Gateway by Frederik Pohl (August)

[Joe]

Hey everyone, this is for discussion of August's group book:
Gateway by Frederik Pohl

Unless it’s a very general comment make sure you use spoiler code.
< spoiler>Comment< /spoiler> Without the spaces.

I've been meaning to read this for years now. Pohl is a significant name within SF and I would really like to read more by him.

[Joe]

Finally started it, a little later than planned but oh well.

Chapters 1 - 5
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A pretty good start I think. Introduces the main characters , Bob and Sigfrid, with a nice sarcastic tone and manages to give a glimpse into this alien environment that’s made up of the Heechee ships. Curious to see where it’ll end up.
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[Joe]

Chapters 6 - 10

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Interesting setup so far with everyone on Gateway hoping to strike it rich like it was the American goldrush; just far more dangerous and isolated. We know the end results so waiting to discover what happened to Bob to make him so rich and needing the psychiatrist AI Sigfrid.
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[Joe]

Chapters 11 - 15

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They’ve finally started on their first trip which I’m curious to see if it’s the one that made Bob so rich. There’s reference to a third flight however by Sigfrid so maybe it’s a darker trip and someone dies? Bob looks as though he’ll be in for some informative times ahead very soon.
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[Joe]

Chapters 16 - 20

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I’m finding the sequence of shorter Sigfrid chapters mixed with longer Gateway sections to be rather effective. At the start I was a little unsure with it as I thought it’d break things up too much but it builds up Bob well and gives a certain odd tension to events.
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[Joe]

Chapters 21 - 25

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His ongoing psychological deterioration seems to be at a head now.He’s hoping against hope he can just find that big artifact and leave forever; which we know has happened
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[Joe]

Chapters 26 - end

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His third big flight where he earned all his money didn’t surprise me at all. He was holding something back through all his sessions with Sigfrid so hearing it’s because she’s still alive as such in the outer event horizon and only seconds have passed explains it all. He feels eternal guilt and in this case it almost literally is.

I really liked this overall. It has interesting ideas
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[Jon]

Joe,

(view spoiler)[ I read this one a few months ago. When we read Man Plus I remember wondering if psychology was a theme that was present in all of his books like it was in these two. In this one I liked that the Heechee were a complete mystery. I think more is explained about them in the later novels but I was fine with the mystery. A little like Rendezvous with Rama.
The one thing that I took away from this book was the irony of Bob's problems. He's a complete dick and it doesn't appear to bother him and when Sigfrid brings up his actions he doesn't appear to understand (whether he does or doesn't is debatable I guess) what Sigfrid is even talking about. But his life is being destroyed by an action that he didn't do (pushing the button) although he tried to do it. And as Sigfrid points out at one point, the person programming the button to disconnect the two ships wouldn't have programmed it to work in the ship that Bob was in. So his life is falling apart because of an action that he didn't do and that wouldn't have done anything even if he had done it while he continues to ignore the horrible things that he did in his past and continues to do.

Do you plan on reading the sequels?
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[Joe]

Jon,

(view spoiler)[
He seems to have a considerable interest in exploring different psychology aspects of someone.
In the end it was a really messed up and damaging situation which combined with him being a dick made it a whole lot worse. He'll never get over it even it he wanted to due to the time dilation making the crew live longer and slower than millennia of humanity.

I do have a old copy of the second book, Beyond The Blue Event Horizon, and was thinking of reading it soon; maybe next month.
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[Nick]

Have you guys read Manny's review of Gateway on Goodreads? It's here. It resonates with me because (view spoiler)[when I got to that scene in the book, I found it so ridiculous I laughed out loud!. (hide spoiler)]

Jon, I like your description of the end, because when I first read it (view spoiler)[I thought that Rob had killed them all. It took a lot of persuasion from my book club to convince me that there was actually some good evidence in the text that he hadn't! I wonder if I was biaised against him because he was such an unlikeable character?

Another reader in the club suggested that Rob might actually be one of the most unreliable narrators in SF. Maybe he really is the asshole he describes himself as - or maybe he's so eaten up with self-loathing that he has warped all his memories of himself to present his past actions in the worst possible light. Maybe he isn't really the asshole he describes in the book? (hide spoiler)]

[Jon]

Nick,

(view spoiler)[ Noooo! I don't remember that scene! I went to get my copy to find it and I've already packed it away in preparation for an upcoming move. Evidently there's no e-book version, it's not available from Overdrive or Hoopla and my local library doesn't have it. I have a choice of tearing through all the boxes in storage to try to find it or buying a new copy. I didn't like it enough to own a second copy so I guess I'll be tearing open boxes this weekend.

I had to go back and reread certain passages a couple of times because I was so confused by Rob's guilt. As you say he was so unlikable that I was sure that he had to have done something heinous in order to be that upset and that somehow I had missed it or misread something.

The unreliable narrator idea is really interesting. I don't think that I buy it but it is fun to look at the story through a different lens. In the end though I just think that Rob is an ass and karma came up and punched him in the face. He's got all the money he wanted and he'll never enjoy it. (hide spoiler)]