Rating: 
Summary: Eh
Review: Rating: 2.5/5I expected much better from a book that's touted as an SF classic. The background in which Gateway is set is brilliant, and the only reason why my rating's not lower. An imaginative look at how earth could be in the far future (mass exploitations in countries rich as well as poor, people thrown out the airlock when they're not of any use), the lives of the prospectors and how long space trips could be, and the brilliant concept of Gateway itself. Where the novel is extremely flawed is the absolute lack of any kind of conflict; I gave up assuming this was just a long buildup around 3/4ths of the book. There's only so much to like when the focus in a science fiction book is on the main character's psychological problems, and the climax at the end is one of the most disappointing I've read in a long time. Maybe the sequel will be better.
Rating: 
Summary: This is a Sci Fi title that really rended my heart
Review: Today I finished GATEWAY at 4am after staying up most of the night engrossed in Pohl's masterpiece. Yes, it's that good in my opinion. And quite frankly it devasted me. If you like your SF with emotion, feeling and fully 3 dimensionally characters, You will love this book. It will break your heart. Pohl leads you up to a point where you think things will be OK, then leads you careening over the edge. It really hit me hard, emotionally. Some people would say that this is melodrama, but I don't think so.
Rating:
Summary: The Big Glory Hole in the Sky
Review: Gateway is the first novel in the Heechee Saga. The Heechee are long gone, but they have left a Gateway on an inclined orbit that reaches inside the perihelion of Mercury and outside the orbit of Venus. An asteroid or the nucleus of a comet, Gateway is a space station that contained nearly a thousand little FTL ships shaped something like a mushroom. These ships were all programmed for a large variety of destinations. Every since its discovery, prospectors have been flying the ships out to unknown destinations. Sometimes they come back with news of another uninteresting location, sometimes they come back with only dead bodies on board, and sometimes they don't come back at all. However, every now and then they come back with news of a great treasure of artifacts or data; then everybody on the flight scored big. In this novel, Robinette Broadhead has been a prospector on Gateway and is one to the big winners. He has crewed on several relatively low payoff flights before he comes back from a twin ship mission as the only survivor. The survivor total mission bonus plus the science bonus nets him over eighteen million dollars, which he then parlays even higher with his investments. However, he is having bad dreams. Much of the novel consists of Broadhead's conversation with his computerized therapist, which he calls Sigfrid von Shrink, interspersed with his memories of Gateway and the flights that he has taken in the Heechee ships. Every now and then there are inserts of pieces of Sigfrid's program, Gateway brochures, payment statements, and other documents. The plot moves slowly, but the suspense builds also. However, this is not a story for anyone who wants a lot of action; Broadhead is less often doing than done to. This was an engrossing story of adventure, romance, and suffering. This series is probably the best known of the author's works, although some his other tales are probably better written. Some of the sequels in the series are even better than this novel. Recommended for Pohl fans and anyone else who enjoys well written tales of relationships amidst the minutia of budgets and bureaucrats leavened with moments of terror in a high tech environment.
Rating:
Summary: Ruined By Hollywood Angst
Review: This book has some merits. Pohl paints a convincing miners' world by giving us a sense of its grit and stench. The lives of the miners are also handled well. The cramped seediness of their environment stunts their souls and this is crafted both believably and professionally. And, in spite of portraying Twenty-Third (?) century scientists as being unrealistically dense, the mystery of the Heechee is equal to any other creation in science fiction. However, for all its strengths, this book didn't engage me. I found the angst of the main character both affected and contrived. And while his emotional self-flagellation was not central to the workings of the story, it kept distracting me from the more important elements. Consequently, I couldn't enjoy the story because of my resentment towards the book's heavy-handed artifice. In this book, Pohl is so intent on teasing a multi-dimensional character out of a uni-dimensional kernel that he overindulges in Freudian excess. The main character is a parody of psychological trauma. His self-consuming guilt is advertised to the reader with all the subtlety of a highway billboard. Just as blatantly, our hero goes through unbelievable mental contortions to evade his real feelings. What we get is not a characterization we can identify with, but a painfully simplistic parody of an emotional breakdown. If despair and survivor guilt were really this superficial, psychiatrists would all be out of work. Many readers unused to science fiction complain about the genre's tendency towards simple characters. This book illustrates why simple characters in the service of a good story are preferable to "complex" characters purchased with pretension. Grandmasters like Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein rarely created multifaceted or engaging characters. Yet some of these works proved to be classics because characterization was unimportant to the story. Here, a great story is felled by a misguided attempt to inject "dimension" into the hero when a simpler hero would have allowed the complexity of his world to take centre stage. If you can get past the Hollywood angst, this book is actually a pretty good read with interesting ideas, settings and storyline. But it could have passed from "good" to "great", and it's a shame that its excesses prevent it from achieving something grander.
