First edition cover | |
Author | Frederik Pohl |
---|---|
Illustrator | Vincent DiFate (serial) [1] |
Cover artist | Boris Vallejo [2] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Series | Heechee Saga |
Genre | Science fiction |
Publisher | St. Martin's Press |
Publication date | April 1977 (serial from Nov 1976) [1] |
Media type | Print (hardcover) |
Pages | 313 (first ed.) |
Awards | Locus Award for Best Novel (1978) |
ISBN | 0-312-31780-8 |
OCLC | 2862581 |
813/.5/4 | |
LC Class | PZ4.P748 Gat PS3566.O36 [3] |
Followed by | Beyond the Blue Event Horizon |
Gateway is a 1977 science-fiction novel by American writer Frederik Pohl. It is the opening novel in the Heechee saga, with four sequels that followed (five books overall). Gateway won the 1978 Hugo Award for Best Novel, [4] the 1978 Locus Award for Best Novel, [4] the 1977 Nebula Award for Best Novel, [5] and the 1978 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. [4] The novel was adapted into a computer game in 1992.
Gateway was serialized in Galaxy prior to its hardcover publication. A short concluding chapter, cut before publication, was later published in the August 1977 issue of Galaxy. [6]
Gateway is an asteroid hollowed out by the Heechee, a long-vanished alien race. Humans have had limited success understanding the left-behind bits of Heechee technology found there and elsewhere. The Gateway Corporation administers the asteroid on behalf of the governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, the New People's Asia, the Venusian Confederation, and the United States of Brazil.
Nearly a thousand small, abandoned starships are located at Gateway. By extremely dangerous trial and error, humans have partially learned how to operate them. The controls for selecting a destination have been identified, but nobody knows where a particular setting will take the ship, how long the trip will last, or even if enough fuel is available to get back. Those who choose to risk their lives cram the limited space with equipment and hopefully enough food for the trip, but sometimes it is not enough, and they have to resort first to cannibalism, and if that is not enough, to suicide. Attempts at reverse engineering to find out how the ships work have ended only in disaster, as has changing the settings in midflight. Most settings lead to useless or lethal places. A few, however, result in the discovery of new Heechee artifacts and habitable planets in other star systems, making the crews extremely wealthy. The vessels were made in three standard sizes, which can hold a maximum of one, three, or five people. Some "threes" and many "fives" are armored. Each ship includes a lander to visit a planet or other object if one is found.
Despite the risks, many people on impoverished, overcrowded Earth dream of going to Gateway. Robinette Stetley Broadhead is a young food shale miner who wins a lottery, giving him enough money to purchase a one-way ticket to Gateway. Once there, he is frightened of the danger and puts off going on a mission as long as he can. In the meantime, he becomes romantically involved with two different women, eventually settling on Gelle-Klara Moynlin, his co-enabler in fearful delaying. Eventually, he starts running out of money, and although still terrified, he goes out on three trips. The first, with Klara and three others, is unsuccessful, and afterwards tension rises between them until he gives her a vicious beating. On the second trip, he goes by himself and inadvertently makes a discovery through unauthorized experimentation when he becomes infuriated after reaching Gateway Two, a smaller version of Gateway with only about 150 ships. He is awarded a sizable bonus because his route saves about 100 days of travel time; the windfall is partially offset by the large penalty for incapacitating his ship. On his third trip, the Gateway Corporation tries something different – sending two armored fives, one slightly behind the other, to the same destination, one rejected by most ships' computers; each crewmember is promised a million-dollar bonus. Bob signs up in desperation, along with Klara, with whom he has reconciled.
When the ships arrive, their crews find to their horror that they are in the gravitational grip of a black hole without enough power to break free. One person devises a desperate escape plan: Move everyone into one ship and thrust the other toward the black hole with an explosion in a lander, thus gaining enough of a boost to escape. They work frantically to transfer unnecessary equipment to make room for everyone in one ship, but Broadhead finds himself alone in the wrong ship when time runs out. He closes the hatch so that the plan can proceed. However, his ship is the one that breaks free.
Broadhead returns to Gateway and is awarded all the mission bonuses. He feels such enormous survivor guilt for dooming his crewmates, especially Klara, that he suppresses his memories of what happened, but he is very disturbed and miserable, though he does not understand why, so back on Earth as a wealthy man, he seeks therapy from an artificial intelligence Freudian therapist program, which he names Sigfrid von Shrink.
The narrative alternates in time between Broadhead's experiences on Gateway and his sessions with Sigfrid, converging on the traumatic events near the black hole and Broadhead finally remembering them so he can begin to heal. Sigfrid helps him realize that due to the gravitational time dilation of the black hole's immense gravity field, time is passing much more slowly for his former crewmates and none of them have actually died yet. Broadhead, however, concludes that this means that they will still be alive when he dies, with Klara still believing that he betrayed them to save himself.
Also embedded in the narrative are various mission reports (usually with fatalities), roster openings, technical bulletins, and other documents Broadhead might have read on Gateway, adding to the verisimilitude. The economic side of living at Gateway is presented in detail, commencing with the contract all explorers must enter into with the Gateway Corporation, and including how some awards are determined.
C. Ben Ostrander reviewed Gateway in The Space Gamer No. 12. [7] Ostrander commented, "I loved this book. I like books that don't solve big problems, but take care of the characters." [7]
In 2015 Variety announced that a Gateway TV series was going to be written and produced by David Eick and Josh Pate for Syfy, although it failed to enter production. [9] In 2017 Skybound Entertainment made an agreement with the Pohl estate for another attempt at making a TV series but it failed to begin production as well. [10]
Frederik George Pohl Jr. was an American science-fiction writer, editor, and fan, with a career spanning nearly 75 years—from his first published work, the 1937 poem "Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna", to the 2011 novel All the Lives He Led.
