I'm 63 read this ages ago and loved it, then managed to read a handful of heechee stories after that. They were always good. After I got married I was happy to find that she loved science fiction as much as I did. She was legally blind at the time and had been listening to Talking books from the Library for the Blind. But also I would read one to us. Loved doing the different voices and accents. I was never as good as the professional readers but thought I did a half descent job! There was one book by Pohl the Fires of Heaven about a fellow named Barry di Hoa who tries to settle on some strange world full of odd little aliens, they would call him by his name in a strange accent that both of us loved. Always thought I'd be a good reader lol. My wife passed away some years ago now and I really miss listening to a good book. I discovered this channel some few weeks ago and have been so happy to find so many good books many I had read or listened to in the past! Brings me many good memories, very glad to find it
Sorry for your loss. Losing my eyesight, I am thankful for all these generous people who share audiobooks...Reading to someone is like cooking for someone: It is greatly improved by the love that you put into it! Thanks for being a force for good in the world. Always remember that there is much truth to the old adage that it's better to have loved & lost than it is never have loved at all. How lucky you are to have so many good memories! Hope you find many great sci-fi books. Research "Top 50 (or 100!) sci-fi books so don't miss the classics. Good luck!
60. Must have spent 10's of thousands on books. After starting my own business, I purchased a motor home as I was never home and was tired of hotels. Packed my books into 3 4ftx4ftx4ft crates and sent them to a used book store up north. Just started reading again. Pohl and Niven were favorites of mine.
Certainly one of the most enjoyable Sci Fi novels ever. I first read it around 1980 or so as part of college English class in science fiction. I read it in one night. I never do that. I'm a slow reader, but I couldn't put this book down. I went on to read every book by Fred Pohl I could get my hands on and he became and remains my favorite author. This is not soaring, worldview changing sci fi in the classic sense, but the story just hangs together so well it's an irresistible read. Every few years, I pick it up and read it again. in a genre now full of swords and breast plates, they don't write em like this anymore. This audiobook, on the other hand, sucks. I could read it better, in character.
What a masterpiece. I read this first as a teenager in the 1980's. Just listened to this now in my 50's and I saw a hundred other things in it that I never noticed the first time. Compelling right to the last page.
I decided to re-read (well listen) to his books as an adult. I loved him as a teen but never knew he was a commie writing satires of capitalism, or just shitting on capitalism in general until a few years ago. I wasn't into politics really back then, I'm sure I'm gonna get more out of it now.
When your sexual preference is the deciding factor. This is a masterfull tale. Read it as a younger man. I thought about its themes from time to time since. Great to reaquaint myself with it. Could take some abridgement here and there, feel free to skip a bit of Siegfried (We get it allready) Recommended adult listening.
Synopsis When prospector Robinette Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was the right mission to make him his fortune. Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Rob Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he has become...
I am gonna be an apologist for Pohl about this book. It is the best combination Hardware and Character SF book I know, and way up in my favorites. This audio rendition is my 3rd or 4th read of it over quite some years. As for hardware I find it just intriguing and full of ideas I had not encountered before. The details of Heechee Metal are so much more satisfying than the old "alloy that is not found on earth" meme, f'rinstance. Elements of discovering that someone was here long before us, and that they remain utterly mysterious, are fascinating to me. And that everything still works. Also the sociology of a survival economy from food mines to weird trips visiting black holes. Heck, I find the detailed description of the Heechee ships and the re-rigging thereof to accommodate humans interesting. I (largely) love the sidebars. Gonna say the pages of Siegfried's code are a mixed blessing. Remembering what decade we were reading this in for the first time, it is interesting and informative to see how the machine language follows and creates the thread of a therapeutic conversation. Stuff was new to us right-brained types. BUT I grant you, in the audio version, it is slow and there is an awful lot of it at verbal reading speed, and we don't have the option to skim it or skip it. The classifieds aboard Gateway are inventive and amusing, on the other hand. Professor Hegrammit's excerpts are an illuminating, sometimes funny, and maybe I'll call it wry; expansion on the mysterious; and are also little "bits" on a side stage. I enjoy them. The trip reports are fascinating in putting the reader inside a claustrophobic capsule with results exciting, frightening, despairing.... Another novel (and I love this one, too) that uses such asides is "Stand on Zanzibar." The sidebars are a chance to illuminate the society without having one character say to another, "As you know..." Maybe compare this to the way the original "Robocop" starts with a TV ad for "Lethal Auto Theft Protection." "Gateway" was probably the first book in this kind of format I read. I found it different and entertaining (in varying degrees.) And all that shrink stuff----well, if you have spent any time in therapy yourself, you may well find that part immersive and interesting and familiar; and it's a setting to get depth on the character. I read this at a point when therapy was at least a recent part of my life, and was impressed all to hell at Pohl's familiarity with it; figured he must've spent some time being shrunk himself. Robinette Broadhead is both a jerk and a pretty positive character. He contains some tragedies---some slow-moving ones in early life; and the big one that is the core dilemma of his being in the narrative present. Without tragedy, characters are shallow. Sez me! (Quite frankly, I have read over the very core-most action scene in this book any number of times and cannot suss out the physics of it; though the emotional ambiguity is pretty clear.) The narrator struck me as pretty spare and dry at first, but I have gotten used to him. You know one I hate? George Guidell, who has read some Heinleins, and is dry to the point of bloodless. Sez me.
