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Frederik Pohl
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Gateway (Heechee Saga) Paperback – October 12, 2004

by Frederik Pohl (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 538 ratings
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  1. Nebula AwardWinner, 1977
  2. Hugo AwardWinner, 1978
  3. Locus AwardWinner, 1978
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WINNER OF THE HUGO AND NEBULA AWARDS • Frederik Pohl stands shoulder to shoulder with Philip K. Dick, Larry Niven, Robert Heinlein, and Ray Bradbury as one of the brilliant vision-aries in the science fiction stratosphere. Gateway is a modern masterpiece that defines—and transcends—its genre.

Seeded among the stars are troves of valuable artifactsleft behind by the enigmatic, long-vanished alien racecalled the Heechee. For the right price, anyone can climb aboard one of the abandoned Heechee spaceships, castoff on an autopilot voyage to parts unknown, and takea chance on finding wealth . . . or facing death.

Robinette Broadhead took that chance and walked awaya winner. But at what cost? Despite living a millionaire’s life of material luxury, he’s haunted by crippling despair—and the dark secrets buried deep in his psyche. With the help of his computerized psychiatrist, the truth about whathappened “out there” could set Broadhead free. But only after a personal journey more terrifying and, ultimately, more devastating than his last fateful trip into space.

Praise for Gateway

“When an author of the stature of Frederik Pohl says that . . . Gateway is the best thing he has ever written, it deserves careful attention. . . . Get this one.”—Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine

“Ccompulsive reading.”—Chicago Daily News

“Wonderfully satisfying.”—The New York Times Book Review
Previous page
  1. Book 1 of 6
    Heechee Saga
  2. Print length
    288 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Del Rey
  5. Publication date
    October 12, 2004
  6. Dimensions
    5.46 x 0.62 x 8.24 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    0345475836
  8. ISBN-13
    978-0345475831
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“When an author of the stature of Frederik Pohl says that . . . Gateway is the best thing he has ever written, it deserves careful attention. . . . Get this one.”—Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine

“Ccompulsive reading.”—Chicago Daily News

“Wonderfully satisfying.”—The New York Times Book Review

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.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Del Rey; Reprint edition (October 12, 2004)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0345475836
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0345475831
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.5 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.46 x 0.62 x 8.24 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 538 ratings

About the author

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Frederik Pohl

Frederik Pohl

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Frederik George Pohl, Jr. (/ˈpoʊl/; November 26, 1919 – September 2, 2013) was an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning more than seventy-five years—from his first published work, the 1937 poem "Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna", to the 2011 novel All the Lives He Led and articles and essays published in 2012.

From about 1959 until 1969, Pohl edited Galaxy and its sister magazine If; the latter won three successive annual Hugo Awards as the year's best professional magazine. His 1977 novel Gateway won four "year's best novel" awards: the Hugo voted by convention participants, the Locus voted by magazine subscribers, the Nebula voted by American science fiction writers, and the juried academic John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He won the Campbell Memorial Award again for the 1984 collection of novellas Years of the City, one of two repeat winners during the first forty years. For his 1979 novel Jem, Pohl won a U.S. National Book Award in the one-year category Science Fiction. It was a finalist for three other years' best novel awards. He won four Hugo and three Nebula Awards.

The Science Fiction Writers of America named Pohl its 12th recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award in 1993 and he was inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1998, its third class of two dead and two living writers.[a]

Pohl won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2010, for his blog, "The Way the Future Blogs".

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by AllyUnion [Attribution, GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0), CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
538 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

W. Weber
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the Very Best (To Me)
Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2018
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I love Gateway. I've read this and the sequels several times, over the decades. But if you check out the reviews, you'll see a spectrum of taste, ranging from adulation to contempt. Here's a brief sample of the science fiction works that I like. If you like them too, then you'll probably enjoy Gateway (a lot).

