The Boy Who Would Live Forever

Heechee Saga #6

by Frederik Pohl

A Triumphant New Gateway Adventure

Twenty-five years after the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning bestseller Gateway, Frederik Pohl returns with a new Gateway novel. Filled with excitement and the sense of wonder that made Gateway a huge success, The Boy Who Would Live Forever is a memorable journey into the unknown.

Stan and Estrella, two young people from Earth, journey to the Gateway asteroid looking for adventure, and discover each other during a flight in one of the ships the alien Heechee left behind when they explored our Solar System. Stan and Estrella settle among the Heechee on a planet in the galactic core, never suspecting that the two of them may be the last, best hope to save the humans and Heechee in the core from destruction by a crazed madman.

Wan Enrique Santos-Smith, a man full of loathing for the Heechee, will stop at nothing to destroy the Heechee and their human friends. But Stan and Estrella, with the help of a fabulously wealthy philanthropist and the unique machine mind Marc Antony, are determined to thwart Wan's terrible plan. At stake is nothing less than the fate of all life in the galaxy.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Audiobook, Space Opera, Science Fiction Fantasy, Adventure, Hard Science Fiction

480 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1, 2004

About the author

Frederik George Pohl, Jr. was an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over seventy years. From about 1959 until 1969, Pohl edited Galaxy magazine and its sister magazine IF winning the Hugo for IF three years in a row. His writing also won him three Hugos and multiple Nebula Awards. He became a Nebula Grand Master in 1993.

Reviews

[Peter Tillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the latest, and perhaps final, chapter in the Heechee Saga, begun 28 years ago with his classic GATEWAY. "Boy Who" isn't in that class -- none of the Heechee sequels are (except #2) -- but it's decent, readable, clever and fun.

For a quick reprise of the Heechee series, and a nice review of this book, by the ever-reliable Paul Di Filippo: [no longer online, alas] Sample:

"Frederik Pohl is 85 years old. His first story was published more than 60 years ago. The Gateway sequence itself is now nearly 30 years old. Despite—or perhaps because of—all this history, Pohl's new book remains a feast and a pleasure."

"Boy Who" is in part a fixup -- you are most likely to have already seen "Hatching the Phoenix" (1999), in which Gelle-Klara Moynlin pays for a scentific expedition to study the Crab Nebula supernova. The blast also incinerated the planet of the "Crabbers", a decidedly unsympathetic race of aliens. It's a crackerjack story, reprinted in the Dozois Year's Best --though its connection to the rest of the novel is tenuous. Two other previously-published stories are more smoothly integrated.

So the novel reads a bit choppily -- but there's lots of cool Pohl stuff here. My favorite new character is Marc Antony, the Stovemind AI. His primary duty is cooking up gourmet meals for humans and Heechees, both organic and machine-stored -- but his collateral duty is Human-Heechee Security, and who Saves the Day! from the nefarious star-smashing plot that's the McGuffin here, and which is a decidedly less-interesting part of the book.

Ol' Fred isn't getting any younger, so I'm very pleased to recommend his latest novel. Recommended for Pohl fans -- and who isn't?

Pohl passed away in 2013: RIP.
[review posted to Usenet, rasfw 2/9/05]

[Nikola Pavlovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Od svega po malo, zaplet i na kraju su ziveli srecno do kraja zivota :)
Frederik Pol zna sta radi, pise omaz svom poznatom serijalu. Ne moze da izdrzi a da ne pise o onome sto voli, a vidi se i tekako koliko je zaljubljen u svet koji je stvorio. Ova knjiga je nekako lagano napisana, isto tako se i cita i svo to uzivanje je upravo ona nagrada koju smo svi zasluzili na kraju svih krajeva Heechee serijala. I bas kao sto ovaj serijal zasluzuje, kraj nije nista drugo do novi pocetak, novi pocetak najednostavnije price hiljadu puta ispricane, price o ljubavi i novom zivotu.

[Jon Norimann · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Boy Who Would Live Forever is a poor end to the Heechee series. It seems other reviewers saw this as a book of several different short tories to tie up loose ends in the series. I can't really see that. I see a broken up story, that vaguely, barely, comes together at the end. The whole book is poorly written with few or no new answers or insights. The SF takes the back seat to lingusitic nonsense and more mundane isses.