Rating:
Summary: Evokes fascination and terror.
Review: Gateway evokes the fascination and terror of the unknown universe better than any other science fiction book I know. I agree with the reviewer who said that the other books of the series could be regarded as optional; the fascination of Gateway consists largely of the fact thet we DON'T know all the stuff about the Heechee that is revealed in the following books.
Dick Ellis
Rating:
Summary: fantastic
Review: Let's see what I can remember...
There were a lot of good things about this book. The narrator, Robinette Broadhead, was fun to read about. Some authors can't do first-person narratives very well, but here Pohl creates a great character just by having him speak. Rob (a young man with a feminine name that he despises) has a lot of energy and emotion, and his fiery narration really carries the book. The narrative jumps back and forth in time, from Rob's first visit to Gateway station, an abandoned alien base on an asteroid, to when Rob is older and undergoing psychotherapy. The scenes with his computer therapist, Siegfried von Shrink, are particularly entertaining. This also ups the suspense throughout the book: because of Rob's conversations with his shrink, you know something is going to happen, but you don't know what. The Heechee - the alien race that built Gateway station - are also fascinating. We never see them (at least, not until the end of the sequel), but we're given little tidbits of their culture and physiology. The sense of mystery surrounding them is immense. Pohl does a fantastic job creating the mood on Gateway station. Whenever a character ventures out on one of the autopiloted Heechee ships, there an overwhelming sense of anxiety and fear, because no one knows whether the ship will come back or not, or what will happen to the crew. Some of these ships vanish without a trace, others return just fine; some come back with the crew dead inside. There's always the chance, however, that at the other end of one of these trips, the crew will find a habitable planet, or something that could make them rich. The boredom between trips is also entertaining somehow. Robinette is so scared of disappearing in a Heechee ship, he spends a lot of the book being a typical teenager: he has sex, smokes pot, etc. There are lots of characters on Gateway, and most of them are fleshed out pretty well. Some of the twists of sexuality undergone by Rob towards the end of the book are cool too. The future of this book is believably detailed with realistic science and social speculation, told and explained by a narrator who actually lives there. This book is very high on my list of favorites; too bad the sequels weren't quite as magnetic.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard science fiction combined with character study
Review: The premise of Gateway is simple enough - humankind has discovered a space station abandoned 500 000 years ago by a technologically superior race (the "Heechee"). Part of the station's equipment is a group of space shuttles with faster-than-light drives. The shuttles have a capacity of 1 to 5 humans. No one can figure out most of the technology in them, but through trial and error, they learn that if a certain panel glows a certain intensity, the ship will make a round trip to.... somewhere. The truly adventurous (or desperate) sign up to ride the vessels out and back and see if they go anywhere of use (i.e. an old Heechee colony that contains some more of the wonderful Heechee artfacts/technology). Of course, because nothing is known of the destination, and because the Heechee were known to be scientists, sometimes the destinations are close to black holes, inside recent supernovae (that were stars 500 000 years ago), or the trip is too long for the occupants' food/water supplies. The central character is Bob Broadhead, a poor miner who won enough money in a lottery for a ticket to Gateway. Unfortunately for him, he's a self-professed coward - afraid to go back to the mines, yet afraid to try his luck in the Heechee ships. It turns out that the story is more of a character study - we first meet Broadhead in his psychiatrist's office, where he's fabulously wealthy after three trips in the Heechee ships, but with deep emotional problems. The story intercuts between therapy sessions and a first-person account of the actual events leading up to his fame and pychosis. The strength of the book is the way it maintains suspense and interest - we know what is going to happen to Broadhead, but not how, and not the fates of his friends and associates. It is well established that many flights are "successful" only in the fact that at least one of the crew returns alive. The therapy sessions and the story narrative are effortlessly intertwined and build up a rich weave of narrative that is difficult to put down. The future world is plausible, and written in a fashion where little is explained explicitly, but where the reader can fully understand based on context. There is very little science because the inner workings of the Heechee artifacts are not understood. The book's weakness is, in fact, its attempts to explain some of the technologies (the explanations of Heechee "metal" are laughable). However, this is a fully realised futuristic society, self-contained and a logical extension of pre-AIDS sexual mores... That the psychoanalysis is almost excusively Freudian is forgivable because it fits perfectly well with the attitudes and morals of the society. It is the first book of a series, although completely self-contained. It piqued my interest enough that I will be on the lookout for the second book in the series, and is a worthy dounle-winner of science fiction's top prizes, the Hugo and Nebula.
