Well tonight folks I’ve finished reading my first ever Frederik Pohl novel, the first book of his Heechee Saga “Gateway”.
There are two choices that are offered by Gateway, rich man or dead man, a choice that also applies to women as well. This place has opened up to all the riches that the universe offers, and also many horrors. People who have rode in the spacecraft made by the mysterious Heechee could never know whether the trips they take would make them rich beyond belief or turn them into corpses.
When he arrived at Gateway Robinette Broadhead (sometimes referred to as Rob or Bob) he believed that his problem was a very simple one: which is to wait for the right mission and then ship out. But many things have changed him, from watching returned prospectors being scraped off of the insides of their own ships, falling in love and the dwindling of his own nerves.
Now years later Broadhead is now a three year veteran, is famous and also rich on a permanent basis. But now he has to face the past and what happened to him, and also to face what he actually is, in an inner journey into himself that is just as dangerous and far more terrifying than his nightmarish trip into the interstellar void that he had finally made himself to take.
I’ve always had the bad habit of starting a book series by reading either the second or third book, but sometime that is rectified. And here with this series I’ve done that. In the first book of the Heechee Saga I spend an enormous amount of time with the main character, Robinette Broadhead. In every chapter is shifts from his time on Gateway and also the sessions with his computerized therapist.
During his time on Gateway he comes off as a very undecisive fellow. In his years after becoming rich and famous, he is in a constant mental turmoil, and more often than not seems antagonizes his AI therapist as he tries to figure everything out.
There is a lot of reference to the mysterious race known as the Heechee (of course it is the Heechee Saga after all!). Nothing is virtually known about but I imagine that more would be revealed in later books. And as a nice touch Pohl adds some documents pertaining to Gateway, the Heechee ect.
Book one, for me, is only just a start, for I must get my hands on the next few books if the opportunity is right. Or maybe find them online. Either way this series is bound to get interesting!
by i-the-muso-1968