But once he’s there, he has no choice but to either ship out – taking his chances as a prospector – or return home. It is Broadhead’s lottery win that funds his trip to Gateway. The rich can live long and comfortable lives, whereas the poor are consigned to a life short life of misery. His ultimate dream, referenced many times through the novel, is to have Full Medical. In fact, the ruins of Earth are what drives Broadhead. Things are made all the worse by Pohl’s description of the world from which Broadhead originates: no family, and a planet so starved of food that it’s grown in mines. You’re playing for big returns, but expect terrible losses. This, my friends, is the ultimate game of Russian roulette. But just as likely (if not more) is that you’ll end up dead, or as good as.Īs you can see, the central premise of GATEWAY is immediately engaging. “Working”, of course, in the loosest sense of the word… You can initiate a jump from Gateway – using a completely unknown FTL technology – and it may yield untold riches and royalties, at the review of the faceless Corporation. The relics of this alien civilisation were first found on Venus, but Gateway was the real find: offering a fleet of working alien ships. These ships are the creation of the Heechee a long-dead (or disappeared?) alien species, which despite decades of study remains an enigma. Discovered quite by chance, Gateway is an alien space station – a hollowed-out asteroid – which when found housed hundreds of dormant starships. Robinette (or Rob, Robbie, or even Bob) made his money on Gateway.
Robinette Broadhead was once a prospector, and tells the story of how he made his fortune – allowing him such comforts as a home beneath the Bubble of Manhattan – to a machine-psych known as Sigfrid von Shrink. As with almost all of the best SF stories, the premise of GATEWAY is very simple, and many of the story elements have been re-used over the last few decades to the extent that they’ve become worn tropes. Pohl’s GATEWAY is deserves its place as a classic SF. I picked it up last week in Forbidden Planet, and started reading it almost right away.Ī couple days later, and the book is done. Sure, I’d read about it, and it’s one of those books that is often brought up as an example of “Golden Age” SF (which it really isn’t: the book was published much later than most of the Golden Age classics), but I just never got around to it. I’m ashamed to say that I hadn’t read Pohl’s GATEWAY until very recently.
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