I had read this book years ago while still school age; it was part of my “stupidly mad about everything sci-if” phase and a good inspiration for wanting to write in the field of science fiction because this, I knew even then, was the kind of stuff that I wanted to write about: not just entertaining fluff about aliens and ships in space but something more, something intelligent and, dare I say, thought-provoking. I consequently read a few other books by Frederik Pohl and loved them all but that was it, never read any other ones.
It’s only recently that I have thought again about Pohl, one of those authors who prey at the back of the mind, never letting go. It was seeing the books Gateway, Jem and Man Plus on a bookstore shelf that I thought, hey, I wouldn’t mind reading those again. This might not sound like much of an exciting thing to do but it’s something that I never do. I don’t know how many books I have read more than once but you can count them on one hand. I never watch a movie more than once, any TV show or any game. I just don’t; once I have consumed it then I’m finished with it and on to the next thing.
So re-reading Gateway by Frederik Pohl was interesting, only in the way that it makes me realize that my memory is better than I had realized. On seeing the cover it brought back memories and then reading the story, seeing those characters once more that I had totally forgot about, it gave me something of a fuzzy feeling, like diving into a familiar bed with a familiar woman. It just felt good.
So, anyway, the book is about a man and his quest for riches in a future that has seen the Earth become hugely overpopulated with most of the denizens hungry and poor. Humanity has discovered an ancient alien relic known as Gateway, a hollow asteroid containing roughly a thousand ships that cannot be controlled but will fly the inhabitants of the vessel to an unknown and possibly very dangerous destination. And that’s where the riches come into play because humanity does what it always does when face-to-face with an amazing new discovery: it tries think of way to profit from it. People who pay the company set up to look after Gateway can board a ship and fly off to said unknown destination which has resulted in many deaths but also many riches. If they discover something scientifically groundbreaking and if they especially bring back some kind of artifact then they are awarded greatly and this is what leads to many people trying their luck in order to gain a much better life for themselves, including the main character.
One of the things that struck me about the book was the amount of sex: the main character, Bob Broadhead has a lot of sex with, apparently, just about anyone he sees and even when he isn’t he is talking about it. This doesn’t really serve any purpose and is either just the future that this had become where everyone is very sexually free and open than we are now or it’s just the way that Pohl’s mind was hardwired. Either way I did not remember that being the book that I had read as a child and if I did I may not have even understood a lot of the talk that goes on within the pages.
The story flips between the present life of Bob, one in which he sees his machine psychiatrist and has become incredibly rich by means that aren’t exactly explained but are certainly implied. He’s currently rich and it flips to the past where is poor but is searching fro his riches. So we can figure out how he gets there but the fun is in seeing exactly how it all plans out.
The aliens, called Heechee, are never seen and no one know where they have gone. They quite literally appear to have disappeared into thin air. There are sequels to the book that apparently explain what has happened to them but I personally think it’s better suited that they are left to the imagination, the mystery of what happened to the heechee being one of the major forces that pulls the novel, that and the tortured mind of the main protagonist Bob who is definitely that, tortured. The psychiatrist sessions are a good way of showing just how tortured this man’s mind is. In between asking if he has any sexual desires for his mother he finds out a great deal of things about Broadhead and it makes us learn more about the sort of man he is. The character is compelling and with the whole novel being told in first-person from him we get to know a great deal about him but never truly sympathize with him because he isn’t really that kind of guy. He’s not a nice guy, exactly, but neither is he bad. He has dark thoughts and a bad attitude and the whole story is for his personal quest for fortune. He isn’t doing it for anybody else he’s doing it out of pure greed and although that makes the reader not care about him what it does is make him interesting and when a book is told from the first-person that is the main thing.
Gateway by Frederik Pohl is number nine of the list of great sci-fi masterworks and it greatly deserves it so if you haven’t read it yet check it out and then read it again a few years later because you might notice things you didn’t the first time around.
