Gateway

by Frederik Pohl

Excellent book. It’s the first in a series of four…sigh…this is the third book in the past month or so that has gotten me started on a series. I hope the subsequent books continue the quality of story and character Pohl exhibits in this one.

Humans discovered Gateway, a station built long ago by a race we now call the Hechee. The station is a gateway to other places, with nearly a thousand Hechee ships left behind. The Hechee, however, left behind little else, so that our knowledge of them is very limited. We know how to make the ships go, but don’t know what fuel they use, how to refuel them, or how to translate the destination settings. People go to Gateway to gamble their lives for potential fortunes. They hop in a ship going to a destination they can’t predict, with an amount of fuel they can’t change for an unknown round-trip duration and into unknown conditions. Most ships don’t return. Most of the ships that do return are without one or more of the crew members who originally embarked. But those who do return with new Hechee artifacts or new scientific results are well rewarded.