The Sword and Laser discussion

Gateway, a blast from the "old style" of SF books like I grew up with. Told a complete story in 200 or so pages. Sufficient science to keep the techies interested, but essentially a character study.

One major theme encapsulates the feelings surrounding space travel of the time: A sense of wonder for what might be out there, along with a healthy regard for the risks involved. Some leap at the risk, others want to go but find themselves hanging back out of legitimate fear of the unknown.

There's the obvious framing device of the psychiatrist's couch. The muddled, imperfect relationships of the explorers. Even within the book, some major plot points are unclear simply because the actors themselves aren't sure what happened.

I read this in one day, something that wouldn't happen with today's doorstop tomes. Some of the interactions played for drama seem quaint by today's standards. Others might seem so horrific as to take the protagonist from "anguished" to outright villain.

Anyhoo, shall we discuss? I'm being purposely vague above. Feel free to chime in on those or bring in your own thoughts. Let 'er rip!

John (Taloni) wrote: "Some of the interactions played for drama seem quaint by today's standards. Others might seem so horrific as to take the protagonist from "anguished" to outright villain."

You are absolutely right about this, those were roughly my exact reactions while reading. At one point, "Why is this even a plot point?" At a second point, "How can the author still treat this character as a sympathetic protagonist?"

To me the part from Gateway that is most interesting was space exploration represented as a sort of hypercapitalist dystopia. Seems insightful and relevant when judged with today's headlines regarding SpaceX, and so on.

I found the dystopic capitalist storyline a little much, but Pohl is hardly the first. One of the point of dystopias is to warn about what could happen, so that it doesn't.

As for SpaceX, Elon Musk is getting it done so I can only applaud. NASA hasn't done much for my entire adult life.

John (Taloni) Sufficient science to keep the techies interested, but essentially a character study..."

I didn't think there was much science except for the unknown 'hand wave' variety, which in this case, was an important element of the story.

Yeah, there was a lot of the "look at the unknowable alien technology" aspect. But along the way we got a discussion of the orbit of Gateway, some talk about the Ecliptic, realistic portrayals of life on a station that rotates for modest gravity, and of course life support only lasting so long on the ships. And then the end got into some heavy cosmology.

John (Taloni) wrote: "Gateway, a blast from the "old style" of SF books like I grew up with. Told a complete story in 200 or so pages. Sufficient science to keep the techies interested, but essentially a character study..."

It's funny to see this regarded as "old style." I'm pretty sure when it came out it was regarded as a ground-breaking effort to bring modern psychology into SF.

I'm about 80% through right now, should finish up in the next day or two.

I understand that Bob's the narrator, and I know he doesn't have a supper great education, but one thing that really got to me was his use of kg as a weight instead of a mass. I know it's a little thing when you are talking about a whole lot of other unlikely and unscientific scenarios, but he kept saying things like this "would" be such and such kg on Earth, but they were less on Gateway. No they have the same damn mass on both, they just weight different due to gravity.... argh.

It took me a bit to warm up to the framing device. I also didn't like the main character very much. Somehow I still enjoyed the book though. I like that it was short.

I am concerned about what I missed by doing it in audio though. I gave it a 3.5. Would the missing "documents" have bumped that higher?

^Nah. The missing items give background. It sets up parts of the world, which you missed, but also

(view spoiler)[Sets up the black hole a few pages before you actually encounter it. The missing items do a whole cosmology series including neutron stars that lead up to it naturally, so you aren't necessarily expecting the black hole when they encounter it. (hide spoiler)]

I took a look in my local second hand store and they had two copies. Flicked through all the letters and other info and there didn't seem to be anything significant there.

Good to know. Thanks Andrew!

Rob wrote: "Good to know. Thanks Andrew!"

At least not from the point of view of having already finished the book :)

I'm a little surprised there's not more love for this book. It was a joint Hugo/Nebula winner and often lands on "Best Of" lists. Has it aged badly?

Phil wrote: "I'm a little surprised there's not more love for this book. It was a joint Hugo/Nebula winner and often lands on "Best Of" lists. Has it aged badly?"

