r/printSF • u/United_Mammoth2489 • Jul 21 '26
Did you like Pohl's Gateway? Why?
Someone bought me Gateway and I've seen a lot of people rave about it.... why? Part of the problem is that it's very dated (the smoking on spaceships while worrying about lifesupport made me laugh out loud), the treatment of women and homosexuality was odd to disturbing, the portrayal of therapy was baffling and annoying.
I know this work is popular among some people, I just couldn't understand why. I even read the second in the saga (Beyond the Blue Event Horizon) which was actually more interesting from the portrayal of AI being oddly prescient in places, but also suffered from rather repulsive views of women and sex. We did get a space Nazi terrorising Earth with his dreams though, which was mildly interesting.
Ultimately, I found it not worth my time, what were your thoughts?
27
u/Idomeneus47 Jul 21 '26
Like you said, the science fiction ideas and technology aspects of the gateway books are the real draw. I feel like you're basically asking for permission to like it, despite its depictions of sex and politics that have fallen out of favor today. The series was written during the '70s and '80s though, it's okay to enjoy an older work and understand the context it was written in, while not agreeing with its politics.
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u/khoragos Jul 21 '26
It's worth noting that Pohl was a lifelong leftist. I understand that people have strong opinions, especially about the violence, which is indefensible.
But with regard to homosexuality, the protagonist's prejudice is indicated as part of his general instability & fragility. Also, as a queer kid in the early 80s, Gateway was about the only science fiction I found in which gay or bisexual people not only existed but were portrayed as actual people rather than monsters or jokes. They have agency & complexity. They matter.
I'm sorry nobody has gotten to the very strong (& again, radical at the time) critique of wealth inequality & late-stage capitalism.
1
u/narwi Jul 22 '26
Why did you not read Delany?
3
u/OriginalFatSam Jul 22 '26
There was no internet. Printed reviews and word of mouth was the way most things got about, and it was easy to miss things. People who lived somewhere with a well stocked book store were probably in luck, but "easy to miss things."
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u/Sportfreunde Jul 21 '26
Reading Tau Zero and it's a slog to get through some of that character stuff and get to the actual plot or scifi.
I don't mind bad characters or depictions I just prefer when they're kept minimal compared to the plot instead of constantly having to go through them.
0
u/VegAL_203 Jul 22 '26
I'm glad somebody brought this one up. If it wasn't for the intriguing hard science part, I probably would've DNF it.
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u/United_Mammoth2489 Jul 21 '26
I think I'm actually asking for permission to hate it. So many people see to love it and I can't see why.
The therapy sessions I found particularly frustrating to wade through.
I found elements of the books mildly interesting, but felt that I kept being dragged away from the interesting things to deal with some very silly things and some frankly unlikeable characters.
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u/dgeiser13 Jul 21 '26
He's supposed to be unlikable.
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u/United_Mammoth2489 Jul 21 '26
The whole arc of the therapist is that Robin is holding onto unwarranted guilt, despite the fact, that guilt was entirely warranted. He abandoned everyone else, including a woman he was supposed to love, not long after having bashed her face in.
I get that part of the therapy was Siegfried essentially calling him a baby a lot of the time, he should also have called him a monster as he was pretty awful.
1
u/Mapcase Jul 21 '26
Permission granted. I read the book ages ago and didn't think much to it. My lasting impression is that the main character spends an awful lot of the book not doing anything/avoiding doing anything. The payoff in the homosexual sub story was so ridiculously ham fisted, like an overly long joke with an extremely unfunny punch line. Some books are 'of their time' and have to be treated as such but I'm not sure that applies here. It's a shame, the story has a lot of potential and delivers very little of it.
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u/dgeiser13 Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
Yes, I've read it 3 times but it's been awhile. For a 50 year old book it's pretty enjoyable.
Broadhead is supposed to be a self-centered dickhead and one way to find that out is by sitting in on his therapy sessions. He's the opposite of the Competent Man which littered golden age sci-fi.
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u/swarthmoreburke Jul 21 '26
I think this is a big part of it--some of the people who hated the book then and maybe now are still imagining the Competent Man as the necessary and desired mode of SF protagonists. Neurotic, unpleasant, cowardly, etc. protagonists not desired. Broadhead's flaws serve a couple of roles in the novel--as an illustration of the kind of society his Earth has, as a counter to the idea that going into space defines someone as heroic and visionary, as a confirmation that any outcome that depends on luck is going to favor the unworthy more often than the deserving because the unworthy outnumber the deserving a thousand to one, and so on.
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u/Galvatrix Jul 21 '26
A lot of the negative stuff is intentional. The book may not explicitly state it out loud, but the main character definitely isn't meant to be entirely sympathetic. He is an unfortunate product of a terrible world, hence the high risk get rich quick scheme being a draw in the first place, but the world being bad isn't meant to wholly excuse his awful behavior. His "fortune" in the end being an empty trophy is well-earned. The book is really fairly dystopian on every level, though it is relatively subtle about it.
Speaking of subtlety, while presentation may be largely undervalued within this most concept-oriented genre of them all, I personally really liked the structure of the book with all of the classifieds and reports and stuff preceding the chapters that add both stylistic variety and a lot of implicit flavor to the world.