Asimov's Foundation Series
95%+ of Heinlein's work (I think I've read them all)
Clarke (Fountains of Paradise, Rendezvous with Rama)
The Stainless Steel Rat, by Harry Harrison
Ray Bradbury (451 for example)
Charles Sheffield's Cold as Ice series
Aldous Huxley (BNW, Chrome Yellow, Ape and Essence)

I think that Gateway fits into this genre very well, but closer to the "far out" range, like Niven's Rig World. Still, he handles the fantastic very well and makes it believable, as in "Yeah, that could happen."

Now the bad news. The sequels are very good and they introduce interesting new situations and characters. But in my opinion (you may think otherwise) they are 4-star. This first book in the series is the best. To me, it's well worth reading the series but Gateway is a stand-alone masterpiece, like Stranger in a Strange Land, and Fahrenheit 451. If you like shootouts with ray-guns, this is not your book.
33 people found this helpful
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Lionel S. Taylor
4.0 out of 5 stars A Very Entertaining Read With One very Annoying Flaw
Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2014
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Gateway is a very entertaining book that alternates between the main character's description of his life working as a "prospector" a group of people tasked with piloting alien ships that they are not sure how to control to potentially new technology and fabulous wealth or into a certain death. This storyline is alternated with on in which the author is going to counseling sessions to try to work out the problems of his last mission. The two stories intertwine in a way that revels the same story but from different perspectives. There also interspersed throughout the book little informative tidbits in the form of classified ads and interviews with other characters giving the reader a word illustration of what is going on in the larger world of Gateway. I thought there were an especially good idea. Overall I really liked this book and was more than willing to give it a 5 stars. But then I got to the last chapters.

I have often heard other authors say that they do not consider their books sci fi when they obviously are. And I have always wondered why that is. I would think that one would love to have their book classified as this because it has a guaranteed fan base. But after reading Gateway and a few others I am beginning to see why. I have read several of the Hugo and Nebula award winning books and one thing that has bothered me about they is that many of these books that have been judged to be the best of the genera for that year by both readers (Hugo) and writers (Nebula) are written at about the emotional level of a 16 year old boy from the 1960. To give an example, there are several chapters in the story where the main character has encounters with his main love interest and they have quirky relationship that really doesn't seem to get developed that much except for the fact that she keeps referring to horoscopes and he keeps smoking and making witty retorts between endless bouts of sex. In one chapter he confronts his girlfriend after finding out that she has slept with another man (that he also has romantic feeling for) they end up getting into a fight and he severely beats her actually picking her up off the ground to punch her and knock a tooth out. Later in the book they are reunited and she makes know reference to the vicious attack and professes that she still loves him! WTF!!!!! The character even mentions that he can see the gap in her smile when the aforementioned tooth was knocked out! To me this is the most implausible part of the entire story. 1.) It implies that she is to blame for what happened and she acknowledges that. 2.) It also suggests that he is just so irresistible that despite he viciously beat a women she will still come back to him and let bygones be bygones making some offhand comment about people with his sign being volatile. This would maybe have made sense to me when I was 14 if I had read it but I am not and neither was the author when he wrote it. And I think that here is why you have authors that write a variety of books not wanting the sci fi label applied to their work. Even the acknowledged best in the genre often has terrible character development and just is not written with a mature non-male audience in mind. I am beginning to get the impression that labeling a book as sci fi indicates that it is sci fi written in a immature pulpy manner as which I find really sad since many stories have some really good ideas that are just really poorly executed.
23 people found this helpful
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Bruce
5.0 out of 5 stars Somewhat tedious in it's length, but ......
Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2023
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...the overall premises of the story keeps you hanging on to find out what happens next. Because you don't know what anybody will find. Or die in the process. The ending almost makes you mad, with the loss of people.
3 people found this helpful
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Pedro
3.0 out of 5 stars a portal to the very known
Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2014
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Gateway departs from some original and interesting ideas and has a pervasive dark humor which makes it an entertaining read.
Nevertheless the book fails to deliver the grandiosity it hails. The action is limited, somehow claustrofobic and excessively based on very limited settings which manages to make a this relatively short book slightly boring. Arguably the author may have intentionally done this, but if that is the case, the intended contrasts between the grandeur of the challenge and the narrowness of human condition are not entirely successful.
Pohl's predilection for side comments on capitalist development intensifies the feeling of cultural narrowness rather than relativising the reader's perception of society, which seems to have been the original intention.
There is also a biased vision of humanity in all the characters - the author is so determined to explore the sloppy, flawed aspect of human nature, that he dismisses the clear possibility for hierarchical, nearly automated human action, which would be likely to occur under the circumstances described.
One cannot stop feeling that the ominous, mysterious presence of the portal could have been explored more effectively to reflect on mortality, meaning and life, which are the background themes.
All in all it's not a bad book, and for all that matters it's worth a read, but it seems to sit well below the potential of is foundational idea: a portal to the unknown.
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Linda, Redlands CA
5.0 out of 5 stars Timely delivery of a quality product
Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2022
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Paperback in excellent condition, although not perfect; book cover had a couple of dings. Timely delivery by seller.
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Miguel Martinez
5.0 out of 5 stars Un clásico de la ciencia ficción
Reviewed in Spain on September 18, 2017
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Con el foco en más en gente normal --casi camisas rojas de Star Trek-- que en gente fuera de serie, Fredrik Pohl nos ofrece una excelente historia de contacto con una civilización alienígena SIN contacto con alienígenas. Recomendado.
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Taklamakan
5.0 out of 5 stars Viel besser als erwartet!
Reviewed in Germany on February 9, 2017
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Dieser Roman stand über Jahre in meinem Schrank, verstaubte, geriet in Vergessenheit und wurde von mir schliesslich ungelesen verschenkt, nachdem ich die vielen negativen Rezensionen auf Amazon gelesen hatte. Doch zur Zeit schwimme ich auf einer Retro-Welle, und ich fand es an der Zeit, genau diesen berühmten Roman genau jetzt zu lesen - und war völlig überrascht vom Konzept, Ausführung und Spannungsmodus desselben!