I agree, we imbibers of youtube science fiction owe a lot to the skills of the presenters, not to say the authors, and after collecting through most of the 1970s to the 2000s I was thrilled to add this to my mental list of top notch SF.
The programming code is Basic. Since this was before 1978, not on a PC. Probably PET or COCO. PC came out in the summer of 79. It cost me $2,400 for 820K memory running at 4.77Mhz when printing or using the 300 baud modem and 8Mhz otherwise. 4 color graphics card and monitor was an extra $1,000 and 20M hard-drive another $500.
This is a good book. It could have been an easy book, but then it wouldn't have been a good book. I didn't like Pohl when I was young. I liked Heinlein (the Ayn Rand of Sci-fi.) This could have been a good Heinlein story, but then it would have been formulaic - exciting, but ultimately predictable. This is not a Heinlein story. It's deeper, and you have to stay with it to get to the bottom of it. The exposition is quite well done. It lays out a path for you to follow, and then takes you somewhere entirely different as a final destination. Be patient. Stick with it. Until about halfway through, you may be tempted to drop it. Don't. Frederick Pohl is taking you somewhere very interesting.
Issac Gabriels I love this book. The only reason I bothered using this audiobook was growing too tired of reading at night, but I just couldn't pry myself away from the story! Truly marvellous.
I do hope that the rest of the series is here. We are, after all, still chasing the Heechee. Pohl and Heinlein the best and very relative to now. How did they know?
Agree with those who suggested sigfried is filler...distracts without enhancement of story. Bob does enough on his own to tell the reader about his outlook.
Just started with this. Read it years ago and remembered it alwasy as one of the best stories ever, so I'm very excited and glad to find it here! But WTF is it with all that monotone read and totally unneccesary "computer readout" stuff? Must have skipped over that reading it myself in the past I guess.
Perhaps that's what we call *Equality!* No more of this "Double standards" where Women are concerned. Don't hit someone without expecting repercussions. Actions have *Consequences*
Good story but the 1970s drug-sex culture stuff badly dates it, there are a few gaping plot holes, and the soap opera/mental health stuff becomes tedious.
Gateway had a good concept which in this case was ruined by the character stuff. The sex/drugs/parental issues/mental illness issues filler seems to be a way for Pohl to "fit in" with the New Wave of the 60s and 70s since they were supposedly the "cool, hip crowd" in the literary SF field at the time. I'm not sure why he felt the need to do this in 1977 when all of that got old and was as dead as disco was by 1981.
@@SpaceKebab And to top it all off, the authors who were doing all of that New Wave SF writing were not even all that young. They were still middle aged squares at the end of the day.
One of the sickest stories i have ever experienced. The hero is insane and a murderer, a coward, and rotten. This should be skipped unless you like abuse.
It’s a story guys, reflecting a desperate time in their history. It’s not meant t gratify the reader’s sensibilities. Go read Mickey Mouse if you are that shallow!
Scott Harris Maybe he had to eat, when your getting paid by the word I would stretch novella's into novels also...wouldn't you? Sci Fi writers were not paid much back in the day.
Aside...It adds dynamic to the storyline. Keeps you wondering where the treatment is going right to the end. Reminds me of 40s and 50s style detective stories. Think Raymond Chandler.