Only read this book if you read the first 5 in the series, just to get through it all. I afford myself an extra star for getting through the whole series and promise not to read book 7 if it ever comes.

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of stories narrated by several old characters from previous novels as well as by new ones, apparently not related, but which will all converge in the end into the main plot. You'll find more details about Heechee, Assassins, humans, Stored Minds and their timeless lives in the Core. It is a sequel of the 4th novel, The Annals of the Heechee. A bit hard to digest due to the fact that some chapters are narrated in 3rd person and the others in 1st, but still a nice addition to the Heechee universe.

[Randal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dull.
If you have read the five previous Gateway novels and this is tying up loose ends, it might be a good read, but as a standalone, it's a snorefest.
But the real weakness is that he is butting together an assortment of uberpowerful characters from previous titles in the series (some of the richest people in the galaxy, aliens with virtually limitless technologies, super-fast, supergenius AIs) so any ending was always going to feel like deus ex machina and this one certainly does. It was just a matter of which hand of which god was going to come out uppermost. Lacking any real tension, it sort of limps along to a thoroughly pedestrian, bourgeois finish.
Oh and the obsession with sex, from the teenage protagonist couple making like rabbits to the fetish about the Heechees wearing their brains where their balls belong, coming from a 70+ year-old man, was just creepy. Ick. Grow up ...

[Gendou · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you enjoy reading about AI programs cooking extravagant virtual meals for other AI programs, then this is the book for you! There are plenty of Heechee in this book, which is cool I guess. Weak on science fiction, strong on drama. Pohl is sex obsessed, which is embarrassing, and it takes the reader out of the story. The chief antagonist in the story is Wan, my least favorite character.

[Sarah Sammis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Since Thanksgiving I've been working my way through the Heechee Saga. A month ago I finished the original trilogy and now I've hit the first of the add on books. The first three covered the life, death and "re-birth" of a prospector turned billionaire. They were fun and full of the sort of adventures that California's early statehood history holds but set in space with alien technology and a planet in crisis due to over population and dwindling resources.

The Boy Who Would Live Forever tries to return to the wild west feel of Gateway but at the closing days of original missions. Instead of following the rags to riches biography of a self made billionaire, this novel looks at the less fortunate and the more cautious. These are the prospectors who have come too late to hit it big and must find a new way of "making it" in the galaxy.

Oh if only the novel were as simple as prospectors coming too late to the party. Unfortunately the original series ends with the revelation of the mysterious Heechee. The problem with the Heechee is that they aren't anywhere as amazing as they were when they were left to the imagination. Since the original protagonist isn't in this book and perhaps the unlucky prospectors aren't as sexy so Pohl dedicates a large portion of the novel to the Heechee. They rapidly go from being incredible to being not much different than the Niblonians from Futurama.

[Sebastian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saga se încheie cu o viziune prea... pămînteană, probabil s-a dorit un fel de happy-end. Mi-aş fi dorit să aflu ceva mai mult despre Asasini, dar asta e. Per total, e o carte care încheie cum trebuie acest ciclu.

Aviz amatorilor care nu au citit celelalte volume! Dacă vă apucaţi doar de volumul ăsta, o să aflaţi prea puţin despre unele personaje - care sunt descrise mai pe larg în primele volume, şi ce fel de aventuri au trăit - şi apoi veţi fi tentaţi să vă plîngeţi că volumul nu e prea-prea şi o să daţi 2 stele. Nu e frumos! :))

[Marius Ungurean · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fitting end to a huge saga, from start to finish it hits you with everything that happened from the beginning of the first book until the last. I, personally, loved it from start to finish and i would recommend this series to anyone who is interested in both philosophical and hard science concepts.

Start reading it, now!

[hotsake (André Troesch) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great swan song for this highly enjoyable series and this series got me officially hooked on Frederik Pohl.

[Joshua · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hokey. Juvenile. Fantastical science fiction - maybe better described as "soft scifi" kind of like Star Trek. The story itself was a let down. Sorry I wasted my time on this one.

