to explain some of the technologies (the explanations of Heechee "metal" are laughable). However, this is a fully realised futuristic society, self-contained and a logical extension of pre-AIDS sexual mores... That the psychoanalysis is almost excusively Freudian is forgivable because it fits perfectly well with the attitudes and morals of the society.

It is the first book of a series, although completely self-contained. It piqued my interest enough that I will be on the lookout for the second book in the series, and is a worthy dounle-winner of science fiction's top prizes, the Hugo and Nebula.

Gateway is the first book in Pohl's wonderful Heechee Saga. It details the adventures of Robinette Broadhead, told in flashback. In the beginning of the book we learn that Broadhead had struck it rich, but do not know why. We learn his past through a series of therapy sessions with his psychologist (in the present), and through a telling of events in the past. Broadhead is a successful gateway prospector. Not too long ago in the story's history, humans stumbled upon the remnants of technology possessed by an advanced race. One of these prized artifacts was a huge spacestation with a nest of thousands of ships. This spacestation was termed Gateway, as these ships were found to have preprogrammed destinations. Unfortunately, humankind has not found out how to change the course of the ships, only to be led to their preprogrammed destination, and back. The problem was, the ancient race (termed the 'Heechee') had left for nearly half a million years, so some of these destinations became disaster areas, such as nearby a star that had undergone a supernova. Thus the adventure was on. Those who could afford the trip to gateway risked their lives on board these Heechee ships. If something of scientific value (such as more Heechee technology) was found at a destination, a bonus was given to the lucky prospector. More people died than strike it rich however... The last 30 pages or so is hard to put down as the story comes to a climax. Broadhead is one of the lucky people to strike it rich. But how? Read and find out!

This book started out with a neat premise: an ancient alien civilization has left a few traces behind in our solar system, including a tunnel-filled asteroid with a thousand faster-than-light rockets attached. The rockets hold one, three or five humans and though they have a navigation system no human can figure it out. People can ship up to the asteroid, board a rocket and launch themselves randomly into space. It's entirely a crapshoot where the voyagers end up - some ships come back with a happy crew and a ship full of pricy alien artifacts (so they go home rich), and others come back mangled and destroyed (or not at all).

The climax was a pretty solid idea, too. I found it extremely chilling, and the way the ending played out was suspenseful enough. Pohl managed to make his statement heard.

But I have a number of problems with the vision of future human technology (notably, they send people to their death instead of just placing a recording device in the rockets to make sure they'd come back safely...) The entire business with the psychologist computer (Sigfrid) struck me as very hokey, and the main character REALLY bothered me during these sequences. He spends practically the entire book pretending as though he doesn't have anything he wants to talk about, and won't discuss anything from his past. But why would he bother with therapy if he was so opposed to actually getting any therapy done? And there was some kind of subplot that was meant to explain his latent homosexuality, but that came way out of left field for anybody reading. I didn't find the psychology believable AT ALL.

In the end I think this entire story could have been reduced to a nice novella or even a short story: put the introduction, a little bit about the characters, then hit us with the ending and leave everyone thinking. Even for such a short novel it felt too long - there were little excerpts of 'Gateway classified ads' and also some transcripts of a professor educating potential prospectors about the dangers of the galaxy, but they did nothing for me except to interrupt the flow of the book.

Gateway is an alien treasure hunt story set in a claustrophobic, overcrowded future. The story begins with Rob. He is an ultimately successful prospector, one of the elite rich, undergoing psychotherapy for space exploration trauma. As a disadvantaged youth he left the mines of earth and voyaged to Gateway, an alien spaceport now adapted for humans as the embarkation point for looking for alien treasure.

The process of looking for alien treasure is highly dangerous and has a high mortality rate. Not only are the expeditions very dangerous, but they are very uncomfortable. Those who are sent have no idea if they will return until they have reached their pre-programmed destination. But those who are successful receive huge rewards.

Gateway reads like a long troubling nightmare. Pessimistic yet suspenseful, it is a fascinating speculative adventure and an incisive glimpse into the human psyche. Pohl's writing is clear and simple. The story is told in such a way that the language is almost unnoticed. Clearly he is a master of space adventure writing. The good news is that there are plenty of sequels!