The shrink is not filler, Sigfrid is essential. The ultimate meaning of the novel, toward witch the entire novel is building to along the way, can only be reached through Sigfrid's conflict. If anything, is the story of Robinette in Gateway that could be cutted out (although that would be terrible, of course). Anyhow, the fact that you think of the shrinksceans as filler isn't quite flattering towards you, and tells that you were not able to grasp the true value of the story. I not trying to offend you, I know it may sound like it, but that's how I see it.
I'm 63 read this ages ago and loved it, then managed to read a handful of heechee stories after that. They were always good. After I got married I was happy to find that she loved science fiction as much as I did. She was legally blind at the time and had been listening to Talking books from the Library for the Blind. But also I would read one to us. Loved doing the different voices and accents. I was never as good as the professional readers but thought I did a half descent job! There was one book by Pohl the Fires of Heaven about a fellow named Barry di Hoa who tries to settle on some strange world full of odd little aliens, they would call him by his name in a strange accent that both of us loved. Always thought I'd be a good reader lol. My wife passed away some years ago now and I really miss listening to a good book. I discovered this channel some few weeks ago and have been so happy to find so many good books many I had read or listened to in the past! Brings me many good memories, very glad to find it
Sorry for your loss. Losing my eyesight, I am thankful for all these generous people who share audiobooks...Reading to someone is like cooking for someone: It is greatly improved by the love that you put into it! Thanks for being a force for good in the world. Always remember that there is much truth to the old adage that it's better to have loved & lost than it is never have loved at all. How lucky you are to have so many good memories! Hope you find many great sci-fi books. Research "Top 50 (or 100!) sci-fi books so don't miss the classics. Good luck!
Im 65 and read this when young :)
60. Must have spent 10's of thousands on books. After starting my own business, I purchased a motor home as I was never home and was tired of hotels. Packed my books into 3 4ftx4ftx4ft crates and sent them to a used book store up north. Just started reading again. Pohl and Niven were favorites of mine.
@@michaelgarrison688 Do you recall the store you sent them to?
in my opinion one of the greatest science fiction books ever. I've always thought it would have made an amazing movie
I love this book, but I don’t think it would make for a good movie. Maybe something like Stalker?
Me too, I love this book! I have re-read it twice now and will enjoy hearing it! Thanks to whomever!
There's a text-adventure game, it's pretty good.
Certainly one of the most enjoyable Sci Fi novels ever. I first read it around 1980 or so as part of college English class in science fiction. I read it in one night. I never do that. I'm a slow reader, but I couldn't put this book down. I went on to read every book by Fred Pohl I could get my hands on and he became and remains my favorite author. This is not soaring, worldview changing sci fi in the classic sense, but the story just hangs together so well it's an irresistible read. Every few years, I pick it up and read it again. in a genre now full of swords and breast plates, they don't write em like this anymore.
This audiobook, on the other hand, sucks. I could read it better, in character.
They did try to make a movie and a TV series, but both failed to launch.
What a masterpiece. I read this first as a teenager in the 1980's. Just listened to this now in my 50's and I saw a hundred other things in it that I never noticed the first time. Compelling right to the last page.
I decided to re-read (well listen) to his books as an adult. I loved him as a teen but never knew he was a commie writing satires of capitalism, or just shitting on capitalism in general until a few years ago. I wasn't into politics really back then, I'm sure I'm gonna get more out of it now.
When your sexual preference is the deciding factor.
This is a masterfull tale. Read it as a younger man. I thought about its themes from time to time since. Great to reaquaint myself with it.
Could take some abridgement here and there, feel free to skip a bit of Siegfried (We get it allready)
Recommended adult listening.
Synopsis
When prospector Robinette Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was
the right mission to make him his fortune.
Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Rob Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he has become...
I am gonna be an apologist for Pohl about this book.
It is the best combination Hardware and Character SF book I know, and way up in my favorites. This audio rendition is my 3rd or 4th read of it over quite some years.
As for hardware I find it just intriguing and full of ideas I had not encountered before. The details of Heechee Metal are so much more satisfying than the old "alloy that is not found on earth" meme, f'rinstance. Elements of discovering that someone was here long before us, and that they remain utterly mysterious, are fascinating to me. And that everything still works.
Also the sociology of a survival economy from food mines to weird trips visiting black holes.