Kurzum: Ein SF-Kenner sollte diesem Roman nicht weniger als 4 Sterne geben.
Ich will im Folgenden erklären wieso.

Die Story: Man werfe "Lockruf des Goldes" von Jack London und "Picknick am Wegesrand" von den Strugatzkis in einen Mixer, würze das Ganze mit ein paar lustigen Raumschiffen der DEFA-Zeit, schmecke ab mit dem Gaumen einer Jules Vernes Sternensehnsucht und, voilà, man erhält diesen frischen, zeitlos interessanten Gateway-Roman!

Der Roman verfolgt zwei Handlungstränge, die sich kapitelweise abwechseln, beide erzählt aus der Perspektive des Hauptprotagonisten Robinette Broadhead, auch "Bob" oder "Robbie" genannt. Der eine Handlungsstrang, eine Psychoanalyse/Primärtherapie von Bob, spielt in der Zukunft des anderen, und nervt ein wenig zu Beginn, da die vielen Dialoge von Robbie mit dem Sigmund-Freud-Therapie-Hologramm, zu nichts zu führen scheinen und den Spannungsbogen des anderen, viel spannenderen Handlungsstranges, dauernd unterbrechen.

Wer sich für "Gateway" jedoch Zeit nimmt, merkt, dass genau diese Strategie das Spannungsmoment des existenzialistisch-tragischen Glücksrittertums auf die Spitze treibt, denn das Ende des Roman ist, slopp gesagt, wirklich "voll krass" und die authentisch wirkenden Therapiestunden zeigen, wie Traumaaufarbeitung in Echtzeit funktioniert: voller Widerstände und Wut; Verdrängung, Aufbrüche, Erkenntnisse und Ausweichmanöver wechseln sich sprunghaft ab, und die Art des Traumas, das erst gegen Ende des Romans deutlich wird, ist ein zutiefst menschliches, ethisches, das sich in dieser Art quer durch die Literatur der Welt zieht: Unschuld, Schuld und Sühne zwischen Leben und Tod.

