Gateway was published by St. Martin’s Press in 1977, and it swept the major science fiction awards — Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Memorial Award — establishing Pohl as one of the preeminent writers in the field and producing one of the genre’s most memorable characters.
The premise is irresistible. An asteroid called Gateway, hollowed out by the vanished Heechee civilization, has been discovered in orbit around the sun. It contains hundreds of small starships, pre-programmed with destinations that the human occupants cannot read or control. Prospectors climb into the ships, launch them, and hope for the best: some ships take their passengers to planets rich in Heechee technology (which can be sold for enormous sums); some take them to empty space and bring them back safely; some take them to stars where they die of starvation, radiation, or encounters with the unknown. The prospectors are gambling with their lives, and the odds are terrible.
Robinette Broadhead went to Gateway, launched in a ship with four companions, and came back rich. He also came back traumatized. The novel alternates between Broadhead’s psychotherapy sessions with Sigfrid von Shrink (a computer psychiatrist) and flashbacks to his time on Gateway and his final, catastrophic mission — the mission that made him wealthy and cost him the woman he loved. The therapy sessions are not framing devices but the heart of the novel: Broadhead’s inability to confront what happened is the central drama, and the reader pieces together the truth alongside Sigfrid.
Collecting Gateway
First edition (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1977): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $100–$400
- Without jacket: $20–$50
- Paperback first printing: $10–$25