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

This felt completely unneeded and spliced together. The stories vary wildly, jumping around as soon as a nice plot develops...it is suddenly never returned to. The main couple arc is boring. Heechee characters are further brought down to boring/normal creatures. And oh yea, the AI spends half the book cooking. No, I mean it, half the book is a cooking sim. At least we got to spend some time with Wan and Gelle...... but NO ROBINETTE BROADHEAD. Come on man, how do we get them, but no Bob. Freud even pops in.

I avoided this final book for decades because of the tidbits and rumors I had heard. Shoulda just kept avoiding, it didn't add anything but in fact took away some of the Gateway adventure/nostalgia.

Will reread the series again for sure, minus this.

[Steve · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gah. I declare this book finished in the name of completeness.

Some thoughts... a disjointed and mostly pointless narrative which dallies, dawdles and fails to provide mush reward to the reader. The characters are weakly defined and uninteresting, which completely fails to inspire any feeling on the part of the reader.

What ultimately irritated me the most was the glaring inconsistencies in the plot; some examples:
- Mark Anthony, takes effort to highlight he easily he can overpower other AI systems; so why the villain Wan (can you really call such a loser a villain?!?) was able to accomplish anything is beyond me.

- Light speed.... again..... Blowing up a star, yes yes, very dangerous i'm sure, However, the stars in the HeeChee core DO have light years of distance between them, and they have an abundance of lightspeed+ ships, so there is no real threat to life since any disaster would be YEARS away. Its a lot like saying, i'm going to burn down your house in 4 years; sure its not something you want, but are you really going to be there if it can't be avoided??

[Florin Constantinescu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some 15 years after the poor "Gateway Trip" collection, Pohl decides to once again milk the Heechee cow. The cow unfortunately has dried out a long time ago.
Did we really need previous collection? Nope. Did we need this one? Nope again.

While not horribly written, it brings absolutely nothing new to the universe. Wan is here again to piss us off (who doesn't hate him by now?), the action is slow as hell, and it's full of more pointless philosophizing about AI's, gods, the nature of the universe, bla bla bla.

I'm glad he decided to stop diluting the cool Heechee series with any more books after this one.

[H. R. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This series has run one book too long. Parts of this novel are great, a few segments with new characters, the rest was slow paced to muddled. Never thought I would rate a Pohl novel as two stars.

[Gunn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Paycheck book which tries to tie in a bunch of characters from previous books to make you feel good about the series. Your life won't change if you skip this one.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't believe I never read this before! The Gateway series is an absolute favorite of mine, and it was wonderful to revisit that universe. By wonderful, I mean that Pohl, in these books, managed to instill a sense of wonder. Anything could happen when you got on a Heechee ship at Gateway. And in this book, Stan, the main character, does exactly that. But then, contact with the Heechee makes that kind of exploration obsolete and opens up so many more possibilities.

In their secure black hole at the center of the galaxy, the Heechee have a thriving civilization, and many humans eventually join them. Because time passes 40,000 (I think) times faster outside the black hole, you can't go back to the same timeline, but you can take advantage of millennia of advances. In Pohl's afterward, he acknowledges that he got it wrong that a black hole can contain many suns and planets. But he got it right that there is one at the center of the galaxy - not bad!

The book, at least at the beginning, reads like a young adult book, except for all the sex, or mainly Stan thinking about (he's only 17). It also reads like it was written a couple of decades before it was, which matches the tone to the earlier Gateway books. And yes, women are identified first by their looks, specifically by how attractive they are. The main young woman character was disfigured in an accident, and Stan likes her looks as she is. And it seems like women are almost a different species from men, but at least they are as smart and capable. Pohl was an older generation, and pretty non-sexist for his time. The very last sentence of the book (for which I was hoping) confirms that.

When I got 50 pages into the book, I looked to see how many more pages. Not because I wondered how much I had to slog through (usually why I do that), but because I hoped I'd be able to read it for a long time. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing. I loved that people were a mix of human, Heechee, digitally stored human and Heechee, and never-human AI. The AI were some of the most interesting people! I also love just being exposed to Pohl's thinking. He had a beautiful mind, crisp and clear, open, curious, and brilliant.

[Óscar López · Rating 3 out of 5]

The final book in the Heechee Saga, and it goes out without a bang. To be fair, it's nice to go back to a familiar universe, and to tie some loose ends still hanging from "The Annals of the Heechee". Several characters from previous books in the saga are revisited, and their stories are brought to a more-or-less satisfying closure. And thankfully, Robinette Broadhead is nowhere to be seen.

