Gateway
Frederik Pohl's Gateway is the first novel in the Heechee Saga, a Hugo and Nebula winning sci-fi classic that frames its action through the protagonist's grim, sardonic sessions with an AI psychotherapist named Sigfrid von Shrink. Robinette Broadhead is a former Wyoming food mine worker who has won a corporate lottery and used the prize to ship out to Gateway, an asteroid honeycombed with abandoned starships left by a vanished alien race called the Heechee. No one knows how to read Heechee navigation, so prospectors climb aboard, push buttons, and either return rich, return dead, or never return at all. Bob makes several runs, comes home wealthy, and spends the entire novel trying to explain to his AI shrink why he is paralyzed by guilt about the trip that made his fortune. Pohl interleaves the therapy chapters with technical inserts, mission reports, and personal ads, creating a haunted study of survivor's guilt at the edge of the unknown.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Gateway
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Humans have found a derelict alien asteroid loaded with one-way ships nobody can fly. Prospectors push the buttons and hope. Years later, a survivor sits with a robot therapist and tries to explain what happened.
Yes. Gateway won the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Locus Award, John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and Prix Apollo, all in 1977 to 1978. It is one of the only science fiction novels to sweep all major awards.
Frederik Pohl wrote five main Heechee novels: Gateway, Beyond the Blue Event Horizon, Heechee Rendezvous, The Annals of the Heechee, and The Boy Who Would Live Forever. The series is complete.
Gateway was written by Frederik Pohl, published in 1977 by Futura.
Gateway is 313 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Gateway takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Gateway is a standalone novel by Frederik Pohl, not part of a series.
Gateway is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.