The psychoanalytics and the gender dynamics have, at the least.

Brendan wrote: "The psychoanalytics and the gender dynamics have, at the least. ."

IMO the former are familiar enough/ still prevalent enough in pop culture to not be totally off-putting; the latter gets pretty weird.

Gay people just don't like being around women, apparently? Or at best "tolerate" their presence?

^That's nowhere near the worst part though, Rob. Although you'd have to read the book to discover the at best dated aspects of the story.

Yeah, I'm only halfway through and that's just the most recent example. It also stood out to me because it wasn't just "oh boy people in previous decades sure were sexist/homophobic", it was a weird thing to think about women/ gay people, because it's the opposite of stereotypes we have in a lot of problematic fiction today.

I finished today, and man I don't know about this one. I procrastinated listing to the last hour and 1/2 for the last few days, because I just wasn't into the story. The setup is good, I like the concept, but Bob is not a very likeable lead. I fell back to just enjoying the overall plot for a while, but then it becomes obvious Bob the narrator is unreliable, so that falls down. You could maybe say the story had character development, but in the end you really don't see any outcome from it. Is the moral really enjoy the life you have no matter how crappy, or how much of dick you are in it?

Others have been saying it, and I agree, I don't believe it aged well either. Both a combination of philosophies changing since then, and what readers (at least this reader) want changing in the last 40 years. But heck Star Wars is the same age, and they were still able to tell one hell of a story, and it doesn't feel nearly as dated, despite what Lucas says/did to it.

I really enjoyed reading this book (if enjoyed is the right word).

Pohl effectively ratchets up the tension through the use of the counselling sessions. We know something horrible has happened but are forced top read on to find out what it is.

Robinette might be the main character but he is definitely not the hero. It just isn't that sort of book.

The prospectors could have been lifted from any frontier story. They echo the Gold Rush where chancers rush off to the new finds for there chance at wealth. They are the no hopers in life desperate for a change to make good. They are going because they are disposable to society as a whole. They also remind me of the space truckers of the Alien franchise.

The world building was interesting. It is not a straight forward dystopia. I see it more as a logical progression of where we are headed. I.e. the with good jobs with health care live a comfortable existence while those on the edges struggle to make a living with no health cover. Give it another decade or so with Zero hours contracts and the removal of public health care and you are living in this world.

I also like the way you can read an alternative ending into this:
(view spoiler)[
Did Broadhead actually escape the Black Hole?

In the therapy part of the book we never actually come across any human characters. He only interacts with the AI shrink. Given that was previously in therapy for a psychotic break could he actually be falling into the black hole and living a fantasy out in his last moments.

I kind of like the ambiguity of the book ending so suddenly.

If not his survivor guilt looks like a clear reference to returning soldiers from Vietnam.
(hide spoiler)]

On the subject of the ending:

(view spoiler)[It's ambiguous as Broadhead seems to think he triggered himself to get out of the black hole, whereas the events leading up to that indicate he was too slow and remained in the ship to be jettisoned. In that sense he is an unreliable narrator. (hide spoiler)]

We have lots of antiheroes in fiction these days but very few characters like the protagonist in Gateway, who is fundamentally not heroic or likable. Beyond the dated aspects of the book, my dislike of the narrator (which may qualify as a bit transgressive for genre fiction even these days) is why I haven't re-read this one much.

Oh don't get me wrong. This is a read once book. I am glad I have read it but have no need to ever reread.

I am actually astonished I did not read it in my teenage read every SF book in the library phase in the early eighties (man I had no taste back then).

while the ending is open to interpretation
(view spoiler)[I don't think it was all in his head, because he would had been frozen in time, and even interacted with some people he knew came back for the trip, you only has his word for it, but he is the narrator and the same can be said about the rest of the book. (hide spoiler)]

This one was definitely a mixed bag for me. The Freudian psychobabble definitely doesn't age well, but we've seen it a lot in classic scifi and maybe it was at it's peak in the mid-70's.

Also, the gender dynamics are, uh, odd.

I really liked the concepts of the prospectors and the Heechee ships and the alien Gold Rush, and even concept of the AI.