However, the new main characters are bland and uninteresting, and the stored minds get tiresome, always complaining of how slow organic humans are and how much better it is to be a machine intelligence. Many of the chapters read as individual short stories, sometimes retelling events from previous books in the series, but as the book progresses the different subplots get intertwined.

We also get to discover more about the daily life of the Heechee at their black hole home (scientifically inaccurate, but fun), and even learn a bit more of the mysterious Foe. The concept of time slowing down inside a black hole is used to good effect, and thousands of years go by "outside".

The ending is anticlimactic, I'd expect more than a wedding and a childbirth to conclude such an enormous saga. I have the hunch that there is enough material left unexplored for one last novel; it's hinted that humanity outside the black hole has fallen into decadence, preferring existence as stored minds over biological lives. We'll never know, as this book marks the end of the Heechee epic that started with Gateway. Thank you Frederik Pohl for a wonderful, epic story that concludes here.

[Adam Duclos · Rating 4 out of 5]

I give it four stars because I've read the Gateway Series and I'm a huge Sci-fi fan. If you're not a fan, if you haven't read the other Gateway books, this will be more like a two. Its a book similar to Niven's 'Crashlander', with a main plot that is frequently put aside to add in many side stories, including previously published shorts. They're enjoyable to read, but they give a very bare bones explanation for back stories.

Spoiler

The story works in a good portion of the whole gateway/heechee story as seen by a new main character, new side characters, and a bunch of cameos of former main characters. The main character is a boy who lives a torrid existence of a big city and escapes it when he comes into enough money to get to the gateway asteroid. He meets a girl, and after a miss-start, they take a mission to visit the inside of the super-massive black hole in the center of the galaxy, where a highly advanced alien race called the Heechee live.

This is the point where all the side stories start up. In the book, time passes 40,000 times more slowly in there, and all sorts of shennanigans happen outside while the to travellers are still trying to get their bearings.

I'll say again, I liked the book, and give it four stars, but there were a few things that rubbed me the wrong way.

The time dilatation aspect, while interesting and all, was handled in a way that was frustrating to me... First, no one bothers to tell this boy the whole story of what is going on at any time, for no good reason. Yes, time seems to rush by outside, but everyone on the inside should be at the same level. However, everyone cuts their conversations short just when they're about to impart some crucial info, even the super fast artificial intelligences who operate millions or billions of times faster than humans! They could just record their answer to play at human speeds along with a 'sorry, so long' message at the end, or they could split off a portion of themselves to carry on the conversation, or even just drop a file in an accessible computer. It came off as far too contrived, especially as they were the first humans in the core! Yet somehow they just can't breathe for two seconds, grab anyone, and shake until information comes out. Yet then there are odd stretches in the story where time is passing but nothing happens. Months go by, but the characters aren't learning anything in the mean time. What are they doing? Evidently they are just waking up, eating, staring off into space all day then going back to sleep.

Second... they live in a high tech world where they have all this super computer stuff going on, yet can't get a translator for quite some time... the AIs could have whipped something up for them in no time.

Third... for a while, everyone is inexplicably mean to them. Look, they made it. They had lousy lives... he was poor, she was poor and also had a bull step on her head... but they had good luck, made it all the way to the center of the galaxy and touched off a whole new era for the human race and the Heechee alike. Several times the beings of whatever nature tell them they are super famous or possibly super rich, but then give them bad advice and leave them in lousy living conditions... no human food for months, no beds, at first no lights at night... Also no computer support. If they were really so important, one of the numerous AIs they met could have split off a duplicate to make sure they got fed, since they were on a strange alien planet and all.

Fourth... Future shock. They were the only ones in the book to experience it! Events were moving just as quickly for all the billions of heechee and recent human immigrants to the galactic core, but out of all those people, the only two to feel at all lost were our boy and his girlfriend.

