Gateway (Heechee Saga Series #1)

by Frederik Pohl

Overview

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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345475831
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/12/2004
Series:	Heechee Saga Series , #1
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	135,824
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

Table of Contents

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
Frederik Pohl's 1976 classic Gateway -- one of only a handful of novels that have won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards -- is the story of an alien way station containing hundreds of preprogrammed starships and of the daring humans who risk their lives to pilot them to their unknown destinations.

Gateway, the first of numerous Heechee novels by Pohl (Beyond the Blue Event Horizon, Heechee Rendezvous, et al.), deftly blends poignant psychodrama with hard science fiction. The story's much-flawed protagonist, Robinette Broadhead, is what most people would call a lucky man. A poor miner in Wyoming destined to spend the rest of his dismal existence laboring away underground, Rob fatefully wins a local lottery and uses almost all his winnings to buy a ticket to Gateway, an ancient alien space station found in the vicinity of Venus that contains almost 1,000 active starships. Those lucky enough -- or more aptly, crazy enough -- to make it to Gateway can apply to become prospectors, choose one of the starships, and go off in search of fortune. Some prospectors return with invaluable artifacts worth millions of dollars, many more come back dead -- or simply vanish. After procrastinating for months, Rob finally goes out on a ship and returns a rich man. But his fortune comes with a heavy price…

Arguably Pohl's finest work ever, Gateway is worth its weight in gold -- a transcendent classic that is just as good as it was almost three decades ago, if not better. Paul Goat Allen

bn.com

In Gateway, Roz Kaveney of Books and Bookmen believes, Pohl "successfully combined wit and humanity in a novel of character. [The result is] a highly competent, darkly witty entertainment." Other critics found the computer psychoanalyst a particularly believable character. "What makes this book so intriguing," Peter Ackroyd of Spectator writes, "is not its occasional satire and consistent good humor, but the fact that Pohl has managed to convey the insistent presence of the non-human, a presence which may indeed haunt our future."

Gale Research