One of the things that bothered me the most was (view spoiler)[the complete lack of consequences or remorse for Rob's violence against Clara. Not only that, but Clara seemed not to hold it against him later! I feel like this terrible outburst was believable from such a flawed character, but I think the lack of fallout from his behavior was very unrealistic. (hide spoiler)]

Buzz wrote: "This one was definitely a mixed bag for me. The Freudian psychobabble definitely doesn't age well, but we've seen it a lot in classic scifi and maybe it was at it's peak in the mid-70's.

Also, th..."

Dreamsnake is on my TBR, so I have more of that to look forward to, ha ha.

I thought Dreamsnake was better by several orders of magnitude, but that's just me.

Brendan wrote: "I thought Dreamsnake was better by several orders of magnitude, but that's just me."

That's encouraging. The reviews make it look polarizing.

Oof, I finished it (all but the snipped out non-audio chapters) and boy did that get kind of rough. The gender stuff.... yeah, that has not aged well. Much worse than I thought before. But on the other hand, I kind of like that we read a book like this? A book where we're confronted with a straight up evil, pathetic dude? Not a likable anti-hero, not a badass villain, just a selfish, sexist, evil ass. It's good to confront such things, and such people, and that made the arc that much more interesting, especially since the final chapter seems to be an admonition to own up to the fact that you might be a monster, and then move on from there.

Thinking of an alternate ending where (view spoiler)[Bob is stuck in a black hole forever contemplating what an ass he is (hide spoiler)] is about the only thing that made me feel like this book wasn't a waste of time. Thanks for pointing out that alternate ending!

@rob -

My thought about Broadhead is that he's the anti-Competent Man. Much of the SF in the decades preceding this was populated with the Competent Man stereotype and we all know its characteristics by now... the person who jumps into the fray, is brighter than their colleagues, picks up new stuff fast and succeeds at pretty much everything they do.

In contrast (SPOILERS HERE):

(view spoiler)[
Broadhead only gets out of his dead-end life because he literally wins the lottery, spends it all on getting to Gateway and then is too scared to actually launch. He dithers and dicks around, only going when he absolutely has to. His first success is accidental - when he randomly twirls the controls out of frustration and is rewarded.

He's a bundle of psych issues... nominally heterosexual, he's bi in some fashion but hates himself for that. He's abusive, but a coward. And he's guilty because he thinks he saved himself at the expense of 9 others.
(hide spoiler)]

While it's an interesting decision to cast your protagonist like this, there's a reason I've only re-read this twice since I first read it on release including this time)... Broadhead is the kind of asshole I'd like to punch IRL.

For people who read on in the series,

(view spoiler)[Broadhead remains an unaware jerk the entire time. He leaves Klara in the black hole, then when she is miraculously rescued AND he's a billionaire, he doesn't even pay for a rescue mission for the rest of the crew. He's more interested that Klara got married than that eight people were saved from death, on the mission that enriched him. What the hell was Pohl thinking? (hide spoiler)]

Thanks John (Taloni) for saving me from reading the rest of the series... I'd love to know more about the Heechee, but not if Broadhead is going to continue to be in the picture.

This book is seriously problematic on the gender front (I go into more detail in the "creepiest scene" thread), but it also feels tremendously dated with the psychoanalysis jibber-jabber.

I do find it amusing to read SF from back in the day and see just how badly an author misses the ball when projecting technology into the future. Apparently computer chips and lasers were just a fad because everything is on tape. Which, okay, for data storage in that era it makes sense, but even back then we had microcomputers. Projecting those a hundred years into the future seems like we'd have more efficient miniaturization of everything. Of course, even John Varley had computers being programmed with punchcards in some of his stories from this same era, and he is a generation younger.

One thing I didn't get was why they had to send a full ship based on the number of seats. Maybe I missed it, but why not send out a Five with just two people and a ton of supplies? Everything was automatic beyond pressing the Go button.

When I compare this to other things I was reading at the time -- Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight series, Larry Niven's Known Space, Jack Chalker's Well World, R.M. Meluch's Sovereign -- it really comes up short. Especially the latter book, which has a much more realistic representation of homosexuality.

