Beyond the Blue Event Horizon was published by Ballantine/Del Rey in 1980, the sequel to Gateway and the second volume in the Heechee saga. Where Gateway was primarily a psychological novel — Broadhead on the couch, working through his trauma — the sequel expands outward, following multiple storylines as humanity begins to penetrate the mysteries of the Heechee civilization.
Broadhead, now enormously wealthy, funds an expedition to a Heechee artifact in the Oort Cloud — a “food factory” that has been converting cometary material into food for unknown purposes. The expedition discovers Wan, a feral teenager who has grown up alone on the artifact, raised by a Heechee computer program that he calls “Dead Men” (actually the stored personalities of human prospectors who died on Gateway). Wan’s accidental manipulations of the Heechee equipment have been causing mysterious “fever” outbreaks on Earth — waves of irrational emotion that sweep through the population.
The novel also begins to address the series’ central mystery: why did the Heechee disappear? What were they afraid of? Pohl provides partial answers — the Heechee retreated into a black hole to hide from something — but the full revelation is saved for later volumes. The novel is more plot-driven and less psychologically intense than Gateway, but it expands the universe in ways that make the series as a whole more compelling.
Collecting Beyond the Blue Event Horizon
First edition (Ballantine/Del Rey, New York, 1980): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $15–$40
- Paperback first printing: $5–$10