Book Review: Gateway

Frederik Pohl
1977
Awards: Nebula, Hugo, Campbell, Locus
Rating: ★ ★ ★ – –

The best thing about Gateway is the unique setting and very cool premise. And Pohl explores that setting and that premise with a story line that is interesting enough that it doesn't seem like it was created half-heartedly just to show off the universe he invented.

It is the relatively near future. During our exploration of nearby space, we have discovered a spaceport, which we have named "Gateway," which was been abandoned long ago by an alien species, who we have named the "Heechee."

The Heechee were highly technologically advanced and left behind an array of valuable artifacts at Gateway, including spaceships with the capability for hyperspace travel. There are many of these ships still fueled up and docked at the spaceport’s gates. Everything is in perfect working order. It is like the Heechee just up and left one day, leaving everything intact and running.

This discovery is a boon for mankind. And, conveniently, the Heechee appear to have been about our size and to have had similar environmental requirements as us, so it is possible for us to use their station and their ships in relative comfort.

The only catch is that we can’t read any of their instruction manuals or any of the indicators on any of their equipment. Everything we know about their technology we have learned from brute force experimentation – by getting into the ships, pressing a bunch of buttons, and seeing what happens.

We have learned some very basic things. We have figured out how to select a destination code and to start the ships on their journey. We know that once the ship is started, it will not deviate from its pre-programmed course and it will automatically return to Gateway on its own.

But we don’t know what the vast majority of the destination codes stand for. So most of the time we don’t know where the ship is going. We don’t know how to program it to turn around or go somewhere else while it is in flight. We don’t know how to tell how long the voyage is going to be. And we don’t know whether or not the ship actually has enough fuel to get there.

So an industry has grown up around Gateway in which a corporation hires people to risk their lives flying the Heechee ships to where ever the ships might take them, and then gives them a share of the profits if they (a) survive the trip and (b) find something that is useful to the company.

Sometimes the ships end up in the middle of a supernova. Sometimes they run out of fuel and never come back. Sometimes the ships return with a dead crew whose food or oxygen ran out before the trip was over.

But sometimes the ships take the crew to a brand-new planet that is habitable or has a supply of valuable ore. Sometimes it takes them to a new Heechee port with still more artifacts. And sometimes the trip gives us more of a clue to the navigation system. When anything like that happens, it makes the lucky crew on that ship very wealthy.

The main character, Bob Broadhead, is one of these Gateway pilots. His first two missions were small and uneventful. His third mission made him wealthy beyond his wildest dreams, but left him a traumatized wreck with guilt and nightmares that he can’t get rid of. 

The book starts with Broadhead in therapy (with a computerized therapist he calls Sigfrid von Shrink) after this third mission. Through flashbacks and sessions with Sigfrid, we learn first about Gateway and the Heechee, and then gradually what happened to Broadhead to make him both so wealthy and so messed up.

The best part of the book is the core premise: the Gateway spaceport and the ships that can set people up for life or kill them in any number of horrible ways. I also found it interesting to try to put together a picture of the Heechee from the stray bits that pilots discover here and there. 

Broadhead himself is not a terrifically inspiring character, however. And the story is not tremendously strong or arresting; it was adequate, but it was mainly the strength of the premise that carried my interest through to the end of the book.

And I do have to admit that although I can see that Broadhead’s third mission was scientifically very important, I don’t understand why it was of concrete monetary value to a corporation.


An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Cheeze Blog.