Gateway (Heechee Saga) by Frederik Pohl Search Amazon for other books by or about Frederik Pohl. Rating: Reviewed by: John Walsh

Life is pretty miserable for most people in the future: endless lives of toil in difficult working conditions and without the prospect of collective bargaining or freedom of association to offer the possibility of better opportunities in the future. Life as a tunnel rat on Venus seems to be even worse and all that the new era of space travel seems to provide is a wider range of deadly, dead-end jobs for the proletarian classes. The only real chance to escape from this grinding poverty is to make it to Gateway and then find a voyage into the deeps of space. The Gateway is a huge artificial space station left behind by the mysterious but extremely tidy Heechee people, about whom extremely little is known. Attached to the station are a number of space craft, which people do not understand and can only turn on and hope for the best. The destination once the engine is turned on is almost entirely unpredictable and even the length of time taken in transit is not known--which raises the danger of starvation if not enough food and supplies can be carried. The Heechee disappeared a long time ago and many of the preset destinations seem to have been abandoned or at least fallen into desuetude in the meantime. So, the procedure is that the would-be voyagers sign up for a voyage (in a one, three or five person ship) and then hope that it emerges into real space in a location where something useful and valuable can be brought back and sold--it might be scientific or strategic knowledge or, best of all, it might be some form of Heechee technology which can then be sold to the state for cash up front and a percentage of royalties if the scientists can figure out how to make whatever it is to work and then to replicate it. However, the odds are poor and the chances are that death or debilitating disease, radiation sickness, or terminal boredom will be the destiny.

It is into this world that Robinette Broadhead propels himself after he wins the lottery and then escapes the mine in which he had spent the first part of his life. Alas, once he actually makes it to Gateway, he is afflicted with terrible fear (or cowardice, as he sees it himself) and cannot bring himself to sign up for any voyage until he becomes absolutely desperate, his love life and finances running at extremely low ebbs. From the outset of the book, which is recounted in flashbacks, we the readers know that protagonist Rob finally strikes it rich but that something has happened to cause him considerable angst. Consequently, the action on Gateway and spaceship is interspersed with interviews with the mechanical (well, robotic) psychoanalyst Sigfrid and ephemera from the station and its life--classified advertisements, notices of those who have returned (safely or otherwise) to Gateway and poems and lyrics, among others--as revelation and success are pursued through the book. This is an interesting device and serves as a means of lending a somewhat brutalist, modernist tone to the action (it is no surprising that the book won numerous prizes and is occasionally reprinted as a masterwork, as in the case of the edition that is sitting on the desk in front of me). On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine, just 35 years after the book was written, considering anyone being able to smoke in a tiny spacecraft in which claustrophobia and oxygen starvation are genuine threats. It is also possible to wonder why future human civilisation would seem to be so monocultural in nature. However, these are comparatively minor quibbles and far from unusual in science fiction, after all.

On the whole, this is a fascinating and entertaining read which will be appreciated by all fans of science fiction (not to mention those wishing more deeply to understand the 1970s). Recommended.