At least this was a quick read.

Trike - Remember the late 70s were the rise of a lot of self-help/analysis stuff. Was very in vogue then.

I remember some later Heinlein getting some things like storage right, with information stored on chips that seem fairly dense. But yeah, LOTS of people really whiffed on technology. Then again, microcomputers were just becoming a thing in the 70s.

On the full ship thing.... I think with Fives it was because they wanted people to be able to go down in the landers that those had. Now, that could have been 2 people, but that's cutting it close (Dan died on the way out and there's something valuable down there but we can't get to it...). But 3 or 4 people would likely have been fine.

What I think they missed is a combination of Pohl whiffing on tech and your issue with the Fives:

Why not put in recording tech that activates when the ship comes back into normal space and starts recording for, say, two days and then goes back? Yes, you'd need some robotics to trigger the controls, but that should be simply for a spacefaring human civilization that can build an AI.

That way no humans would be lost - you'd only send people out on missions that came back and you'd know how long those were, so could supply them well.

Rick, one point I think Pohl was making was how cheap human life was in that dystopian future. The various governments were perfectly fine letting people risk their lives and if they died, so what. There were billions more where they came from.

There was even commentary on elites. The scientists were perfectly fine getting their data second hand and offering big rewards for it, because they sure weren't going to get on those ships themselves.

Ah, good point. Yeah, I remember an offhand comment about 25 billion on Earth... and that makes sense in the 70s as a comment too, since that was a highpoint of environmental awareness and the idea of ecological collapse was definitely in the air.

I like the classic scifi trope of presenting a theoretical structure for impossible things and going through the iterations. The heechee ships and their faster than life drives and how the courses are set are all super interesting. That part is classic scifi stuff. The psychoanalysis stuff as a framing mechanism is fine, as well. The main character is completely unlikable and by the end not even sympathetic.

Part of the datedness of Gateway is the psychoanalysis. Can anyone comment on whether psychoanalysis is always bad in a SF, or if it was just handled badly here?

Iain wrote: "I really enjoyed reading this book (if enjoyed is the right word).

Pohl effectively ratchets up the tension through the use of the counselling sessions. We know something horrible has happened but..."

(view spoiler)[ I can't comment on the Vietnam part so much, but as to did Bob get back or not was a big question I had. And here's the crux of that....

On page 232 of my edition, one of the little sidebar things is a lecture on black holes by Dr. Asmenion. In it, s/he clearly states that, "If you could get into your lander, see, and kick the main mass of the ship away, backward, slowing it down, you might be able to give yourself enough extra velocity to get away. Not easily. But maybe, if things were just right." So we have this quote that Dr. Asmension points out that "old Bob" isn't enjoying. We can assume Bob is in attendance. We can't say if this is before or after said event. But I think it was before. And here is why.

Bob is kind of a jerk. He's not good people. So let's say he was in this discussion before the trip. Pohl made a point of showing that Bob would go to various lectures to "destroy" time, so it's not impossible that he went before. So now Bob has this knowledge. It seems worthless. Until all of a sudden, nine people are in a relatively tiny Five. That's nine bodies of extra mass to push against the black hole. Maybe nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it sure looks like an opportunity.

I think Bob made it. You can't truly say that he murdered the other nine occupants; the black hole took care of that. But he certainly took advantage of an opportunity when he saw it, as any good capitalist would. And this book is nothing if not a critique of capitalist ideals.

I will admit that this argument has the small problem stated in the same sidebar. The text continues, "I see old Bob isn't enjoying this discussion, so let's move on..." This may indicate that this is happening after the fact. But that only raises one question to me; why would Bob be at a lecture after the fact? He has clearly tried to create as much distance between himself and anything that happened as can be, including internalizing everything. The sidebar also points out that the lander would have no way of returning. Considering this with the fact that the crew had already been reported dead or at least missing due to the time dilation, and maybe Bob is just a consciousness floating about a timeless black hole. Who can say? (hide spoiler)]

Tyler wrote: "did Bob get back or not was a big question I had."