Heck, I find the detailed description of the Heechee ships and the re-rigging thereof to accommodate humans interesting.
I (largely) love the sidebars. Gonna say the pages of Siegfried's code are a mixed blessing. Remembering what decade we were reading this in for the first time, it is interesting and informative to see how the machine language follows and creates the thread of a therapeutic conversation. Stuff was new to us right-brained types. BUT I grant you, in the audio version, it is slow and there is an awful lot of it at verbal reading speed, and we don't have the option to skim it or skip it.
The classifieds aboard Gateway are inventive and amusing, on the other hand. Professor Hegrammit's excerpts are an illuminating, sometimes funny, and maybe I'll call it wry; expansion on the mysterious; and are also little "bits" on a side stage. I enjoy them.
The trip reports are fascinating in putting the reader inside a claustrophobic capsule with results exciting, frightening, despairing....
Another novel (and I love this one, too) that uses such asides is "Stand on Zanzibar." The sidebars are a chance to illuminate the society without having one character say to another, "As you know..."
Maybe compare this to the way the original "Robocop" starts with a TV ad for "Lethal Auto Theft Protection."
"Gateway" was probably the first book in this kind of format I read. I found it different and entertaining (in varying degrees.)
And all that shrink stuff----well, if you have spent any time in therapy yourself, you may well find that part immersive and interesting and familiar; and it's a setting to get depth on the character. I read this at a point when therapy was at least a recent part of my life, and was impressed all to hell at Pohl's familiarity with it; figured he must've spent some time being shrunk himself.
Robinette Broadhead is both a jerk and a pretty positive character. He contains some tragedies---some slow-moving ones in early life; and the big one that is the core dilemma of his being in the narrative present. Without tragedy, characters are shallow. Sez me!
(Quite frankly, I have read over the very core-most action scene in this book any number of times and cannot suss out the physics of it; though the emotional ambiguity is pretty clear.)
The narrator struck me as pretty spare and dry at first, but I have gotten used to him.
You know one I hate? George Guidell, who has read some Heinleins, and is dry to the point of bloodless. Sez me.
I agree, we imbibers of youtube science fiction owe a lot to the skills of the presenters, not to say the authors, and after collecting through most of the 1970s to the 2000s I was thrilled to add this to my mental list of top notch SF.
The programming code is Basic. Since this was before 1978, not on a PC. Probably PET or COCO. PC came out in the summer of 79. It cost me $2,400 for 820K memory running at 4.77Mhz when printing or using the 300 baud modem and 8Mhz otherwise. 4 color graphics card and monitor was an extra $1,000 and 20M hard-drive another $500.
This is a good book. It could have been an easy book, but then it wouldn't have been a good book.
I didn't like Pohl when I was young. I liked Heinlein (the Ayn Rand of Sci-fi.) This could have been a good Heinlein story, but then it would have been formulaic - exciting, but ultimately predictable. This is not a Heinlein story. It's deeper, and you have to stay with it to get to the bottom of it. The exposition is quite well done. It lays out a path for you to follow, and then takes you somewhere entirely different as a final destination.
Be patient. Stick with it. Until about halfway through, you may be tempted to drop it. Don't. Frederick Pohl is taking you somewhere very interesting.
Is this for real? Great book, brilliant author. Never thought to find this. Many many thanks! X
Best Sci-Fi series ever.
great book, and a solid audio book reading!!
Issac Gabriels I love this book. The only reason I bothered using this audiobook was growing too tired of reading at night, but I just couldn't pry myself away from the story! Truly marvellous.
I do hope that the rest of the series is here. We are, after all, still chasing the Heechee. Pohl and Heinlein the best and very relative to now. How did they know?
Sounds like Roger Zelazny reading !!
Thanks for the great upload!
Great story and narrator, thanks for sharing it.
6:12:28 When he beats her girlfriend because “she sent the wrong signal”. Priceless.
End of chapter 26 is chilling.
Agree with those who suggested sigfried is filler...distracts without enhancement of story. Bob does enough on his own to tell the reader about his outlook.
Glug-latches also known as *"Stobers"*
Any and All unknown dangerous local fauna.
As in the *"Beware Of Stobers"* warning on planetary survey reports.
Hmm? That's Heinlein, "Tunnel in the Sky," yes?
