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Summary: A great book by the master
Review: This is one of the best hard science novels , highly recommended. The rest of the series is excellent. Actually the Heechee are referenced in some of the earlier works.
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Summary: clever ideas and really draws you in emotionally
Review: What I find most compelling about this wonderful SF novel is the way Pohl makes the FEAR so palpable. The protagonist is no super-human, which makes one able to relate to him. The SF novel that this reminds me most of with its ablilty to really make the reader relate to the protagonist is John steakley's Armor - without the happy ending superhuman sappiness trick to explain the ending. I also like Pohl's nice trick of providing key background information in a very unobtrusive way that negates the need for longwinded explanations with little bulletin board messages, snippets of robot pseudo-code, snippets of scientists' lectures, etc. to get such needed details across. If you like interesting SF ideas and a story with good character development that really draws you in, and you aren't turned off by "what if" questions about potential advanced alien civilizations - you can't go too far wrong here.
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Summary: Easily Pohl's best work.
Review: Gateway without a doubt is Frederick Pohl's greatest and most ground breaking book. He manages to create a setting that is both believable, fantastic, and tense. I remember the first time I read it years ago, I was facinated and thrilled to find out where that next trip out would take them. Or would it everyone survive. Pohl mixes a space adventure seamlessly with the tortured soul storyline that Bob is going through. Why is he going through pyschotherapy? Well, you'll have to read the book. The is one of only a few books in my opinion that deserves the awards it won (Hugo and Nebula). A great and riveting piece of sci-fi. Don't bother with the sequels, it stands by itself...and is better that way.
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Summary: The stuff that dreams are made of....
Review: Gateway is memorable not so much for its characters but for the seed it stirs in the human imagination. At each possible destination could lie death or an exciting new discovery, and the only way to get there is by riding an alien ship that may not be able to get you home again.Interspersed with Bob Broadhead's reminiscences are pieces of lectures on the Heechee or their technology, speculations and ideas and questions raised by the situation. There are logs of missions that either failed or found nothing, and even a few that found something worth remembering. I remember finishing Gateway with a sense of wonder, thinking about all the possibilities and all the unanswered questions. In this respect Gateway's plot is almost secondary; the setting is what's most important. The characters are solid, believable, with realistic failures and regrets, but ultimately they've also got a faceless tinge. Broadhead remembers a place where a lot of friends died, a place where there's a certain facelessness to everyone who ships out because so many don't come back. I think his character is built around the premise that despite a few unusual events happening to him, he knows he was just as forgettable. The sequels are a bit disappointing in that they lack this sense of wonder, the sense of a story that's happening to thousands of people at once. Gateway shows us glimpses of other lives, of great research projects and of the many explorers of a dangerous fronteir. Those glimpses are worth it all; they're the what-ifs and tell-me-mores that spawned from a simple premise, and they give the book life and depth and meaning. The psychological problems and life history of one man are the true story to tie it all together, but the setting is what makes it so powerful.
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Summary: Just plain great
Review: Short, sweet, and to the point - I read this one in a day; I just couldn't put it down. The sad but compelling character of Robin is the perfect vehicle for this story as we follow him through not only the pains of his life, but the wild risks he eventually takes as a result of it. Gateway, being a station almost entirely populated with people who are basically so desparate as to continually play a frightening version of Russian Roulette on the off chance they might escape one way or the other, makes for one of the more fascinating sci fi settings I've encountered. The mysetery of the long lost Heechee and the strange legacy they left behind is the perfect backdrop to the story. Read it twice!
Rating: 
Summary: Read it twice
Review: A clever book. The psychoanalysis chapters will bore a hardened sci fi fan, but they are essential to the story. Reading it a second time (once I knew what was going to have happened) made me appreciate just how clever Pohl had been in the clues he scatters through the psychoanalysis sessions. Having said all that, the very best part of the book, IMO, is the final line in the last chapter. I hadn't even realised that there was a whole other sub-plot until then.
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Summary: Provokes the imagination
Review: This is an awesome book. The plot is original and keeps you in suspense. Pohl provokes the imagination with his realistic telling of the story and character development. It makes you want to believe the story could really happen. You will never look at the night sky the same way again.
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Summary: Well written novel
Review: The Gateway was something that was left from the long dissapeared Heechee Civilization. Now, the fortune seekers try to go there and fly one of the alien ships( that nobody knows how to use, so they just punch in the random numbers in the distination column) hoping that it will take them someplace, where they can find any traces of the alien civilization and get a reward. The main character wins a lottery and spends the money for a ticket to Gateway, thinking that maybe fortune will smile on him when he tries to fly one of those ships.... The story is well developed, the plot is original. Overall,very well written novel
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Summary: Take the Gateway trip
Review: If there is one way ruin a book's appeal for its second (third, fourth...) generation of readers, it is to heap awards onto it and call it a classic. That often does it for me; such high expectations can almost never be met. And yet I knew of this book's award-winning status before reading it and I still enjoyed it. I even read it twice. Gateway's premise is both clever and simple. A huge fleet of ancient, abandoned, operational alien ships serve as the ultimate gamble; hop aboard and hit "go"... if you have the courage. Because the proverbial "go" button is about all it will let you operate or comprehend. Each ship is inalterably pre-programmed (by its long gone alien creators) and will either leave you stranded, starved to death before the programmed voyage completes, or who knows what. But if you're lucky, the information and/or artifacts you might return with may make you a multimillionaire. And in Pohl's over-crowded future, this means "full medical" - the closest thing to immortality money can buy. Like a lot of award winning books, Gateway successfully combines sophistication with a conventional, page-turning plot. Pohl's use of first person point of view is especially effective in drawing you into his character's personal conflicts, and into his very suspenseful space voyages. Not since A.C. Clarke's _The City and the Stars_ have I been so curious as to what awaited a space voyager at the end of his or her trip (or in this case, trips).
Rating:
Summary: A Genuine Classic
Review: Gateway remains one of the most memorable and moving books I have ever read. I would recommend it to other readers without hesitation. Pohl recently stated that 'Gateway' is under development as a motion picture (in an introduction to 'The Boy Who Would Live Forever', a Heechee-related short story in the hardcover collection 'Far Horizons'). The sequel 'Beyond The Blue Event Horizon' is perhaps a better, but certainly different, novel. I'd also recommend Pohl's 'Man Plus' and 'Jem' and Pohl & Kornbluth's 'The Space Merchants'.
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