Rating: 
Summary: Great science fiction.
Review: This is a great book for any science fiction lover. It deals with fantastic themes, but in a believable manner. That is something many SF writers fail to ever achieve. I liked the second part of the trilogy "Beyond the Blue Event Horizon", and the third part as well
Rating:
Summary: Vintage Pohl!
Review: I had read Pohl/Kornbluth, but hadn't read the Gateway series till just now. He continues some themes he explored in his earlier collaboration with Kornbluth, most notably"Search the Sky" - the very long voyages to uncertain destinations in other solar systems, the satire of capitalism--all more fully developed here. Very fine
Rating:
Summary: Alien civ, greed, and space exploration. 'Nuff said.
Review: Excellent book!! I read this one in junior high back in 1978-79 or so. Since then I've read it many times. Follow the advice that everyone gives for Dune...skip the sequals!!
Rating: 
Summary: One of the best trilogy-first science-fiction, after RAMA !
Review: It takes you away with the first page till the last one.
The story is tiled in such a way that you want to go to the
next chapter wishing not to be the last one !
The human protagonist Robinette is introduced with periodical flashbacks but in a consistent and fluctuant fashion.
I began to read in the morning and when finished ran to the bookstore to buy the second of the trilogy:
"Beyond the Blue Event Horizon"
...and read it non-stop till 4:00am !!!
You may read my review for the second book here too..
Now looking forward for the third book to be translated in
my native language:
"Heechee Rendezvous"
Rating:
Summary: First or second on my list of Great SciFi Experiences
Review: Read this years ago, haven't forgotten a word. Astounded that nobody's made a movie of it -- can't think of a more cinematic novel. Because of its odd structure and unexpected humor, some might think it just plain strange -- but rarely has the intensity ratcheted up, for me, as highly as in this one book.
Only caveat is this, and let me be absolutely clear:
Do. Not. Read. The. Sequels.
Rating:
Summary: Don't judge this book by its cover!
Review: Along with Enders Game by Orson Scott Card, this has the crappiest story to cover ratio ever(this is a horrible cover that has nothing at all to do with the book). I have a terrible habit of letting the cover of a book influence me. Thankfully my better judgment prevailed. I read this book in two days and had to drag myself away from it the first night (at 2am, I had to get up at 6am).
The chapters are set up so that one takes place in the present and two is a sort of flash back and so on. This makes it compulsively hard to put down. To me that is one of the most important qualities in a book and this one does it perfectly.
In the future an asteroid is discovered containing hundreds of automated space ships that are capable of faster than the speed of light travel (the problem is that you don't really know where the ship is going, if anywhere). The beings who built the ships are long gone and have left no trace as to what happened to them or where they went to. So humans take it upon themselves to inhabit the asteroid and send "Prospectors" out in the ships to search the stars. A lot of them don't come back.
The book is essentially an interview between one of the most famous and wealthy (prospectors get a percentage of the profits on any thing they find) Prospectors, Robinette, and his computerized therapist. As you get deeper into the book the tension mounts and spirals towards an incident too painful for Robinette to speak of, terminating in one of the most satisfying endings of any book I've ever read.
Rating: 
Summary: "Most days we simply spent deferring decisions."
Review: Pohl's first entry in the Heechee series is really two books in one: a space adventure about pioneers exploring the universe and a tongue-in-cheek look at artificial intelligence through a Freudian prism.
"Gateway" alternates between two storylines. Robinette (Bob) Broadhead, a young man drudging away in an underground food mine on Earth, wins a lottery and uses his earnings to travel to Gateway, a portal that was constructed and abandoned by an unknown species and that contains hundreds of modules which transport voyagers to predetermined locations throughout the universe. Adventurers are paid immense royalties by the Gateway Corporation for any scientific discoveries and for booty, but there are two hitches: nobody has ever been able to figure out in advance the destination for each module and a rather significant proportion of the explorers either return dead or are never seen again.
Pohl ably depicts the claustrophobia of the Gateway colony and of space travel, and he convincingly imagines the fear and excitement that precedes each journey. Once our hero arrives at Gateway, however, he finds himself thwarted far more by his fear of dying than motivated by the desire for glory and fortune; after his training he proves a reluctant pioneer. The accurate and realistic portrayal of this inertia is simultaneously one of the novel's strengths and its downside, since the reader all but experiences Bob's indolence while he gets up enough nerve to set out on a trip: "Most days we simply spent deferring decisions." Living and working in space can be quite tedious.