@@flatcat47 Yes Sir, You are Correct!👍
People complain that this isn't moronically simple. My generation read the wall street journal when there were no pictures.
Classic Pohl.
Thanks for the book
20:30
31:20
51:27
This needs a skip button for the computer readouts. They kill me inside every single time.
Great tales...great listening...thanks
Oh wow.... What a surprising book
I've given up after hour and a half. how can anyone say this is one of best science fiction books ever.
Little Heechee we will find you!
Just started with this. Read it years ago and remembered it alwasy as one of the best stories ever, so I'm very excited and glad to find it here!
But WTF is it with all that monotone read and totally unneccesary "computer readout" stuff? Must have skipped over that reading it myself in the past I guess.
3:57:00
13,000 double*etc. is the whole thing gonna be like this?
Some places are not to be visited.
Great book ruined by endless commercials
HeeChee series is great but dang the first hour could be cut by half,
13 thousand go to double asterisk 3 13 thousand point asterisk 2 13 thousand go to
Audio level is too quiet in this upload
ฉันเจอยานลำนี้แล้วอยู่ตรงสวนสยามกรุงเทพฯ Bangkok มหานคร
Great ending, so profound!!
Damn good in the end.
15:06 Chapter 2
WHOA! Did he just justify a beat down of a woman because of a shoulder punch?????? Ok, crazypants!
Perhaps that's what we call *Equality!*
No more of this "Double standards" where Women are concerned. Don't hit someone without expecting repercussions.
Actions have *Consequences*
6:15
Good story but the 1970s drug-sex culture stuff badly dates it, there are a few gaping plot holes, and the soap opera/mental health stuff becomes tedious.
2:18
Gateway had a good concept which in this case was ruined by the character stuff. The sex/drugs/parental issues/mental illness issues filler seems to be a way for Pohl to "fit in" with the New Wave of the 60s and 70s since they were supposedly the "cool, hip crowd" in the literary SF field at the time. I'm not sure why he felt the need to do this in 1977 when all of that got old and was as dead as disco was by 1981.
fredrik pohl was too good for that stuff dont know why he did it
@@SpaceKebab And to top it all off, the authors who were doing all of that New Wave SF writing were not even all that young. They were still middle aged squares at the end of the day.
He was making predictions. Did almost too good of a job at it
5:01
Tedious at best.
One of the sickest stories i have ever experienced. The hero is insane and a murderer, a coward, and rotten. This should be skipped unless you like abuse.
Out of four years with barely any comments we both decide to comment within a day of each other.
It’s a story guys, reflecting a desperate time in their history. It’s not meant t gratify the reader’s sensibilities. Go read Mickey Mouse if you are that shallow!
Incredibly boring , with the worst reader I have ever heard ..
It would have been better without the shrink crap
It's annoying that Pohl put in the Shrink filler to make it into a novel rather than the novella it should have been. Greed is universal.Lol
Scott Harris Maybe he had to eat, when your getting paid by the word I would stretch novella's into novels also...wouldn't you? Sci Fi writers were not paid much back in the day.
Aside...It adds dynamic to the storyline. Keeps you wondering where the treatment is going right to the end. Reminds me of 40s and 50s style detective stories. Think Raymond Chandler.
The shrink is not filler, Sigfrid is essential. The ultimate meaning of the novel, toward witch the entire novel is building to along the way, can only be reached through Sigfrid's conflict. If anything, is the story of Robinette in Gateway that could be cutted out (although that would be terrible, of course). Anyhow, the fact that you think of the shrinksceans as filler isn't quite flattering towards you, and tells that you were not able to grasp the true value of the story. I not trying to offend you, I know it may sound like it, but that's how I see it.
If you read the rest of the series you will understand the importance of Siegfried
I’ve thought about it too, maybe Pohl was going through analysis at the time himself.
Can they get a guy with a High School reading level?
Inane comment, I'm 6 hrs in and think the narrator is great
How anyone would listen to such ignorant blather with all that foul language. Shame on you editor. Thumbs down. Get a clue. Kids listen to these..
There is far worse to be found.
Don’t be so wet. Excellent novel.
You're overreacting, apparently kids are more mature than you.
It's when I read a comment like Don's I thank my lucky stars we don't live in a theocracy but in a democracy.
Kids read these books too. Why don't you write a long letter to the publishers and see what they say.
Maybe we should start burning books too.