The Heechee Saga, also known as the Gateway series, is a series of science fiction novels and short stories by Frederik Pohl. The Heechee are an advanced alien race that visited the Solar System hundreds of millennia ago and then mysteriously disappeared. They left behind bases containing artifacts, including working starships, which are discovered and exploited by humanity.
Galaxy Science Fiction was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published in Boston from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by a French-Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break into the American market. World Editions hired as editor H. L. Gold, who rapidly made Galaxy the leading science fiction magazine of its time, focusing on stories about social issues rather than technology.
The Dosadi Experiment is a 1977 science fiction novel by American writer Frank Herbert. It is the second full-length novel set in the ConSentiency universe established by Herbert in his short stories "A Matter of Traces" and "The Tactful Saboteur", and continued in his novel Whipping Star. It was first published as a four-part serial in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine from May to August, 1977.
Algirdas Jonas "Algis" Budrys was a Lithuanian-American science fiction author, editor, and critic. He was also known under the pen names Frank Mason, Alger Rome in collaboration with Jerome Bixby, John A. Sentry, William Scarff, and Paul Janvier. In 1960, he authored Rogue Moon, a novel.
Lester del Rey was an American science fiction author and editor. He was the author of many books in the juvenile Winston Science Fiction series, and the editor at Del Rey Books, the fantasy and science fiction imprint of Ballantine Books, along with his fourth wife Judy-Lynn del Rey.
Robert Silverberg is an American author and editor, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple winner of both Hugo and Nebula Awards, a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, and a Grand Master of SF. He has attended every Hugo Award ceremony since the inaugural event in 1953.
Frederik Pohl's Gateway is a 1992 interactive fiction video game released by Legend Entertainment, and written by Glen Dahlgren and Mike Verdu. It is based on Frederik Pohl's Heechee universe. It was followed by a sequel Gateway II: Homeworld, in 1993.
Man Plus is a 1976 science fiction novel by American writer Frederik Pohl. It won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1976, was nominated for the Hugo and Campbell Awards, and placed third in the annual Locus Poll in 1977. The story is about a cyborg, Roger Torraway, who is designed to operate in the harsh Martian environment so that humans can colonize Mars.
Heechee Rendezvous is a science fiction novel by the American writer Frederik Pohl, published in 1984 by the Del Rey imprint of Ballantine Books. It is a sequel to Gateway (1977) and Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (1981) and is set about three decades after Gateway. It has been cataloged as the third book in a six-book series called Heechee or The Heechee Saga but Kirkus reviewed it as completing a trilogy and a German-language edition of the three books was published as the Gateway trilogy after all six were out.
Black holes, objects whose gravity is so strong that nothing including light can escape them, have been depicted in fiction since before the term was coined by John Archibald Wheeler in the late 1960s. Black holes have been depicted with varying degrees of accuracy to the scientific understanding of them. Because what lies beyond the event horizon is unknown and by definition unobservable from outside, authors have been free to employ artistic license when depicting the interiors of black holes.
The 36th World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), also known as IguanaCon II, was held on 30 August–4 September 1978 at the Hyatt Regency Phoenix, Adams House, Phoenix Convention Center, and Phoenix Symphony Hall in Phoenix, Arizona, United States. Despite the name, this was the first "IguanaCon".
The Persistence of Vision is a 1978 collection of science fiction stories by American writer John Varley.
Gateway II: Homeworld is a 1993 interactive fiction video game developed and published by Legend Entertainment. The sequel to Gateway (1992), it is set in Frederik Pohl's Heechee universe.
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon is a science fiction novel by the American writer Frederik Pohl, a sequel to his 1977 novel Gateway and the second book in the Heechee series. It was a finalist for two major annual awards, the 1981 Hugo Award for Best Novel and the 1980 Nebula Award. In the 1981 poll of Locus readers it finished second to The Snow Queen by Joan Vinge.
"The Gold at the Starbow's End" is a science fiction novella by American writer Frederik Pohl. Originally published in the March 1972 issue of Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, it was nominated for both the 1973 Hugo Award for Best Novella and the 1973 Nebula Award for Best Novella. It did win the 1973 Locus Award for Best Novella.
This is an incomplete list of works by American space opera and science fiction author Frederik Pohl, including co-authored works.
The Annals of the Heechee is a science fiction novel by the American writer Frederik Pohl, published in 1987 by Ballantine Books. It is about a dead space explorer's machine-stored version who is trying to discover why the Assassins, a mysterious type of pure energy beings, are threatening the stability of the universe. It is part of Pohl's Heechee Saga, which is about the Heechee, a fictional alien race created by Pohl. The Heechee developed advanced technologies, including interstellar space travel, but then disappeared.
The Gateway Trip is a collection of science fiction "tales and vignettes", including a novella, by the American writer Frederik Pohl. It was published in 1990 by Del Rey Books. It involves one of Pohl's recurring creations, the Heechee universe. The Heechee are a fictional alien race which developed advanced technologies, including interstellar space travel, but then disappeared.
The Boy Who Would Live Forever is a science fiction novel by the American writer Frederik Pohl. It was published in 2004 by Tor. It is about intrigues involving one of Pohl's recurring creations, the Heechee universe. The Heechee are a fictional alien race which developed advanced technologies, including interstellar space travel, but then disappeared. In the novel, humans use abandoned Heechee starships to explore space, while the Heechee aliens hide from a mysterious foe, the Kugel, in a black hole, all the while pursued by hate-crazed humans who are Heechee hunters.