Between Bob's recollections of his life in Gateway are transcripts of his conversations, years later, with Sigfrid, a computer/robot who serves as his A.I. shrink. We soon realize that Bob was the only survivor of one of his exploratory missions, and Sigfrid teases out Bob's feelings of guilt while we concurrently learn the details of his past. At its best, these conversations are vaguely reminiscent of Stanislaw Lem's psychological fiction (although nowhere near as cerebral), and Pohl's idiosyncratic sense of humor make many of these sessions fun reading.
These two "before and after" strands twist and twine their cords to an ending that wraps up all the loose ends, explains the mystery of the doomed expedition, and satisfactorily connects both stories. (Perhaps too satisfactorily: the final bit of dialogue between Bob and Sigfrid almost has the feel of a punch line of a shaggy-dog tale written for psychotherapists.) Pohl's wit and his knack for realism ultimately carry the story of these daring--if suicidally inclined--fortune-hunters to other worlds.
Rating:
Summary: Sorry about the grammar
Review: My dad gave me this book several years ago saying it was one of his childhood favorites. I was so bored by the first few pages that it took me a while to start reading it. Since then I have read it three times.
The only flaw i found in this book was the overuse of the psychology, but Gateway without Sigfrid? impossible. The psych portion of this book makes up the setting, the foreshadowing, the conclusion, the everything. I only felt that a few of the Sigfrid chapters (maybe one or two) were unnecessary or too long. By the time i read it the third time i found myself skipping over these.
I heard one reviewer say that the use of present and past gives the book no suspense. Frederik Pohl in this book used what most people like to call foreshadowing, which is a literary device that has been used since the dawn of... literature. It is so expertly done i believe, that it only increases the suspense. I found that after reading it for the third time in under a year, i still felt tingles down my spine whenever Bob "shipped out."
Many said that this review is dated 30 years (to be exact actually, no one said anything but 30), but it isnt. They are lying. The end. If you do decide that they are right, and im wrong, as they actually established evidence (however flawed i may believe it to be), then so be it, but what the book lacks in new age science it makes up for in new age writing. This isnt one of those space opera formulas, this is something different, more unique than even Hyperion or anything Asimov has put together (that i've read).
If you want to dwell more on the heechee universe, use your imagination, or reread Gateway, but dont read the sequels Although they do have some interesting parts, they are far too predictable, unlike this much more unconventional novel.
Rating:
Summary: Say hello to mr. Freud.
Review: This is a peculiar novel. For 300 pages you think you're reading a SF novel and it's only in the last 13 pages that you become aware of the fact that all along it was mainly about psychology. The SF elements are only the background for this novel.
The two main characters are Bob, his full name is Robinette Broadhead, and Sigfrid, a psychotherapist.
Bob, a poor devil who wins the lottery, is finally able to leave the Earth ( or at least what is left of the habitable part of it ) for an asteroid named Gateway. Gateway has a complex of tunnels dug by the Heechee, an alien civilization that vanished half a million years ago. A part of their spacecrafts - still intact - are left behind on Gateway. They still can be used by humans for exploration of the universe. You don't need a special training because the ships are almost entirely automatic. You can earn a lot of money when you make a new discovery - an unknown star or a new planet in an other solar system, or when you find signs of alien intelligent life and things like that. You have to come back alive of course and that's the tricky part.
The second character is Sigfrid, a robot-psychologist. What can you say about a robot ? I guess Sigfrid is like any other psychologist ( OK, bad joke, forget it ).
Now what's the problem with Bob ? In his last discovery voyage something nasty happens. He's the only one of his crew who gets away. The others are still alive and well but something very odd happened to them. Bob is feeling very guilty about it hence his weekly visits to Sigfrid.
The last 13 pages are emotional.
Rating:
Summary: An outstanding story
Review: "Gateway" tells the story of the ultimate futuristic gold rush. In the 21st century, an asteroid known as Gateway is discovered containing hundreds of ancient space ships, all of them with pre-programmed courses already set. The builders of the ships are referred to as Heechees, but very little is known of who they were, why they built the asteroid, or why the Heechee disappeared. Since no human knows how to steer the ships or predict the destinations, explorers have to get in the ships, activate the program, and then go where it takes them. Some discover vast wealth; many never return or come back dead because they have run out of food or air.Robinette Broadhead becomes a Gateway prospector as one of the few avenues of advancement open to a poor person on Earth. This book tells of his trips interspersed with his conversations with a computerized therapist. The setting is interesting, and the story is very effective. I would recommend this book highly. This is the opener of a series which suffers from what might be called the "Dune" Effect: a terrific first book, with diminishing returns in subsequent volumes. Pohl ultimately does resolve the mystery of the Heechees, along with other questions not introduced in this book; unfortunately the answers are less interesting than the questions, and the story loses momentum well before the end of the series. I would recommend the sequel, "Beyond the Blue Event Horizon", but the final two volumes aren't up to snuff.
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