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mburnamfink 's review for:
Gateway
by Frederik Pohl
Gateway is psychological drama that conceals its major points behind layers of mystery, and reveals them only tenuously.
In the future, the teeming billions of humanity are sustained only by poorly understood alien artifacts. The ancient vanished heechee left tunnels on Venus, unbreakable glowing alloy plates, hot objects used as cutting rods and generators, and all else, Gateway: an asteroid orbiting 90 degrees out of the plane of the ecliptic, and stocked with hundreds of mysterious FTL spaceships. The ships are easy enough to use. Dial in five numbers, tune until the control panel glows pink, and hit the go button. But dialing them in safely is impossible. Nobody knows how the controls correspond to real locations, how long a voyage will take, or what the crew will find at the far end. About 60% of ships come back with deaders, or not at all, but 10% come back with the big score of priceless alien artifacts or scientific data. One of these is enough to set a prospector up for life. Fancy living, full medical care, hot and cold running partners of your preference, anything that makes the risk almost worth it.
The story follows two tracks. Robinette Broadhead as a prospector, making friends in the tough corridors of Gateway and trying to work up the courage to join an expedition. And Robinette back on Earth after his big score, undergoing computer aided psychotherapy. Memos from the Gateway Company and personal ads drop in randomly. Some of this works, and some of it doesn't. Robinette isn't much of a protagonist, and his analytic revelation is teased out far longer than it deserves. On the other hand, the world of Gateway is fascinating, with the mystery of the vanished heechee aliens never faltering, nor the desperate gambler's lives of the prospectors, trying to survive a cosmic dungeon-crawl.
This book build entirely towards the revelation of Robinette's third voyage, which I decline to spoil, but it's fun scifi. On a personal note, I was surprised by how much Gibson's short story "Hinterlands" draws from Gateway, but the themes of exploration and its price are big handle many takes.
In the future, the teeming billions of humanity are sustained only by poorly understood alien artifacts. The ancient vanished heechee left tunnels on Venus, unbreakable glowing alloy plates, hot objects used as cutting rods and generators, and all else, Gateway: an asteroid orbiting 90 degrees out of the plane of the ecliptic, and stocked with hundreds of mysterious FTL spaceships. The ships are easy enough to use. Dial in five numbers, tune until the control panel glows pink, and hit the go button. But dialing them in safely is impossible. Nobody knows how the controls correspond to real locations, how long a voyage will take, or what the crew will find at the far end. About 60% of ships come back with deaders, or not at all, but 10% come back with the big score of priceless alien artifacts or scientific data. One of these is enough to set a prospector up for life. Fancy living, full medical care, hot and cold running partners of your preference, anything that makes the risk almost worth it.
The story follows two tracks. Robinette Broadhead as a prospector, making friends in the tough corridors of Gateway and trying to work up the courage to join an expedition. And Robinette back on Earth after his big score, undergoing computer aided psychotherapy. Memos from the Gateway Company and personal ads drop in randomly. Some of this works, and some of it doesn't. Robinette isn't much of a protagonist, and his analytic revelation is teased out far longer than it deserves. On the other hand, the world of Gateway is fascinating, with the mystery of the vanished heechee aliens never faltering, nor the desperate gambler's lives of the prospectors, trying to survive a cosmic dungeon-crawl.
This book build entirely towards the revelation of Robinette's third voyage, which I decline to spoil, but it's fun scifi. On a personal note, I was surprised by how much Gibson's short story "Hinterlands" draws from Gateway, but the themes of exploration and its price are big handle many takes.