Die Grundidee des Romans, mittels aufgefundenen Artefakten und lustigen Raumschifflein einer fremden Spezies namens Hitschi zu unbekannten Ufern aufzubrechen, wirkt seltsam unwirklich und ist teilweise physikalisch ungenau (Zeitdillatation/Relativitätstheorie) aber dennoch schillernd-spannend und phantasievoll beschrieben; eine Art "Russisch Roulette", ein Lotteriespiel unter Einsatz des eigenen Lebens. Eingeschobene Seiten mit fiktiven Kleinanzeigen, Astronomie-Vorträgen, Statistiken und Expeditionsprotokollen der Gateway-Welt schmücken die Geschichte zusätzlich.

Zweifellos ist der Roman ein Produkt seiner Zeit. Sex and Drugs spielen eine wichtige Nebenrolle (man lese dazu Robert Silverbergs "Zeitpatrouille"!). Jede Frau und jeder Mann scheinen jede Nacht auf jeden Fall Sex zu haben, egal mit wem. Man wechselt Partner häufiger als die eigenen Socken. Zeitkoloritt und Kulturgeschichte zum Anfassen. Dazu gehört auch das Therapieprotokoll von Robbie, das den 70er Jahre Trend der gerade aufgekommenen wilden, emotionellen und körperbezogenen Therapien (Janov u.a.) genau widerspiegelt.

Fazit: Gateway ist ein munter dahinerzählter und farbenfroher Schatzsucher-Roman mit einem völlig konstruiert wirkenden, aber dennoch atemberaubend spannenden Ende.
Sein Geist lebt in der Trilogie "Transport" von Phillip P.Peterson weiter, dessen Romane den Lotterie-Spiel-Modus von Gateway auf andere Weise, aber dennoch sehr ähnlich verwenden.
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Lohengrin
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
Reviewed in France on January 22, 2013
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Je lis beaucoup mais pas spécifiquement de la science-fiction. Cependant, la science-fiction, j'aime bien...exclusivement en anglais. Voilà quelques années j'avais lu du même auteur "Farthest Star" qui m'avait vraiment beaucoup plu. Avec "Gateway" et "Beyond the Bue Event Horizon" j'ai retrouvé immédiatement ce plaisir d'un extrordinaire voyage virtuel dans le cosmos. L'anglais ajoute, pour moi, une incroyable dimension à la création intérieure de l'image. Vraiment excellent.
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Jan Dierckx
5.0 out of 5 stars Say hello to mr. Freud.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 19, 2004
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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 psychology. The SF elements are only the background for this novel.
The two main characters are Bob, his full name is Robinette Broadhead, and Sigfrid, a psychotherapist.
Bob, a poor devil who wins the lottery, is finally able to leave the Earth ( or at least what is left of the habitable part of it ) for an asteroid named Gateway. Gateway has a complex of tunnels digged by the Heechee, an alien civilization that vanished half a million years ago. A part of their spacecrafts - still intact - are left behind on Gateway. They still can be used by humans for exploration of the universe. You don't need a special training because the ships are almost entirely automatic. You can earn a lot of money when you make a new discovery - an unknown star or a new planet in an other solar system, or when you find signs of alien intelligent life and things like that. You have to come back alife of course and that's the tricky part.
The second character is Sigfrid, a robot-psychologist. What can you say about a robot ? I guess Sigfrid is like any other psychologist ( OK, bad joke, forget it ).
Now what's the problem with Bob ? In his last discovery voyage something nasty happens. He's the only one of his crew who gets away. The others are still alive and well but something very odd happened to them. Bob is feeling very guilty about it hence his weekly visits to Sigfrid.
The last 13 pages are very emotional.
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Maestrat
4.0 out of 5 stars Un clàssic que s'ha de llegir
Reviewed in Spain on December 30, 2018
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És un clàssic de la ciència ficció que s'ha de llegir si t'agrada el gènere.
El plantejament del context es molt original i està ben explicat. Resulta coherent i versemblant. El desenvolupament de la història està bastant bé. Potser falla una mica en quant a la psicologia d'alguns personatges.
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