Fifth... the end of the book was rushed. I guess Pohl ran out of interesting side stories to add to the book, but hadn't finished the connecting plot with the titular 'boy who would live forever'. They rush through a bunch of months, again without him doing anything of note but still being completely future shocked and out of touch, and then they skip ahead to him running for governor of the human race and losing gracefully to his girl (now wife). I guess in those seven months he had been in there, so much time had gone by outside that all the people had either turned into computer programs or moved into the core, oh, and by the way kid, you're super famous. Sigh.

Sixth. The book, as stated earlier, covered events from other books. Basically, a bunch of them were out of order.

Seventh. The book kept contradicting itself. For example, at the very end, the boy meets a lady who had become a computer program. They made a point of her explaining that she had multiple PhDs and had all sorts of useful knowledge. But soon after, an AI tells him that computer program people don't really contribute meaningfully to society because they just spend time in hedonistic computer fantasy lands. Yes, that flatly contradicts what I as a reader had just been shown. Its also foolish because not everyone is all that great at, say, superluminal drive mechanics. But if there was such a person, and he did get 'vastened' into a computer being, he could waste a full day doing whatever, get bored because he spent the equivalent of a century or two in his time, then spend 100 milliseconds designing the next best super ship. He'd have to wait the equivalent of another few decades, his time, for an organic person to even notice his work, even if it flashed right in front of his face.

Finally, eighth... the boy didn't live forever, just a long time.

I enjoyed picking apart a few things that bothered me about the book, but there were indeed long stretches of time where I was sucked right into the book! Read this only if you like good sci-fi and have read the previous six books.

[Kathi · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10
Author Frederik Pohl returns to the form of his original Heechee book, Gateway, with this final installment in the Heechee Saga. Robin Broadhead plays only a background role, which was a relief to this reader, and the cast of characters, including humans, Heechee, Kugels, Old Ones, and AIs, was a mix of familiar and new, but all were interesting. The story was told in several POVs and a variety of locations, so the “voice” was never tiring or too repetitive the way the previous few books were with an overload of Robin’s POV and voice. Best of all, there were both intimate, personal stories and universe-wide aspects to the plot. All in all, I’m glad I persevered through some of the middle books to get to this one.

[Roger · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall, this book was underwhelming. It was wholly unnecessary to the series and was a struggle to finish. While the writing itself was good, the story was incredibly boring and waaay too long. It could easily have been a short story. The characters were also pretty uninteresting. I couldn’t have given less of a shit about Stan & Estrella, Wan, or Achiever, which is unfortunate as their story lines made up probably 90% of the book.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

By boos six of something it should necessarily be a surprise that the idea is played out. It reads like a young adult/feel good sci fi tale, genres I don’t really care for. A teenaged boy and twenty something woman carrying out first contact with an alien species (and other feats) is too implausible too take seriously. Long stretches were tedious and didn’t advance the story line. Book one of this series was enough.

[Caleb · Rating 2 out of 5]

You know how some books in a series are exciting, and some are just filler you're reading just because they're next in the list...

This is one of the fillers. And you can tell easily because it suffers from the same problem all fillers books do: slow pacing, not much advance, and there's a lighting close out as soon as they hit the page count.

Haven't started the next book yet, but I think you could cover everything important in 2 pages of summary and still have a page left.

[Nix Gerit · Rating 2 out of 5]

A nice story, in which I liked the close up of the Heechee Core and life. They're certainly rather different than we are, but I still liked it. The time dilation of 40000 : 1 was a fascinating thought, as well as basically a habour of life within the Core.
Wan was a punchable asshole, as usual, nothing surprising. It wasn't that remarkable except for the setting. That was nice.

[Gabrielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

The contrast between humans and aliens saga ends here. I liked this one and the narrator. I think this wraps up the different characters well; I wonder about her flesh existence with her computer assistant AI.
3.5 STARS

[Elar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some parts are repeated from previous books in the series and pace is not best of the series, but it wraps up saga quite nicely.

[Oxinabox · Rating 2 out of 5]

Many really cool ideas.
But overall presentation cliche in a lot of points.

[Michael Moats · Rating 2 out of 5]

really enjoyed the first 3 books of this series
this one was a total waste of time.

[Matt Whitehead · Rating 5 out of 5]

Didn't know this was a Heechee series book. Liked it. A bit weird, but like the others weren't.

[Bram Wijngaarden · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lacking in tension and surprise but nice to finish the series.