Not sure I understand this. (view spoiler)[We know Bob got back, and that he's not a floating consciousness, because he's in all of those therapy sessions with Sigfrid back on Earth, ultimately talking about the black hole. We just don't know how he got back. (hide spoiler)]

I found this book to be a real slog. I only kept reading because I thought there must be more to it because It won so many awards. I still have no idea why the person who gave the introduction on the audiobook called Sigrid "one of the most memorable characters in all of science fiction." All SF? Huh!? I also found the book's "human story" to be less "heart-wrenching" and more frustratingly annoying.

(view spoiler)[As far as the laser-y parts of the book, it was an interesting idea, that I don't think was fleshed out very well. Maybe I missed something, but I never got why the Gateway people would let a bunch of novice non-scientists take these invaluable ships out. If they can make an AI therapist, couldn't they make an AI robot or drone to take the ships out for them first. Why use people? I also never got a sense that life on Earth, or Venus, or wherever was bad enough that people would risk their entire families lives just to strike it rich. Hard maybe, but not desperate to that extent.

The therapy!!! So, so painful to read. So very dated in all it's Freudian psycho-sexual references, but also just not a very interesting framing device. It was obvious from the beginning that Rob was repressing something so there was going to be some reveal at the end. Yet, it just dragged on and on, and when the reveal happened I'd already guessed it, and then the book just ended abruptly.

Then there's all the gender stuff. The weird homophobia with characters talking about "The Gays" like they're an alien species. And then the absolutely baffling attack of Klara by Rob. Rob was never likable from the beginning, but I have no idea why that scene was even in the book because the characters seem to promptly forget that it happened. No consequences, no remorse (befitting the act), nothing. Just swept under the rug. All of Rob's 'repression' seems to stem from the fact that he left Klara and the others in the black hole. Not from his selfish, infantile personality, and least of all from his savage beating of someone he claimed to love. I took that as more than just an author representing a flawed character. I took that as the author saying the beating wasn't important enough to be addressed within the text. All in all, I found nothing to recommend this book. (hide spoiler)]

Amadis wrote: "Tyler wrote: "did Bob get back or not was a big question I had."

Not sure I understand this. [spoilers removed]"

We don't know if the guy who previously had a psychotic break also had another one and Sigfried is just in his head.

W/r/t how he escaped, they lay it out:

(view spoiler)[ he tried to blow up his own ship to get the other ship clear, instead he was thrown clear and they were thrown towards the black hole (hide spoiler)]

The best part about the ending, further to Rob S's, post above, is

(view spoiler)[the big reveal is the guilt over the black hole escape. And the telling makes it clear that Broadhead was in the ship to be scuttled. It just turned out differently than expected.

Broadhead has survivor's guilt over something he didn't do. He is a jerk and an abuser, but he didn't do the one thing he's most hung up on. (hide spoiler)]

He has survivor's guilt over something he *claims* he didn't do. Is it not possible he's lying, maybe even to himself?

Thing is, he claimed he did it. Or at least that's what the guilt implies. Yet the facts don't bear it out.

Amadis wrote: "he person who gave the introduction on the audiobook called Sigrid "one of the most memorable characters in all of science fiction.""

Really? HAL 9000, Psychoanalyst to the Star Travelers? I mean, he's okay, but nothing too special.

Apart from that, yeah. Bit of a slog. Put me in a rotten mood all day, too.

Andrés wrote: "while the ending is open to interpretation
[spoilers removed]"

there also are 4 more books in the series, and I'm pretty sure Rob is in most of them

Dominik wrote: "Amadis wrote: "he person who gave the introduction on the audiobook called Sigrid "one of the most memorable characters in all of science fiction.""

Really? HAL 9000, Psychoanalyst to the Star Tra..."

very strange, I find Sigrid less memorable that the therapist AI in THX1138, which was basically just ELIZA. "I like cake....WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT CAKE?.....I like how cake tastes.....CAN YOU BE MORE SPECIFIC ABOUT CAKE?"

Pfft. The cake is a lie.

(view spoiler)[I couldn't resist! (hide spoiler)]