Sunday, April 2, 2017

Gateway (Heechee Saga, #1)

Gateway (Heechee Saga, #1)
author: Frederik Pohl
name: Wayne
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1977
rating: 4
read at: 2017/04/02
date added: 2017/04/02
shelves: sword-and-laser
review:
'Gateway' by Frederik Pohl was the pick for my book club last month. It's a good, though somewhat dated, story.

The framing story involves the main character, Robinette Broadhead, as he attends therapy sessions by a mechanical therapist. Rob is not a very likable character, and he seems evasive towards his therapist, even to the point of pulling pranks, and being derogatory towards him. Can you be derogatory towards a machine?

The reason he is in therapy is about his time on Gateway, a place with strange alien technology left behind by the Heechee. Fortunes can be made and lives lost by blindly taking a trip in one of the strange spacecraft left behind. Rob has come from a bleaker existence that makes this sort of risk seem like his only choice.

The dated parts come in regarding the kind of technology and even therapy methods used. Also some of Rob's feelings about things. I don't think we are supposed to like him, but that doesn't mean it's not a good book. The ending is a bit abrupt, and there are bits of Gateway ephemera that were sprinkled through my book that seemed disruptive to the narrative flow, but it was a quick enough read. I enjoyed this one.


via Wayne's bookshelf: read http://ift.tt/2n2FRgZ

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