A very prescient sci-fi novel that essentially predicts the rise of smartphones, no kidding.

It deals with the discovery of a hyperspace network developed by a race of precursor aliens. Its strength is that it's very character-driven - it is mostly told in flashback by the main character in counselling sessions with a sarcastic robot. There are pages that are supposed "realia", helping to flesh out the world. The story is drip-fed to you, slowly foreshadowing the twists at the end when everything comes together, and I liked that.

The hyperspace ships left by the aliens only travel to preprogrammed locations, meaning that every trip is a gamble - will they have enough fuel or food for the journey? where will they end up? will they be able to profit? (since the future world is apparently the worst excesses of capitalism on steroids) - and even then crewmembers have to travel in close quarters for months, making it an emotional toll. Given all that, a lot of what happens in the story is unsurprising.

Some of the revelations aren't so savoury - the m.c. turns out to be a violent closet case, and beats up his girlfriend. But the book reveals this while being careful to condemn his actions and make the story one of guilt. The final revelation that he left his girlfriend to be sucked into a black hole - meaning it's his guilt that she is, due to time dilation still in that situation and will be long after he dies, and he has no way to tell her it wasn't actually his fault - cements that. Unreliable Narrator is handled well, basically.

And yeah, for 1977 the future predictions are astounding honestly. Pohl never quite accurately predicts the internet, for example, but capitalism has been going the way of this book for decades, and the book's p-phones are basically smartphones. ( )

Creative and well written, but I just cannot read this genre for fun and enjoyment. ( )

The only reason I read this book is that the dude lived on the same block as my Mom in Illinois. In retrospect I thought it was okay, not terrible, not great. His house had a sign in front that said "Gateway." I never sought out any more of his books because this was supposed to be his masterwork and I thought it was just average. He was an actual well known writer when I was into more science fiction, so I was impressed and sort of in awe. I should probably read something else by him so if you have any suggestions pass them on. ( )

review of
Frederik Pohl's Gateway
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 17, 2012

Yet another interesting Pohl bk & the 1st of The Heechee Saga. It's a classic writer's technique to alternate 2 inter-related themes from chapter to chapter. Gradually, the content of the 2 themes get closer & closer. Pohl uses that here w/ the addition of a 3rd sortof wild-card theme in the form of miscellany.

The odd-numbered chapters center on the protagonist's highly resistant interaction w/ a computer psychoanalyst who can create a variety of illusory environments intended to achieve different effects - a Sigmund Freud type in a classic analyst's office w/ couch, a mothering teddy-bear in a simulated kid's rm, etc..

The even-numbered chapters chronicle the protagonist's life before these therapeutic sessions - particularly as an explorer/prospector home-based on Gateway & during space travel looking for Heechee artifacts.

The miscellany are things like Classifieds aimed at Gateway residents, lectures regarding space travel, etc.. These are a particularly clever way of adding detail w/o having to otherwise work it into the narrative thread more directly related to the main character.

SF, by its nature, being ahead-of-its-time, it's always interesting to see what details were written in as of-the-time-depicted that didn't actually exist as of the time-of-writing that may exist now. I was delighted to find a casual description of a roll-up keyboard in this 1977 novel. I bought 2 of these recently very cheaply at CVS.

Gateway is an asteroid or a nucleus of a comet on wch faster-than-speed-of-light ships were discovered that enable humans to 'randomly' follow preset courses to unknown locations. Pursuing these locations has a high likelihood of death. Surviving may result in finding & bringing back artifacts from the culture that created these spaceships - or scientific data of value just from the trip itself. These, in turn, may make the explorer/prospector rich. As such, these prospectors tend to be somewhat desperate gamblers.

As w/ most or all works that hold my interest, Pohl manages to have many levels of content be compelling. The inter-relationship between the psychotherapy & the life-story that precedes it is made more fascinating by the chance that the therapy might actually help & then by watching this play out. While I personally think such therapy is generally of dubious value, Pohl carefully has his character recalcitrantly yield to its process. One of the things unearthed along the way is the latent bisexual nature of the main character & his conflicts over this.

Possibly one of the funnier details was having the astronauts SMOKE, both cigarettes & pot (or something pot-like), while space-traveling. All in all, this was a very satisfying, engaging, & entertaining read from an author who was, fortunately, so prolific that he'll keep me coming back for many yrs to come. ( )

I do not read very much Science Fiction, so I turned to the recommendations of others to select this book. It appears on several "Best Sci-Fi" type lists, so I thought it would be a good choice. But, having read it, I fail to see why it is so well rated.
There were holes in the science (taking photographs while traveling beyond the speed of light, two hole in one idea), characters were not fully developed, and the first two or three chapters pretty much made the both ending of the storyline as well as the various "dangerous episodes" used to develop the plot obvious and predictable.
I don't really know the criteria for evaluating sci-fi as compared to regular fiction, but it seems to me that some of the measures of good fiction such as character development, credibility of plot and well drawn descriptions and settings ought to be parts of any fiction, and I did not feel that these existed in this book.
Just before reading this book, I had finished Asimov's Foundation and a collection of short stories, "Best American Sci-Fi and Fantasy of 2016," and I did find these elements in those writings. Additionally, Asimov's writing respected known scientific realities and developed new ideas (for the time when it was written) that became scientific realities revealed since the book was written. This novel did none of that.
Next time I get the urge to read sci-fi, I'll go back to Asimov, Bradbury and Clarke and hope to find someone who might be in their league. ( )