Rating: 
Summary: Yawn, sex and drugs in outer space
Review: This book is your basic teen fare from the '70s. Outer space is a place with lots of sex (alas, presented in a manner with little entertainment value), occasional pot, a Corporation that runs things, a detached and jaded narrator, and plenty of pop psychology. The tone is remarkably similar to Joe Haldeman's "Forever War." I suppose that 30 years ago this stuff may have seemed cutting edge, but it has not aged well. A few better bets: Asimov, Heinlein, Vinge, & Dan Simmons.
Rating:
Summary: slow at first, but picks up
Review: just as the heechee space-worm drive works...picking up speed...this book seemed to work the same way. for a hugo award winner, i was surprised i had to fight the temptation to put the book down during the first chapter or so...
but, stick with it very well worth it
just a tough beginning. gateway, explores scientific, sociological, technological, and pyschological avenues all interetwined as a few select years of rob broadhead's life. this book follows (through two sets of dialogue) robinette broadhead, through some of his exploits as a prospector for heechee (long lost race of aliens) valuables and technology. the two narratives, alternate chapters, and conist of 1) rob talking with his computer pyschiatrist, who he dubs 'sigfrid von shrink', who continously probes deeper into harsh issues rob can not yet deal with, and 2) the story of his life as a prospector, and all of the technology and other such things. if you find yourself, like i did, with the urge to drop the book...push on. it really does get quite good.
Rating:
Summary: 30-year-old Hard SF, a bit rough but original even today
Review: The story: Mankind has discovered a long-abandoned alien space station, with hundreds of empty space ships. The discovery brings new hope-- and new heroes-- to the miserable masses on an overpopulated Earth.
There's a problem, though. Although hundreds of space ships are docked at the station, no one knows much about how to control them. Enter Robin Broadhead, one of many desperate people who have spent their life's savings-- or lottery winnings-- to get to the station in order to risk their lives taking the space ships out into space in search of other abandoned technologies. The prize: striking it rich and living a decent life in a hard world.
Unfortunately for Robin, his willingness to flee life on Earth doesn't change the fact that's he's shivering in his boots at the thought of dying out in deep space.
Pohl does a good job of creating a sense of raw human fear in Gateway, his early signature work. It's a scary story about an average guy who is afraid to die. It's considered a classic, even though it's a bit rough around the edges and the prose is at times lacking, because it sticks to the basics: it's an engaging, tightly written story about a person. And even today, it's quite original in the telling.
Pohl does a masterful job of creating a sense that Robin's life on Gateway (the name of the space station) is much like the feeling you have when you've worked yourself up into climbing a 50-foot tree high above a river, then lose your stomach. Even though you're too afraid to jump, you can't turn back because there's a crowd of people climbing the tree behind you.
It's a clever premise that Pohl executes well. The story is told in a series of flashforwards and flashbacks, as an older Robin talks to a therapist about his past and a younger Robin fears the future.
Gateway is not a masterpiece. Pohl's recently published hard SF Eschaton series, which ends with "The Far Shore of Time," has far more believable characters, far more persuasive description, and the sense of "creepiness" that comes with engaging the Unknown is far more engaging. But Gateway is a high water mark in Pohl's career, and in science fiction as well. It's interesting and it's scary. That's why you'll read it more than once.
[There are a number of sequels to this book. There's a reason why they're all out of print, but I've seen them all at larger used book stores.]
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