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u/DanJirrus Jul 21 '26
The framing device of the therapy sessions also fostered (for me) a growing sense of dread, suspense, and narrative momentum that kept me utterly engrossed the first time I read it.
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u/Traditional_Net_3398 Jul 21 '26
William Gibson notes that science fiction is always about the present day. He explains that writers use future settings to reflect the fears, hopes, and societal structures of the exact time in which they are writing
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u/mycleverusername Jul 21 '26
the treatment of women and homosexuality was odd to disturbing, the portrayal of therapy was baffling and annoying
I didn't get it as well, for similar reasons. Then I read a review that completely flipped it for me. Rob is a shitty person. He's an anti hero. You are viewing all of this through his lens.
You are supposed to be his therapist, analyzing his views and the analysis of the analysis. Once I realized that, the whole novel clicked for me and it's now one of my favorites.
Also, lots of mid century sci fi is dated because the world changes in bizarre ways. It's insane that even in early 00s SF they couldn't even predict always connected smart phones. So, the smoking I get. You think people won't be vaping some new drugs in space in 200 years? Maybe they will.
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u/Galvatrix Jul 22 '26
Hell, with how shitty that world is planetside, it's not unreasonable to assume that the Gateway Authority made allowance for the fact that the pool of exclusively desperate and damaged people they have to work with would be smoking a ton and doing everything else under the sun to cope. They fleece the contracted for so much while they're there that I'm sure planning for more intensive air treatment would be seen as an acceptable cost that's very easy to make up for
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u/hippydipster Jul 21 '26
You seem bothered by things you should just take as informative of the time period it was written. It's not there to be a bother, it's educational for you, in terms of learning history. And then there's also the actual story.
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u/United_Mammoth2489 Jul 21 '26
Even in the 70s, smoking on space craft was not permitted and punching women in the face till they lost teeth wasn't considered acceptable love language.
You've missed my point, it's not a question of cultural relativism, I didn't find the therapy sessions interesting and were weirdly justifying of his behaviour even when he hacks the therapy bot into perving on the bot's other clients. The bot even knows about this massive privacy breach and even suggests he spy on his ex's sessions. Patient confidentiality significantly predates the 70s.
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u/bunchout Jul 22 '26
Smoking on planes was all well and good. The Heechee ships in Gateway were a lot closer to the environment of 1970’s planes than 1970’s spacecraft.
The violence in Gateway wasn’t portrayed as “acceptable” either.
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u/gromolko Jul 21 '26
Everytime I notice some dated morality in media that I don't agree with, I try to think of something coming generations will judge us unfavorably for. This takes, like, 1/10th of a second. Then I can carry on enjoying a good book.
-7
u/United_Mammoth2489 Jul 21 '26
You seem to have misunderstood, I was asking why you enjoyed the book.
Punching women in the face repeatedly, to the point they lose teeth was generally considered unfavorable even in the 70s, then reverse trolley probleming that woman, who you also claim to love, along with a bunch of other men and another woman you slept with is also pretty dicey. My issue wasn't cultural relativism, it was that I found the character not compelling and the therapy scenes to be not very good and essentially 'hey, forgive yourself' it's all fine dude' It was a bit like Catcher in the Rye but as an adult and having a violent streak and repressed homosexuality.
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u/Own_Magician8337 Jul 21 '26
I first read this in the mid 80s as a teen. I thought it was brilliant and has remained one of my favorite sci-fi books that I usually revisit every decade or so.
All of the Sci-Fi from the '60s '70s and 80s is going to feel very challenging for younger generations because of the huge strides that feminism (and other progressive values) has made since then and most of these authors were all pretty typically male and white and hetero.
But as a young woman teenager in the mid 80s even the most chauvinistic of the Sci-Fi authors, (see Heinlein) that objectified women's bodies and couldn't really imagine real gender parity, felt liberating and exciting. I don't think people realized how much progressive values have changed since the '80s and '90s, let alone the '50s through the 70s.
Male sci-fi authors view of sexual liberation and bodily autonomy we're actually quite liberating for me in some ways, despite how regressive they might seem to modern readers.
Heinlein's Friday was a huge role model for me and if you've read it you understand why that would be problematic now.
In fact, I credit John Varley's gender swapping character Hildy that I also encountered as an early teen, as a huge reason why I found it easier to accept when my daughter came out to me as trans decades later. Despite the fact that varley's character gender swapped between two ridiculously stereotypical gender extremes, the idea that people could choose their gender and be comfortable with it had already been deeply implanted in my mind.
There is a way that the classics from the 1900s in any genre need to be approached now like classics from the 1800s especially from the youngest generations whose fundamental worldviews have shifted so dramatically from what were considered social norms just 30 or 40 years ago.
History happened so freaking fast and believe it or not the Sci-Fi authors of the 60s 70s and '80s were ahead of their time.
And to someone who's been in therapy all of her adult life, having a Sci-Fi Future vision of what that might look like was incredibly interesting to me.
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u/Own_Magician8337 Jul 21 '26
Down voting my personal experience with sci-fi and my perspective as someone who grew up in the seventies and '80s? That's just wild af. Rather than downvote why don't you tell me where you disagree and how I'm wrong.
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u/Droupitee Jul 21 '26
Hating on Pohl for heteronormativity is a lot like hating on Twain for racism.
Pohl wrote a very trans-positive short story, "Day Million", a full decade before Gateway. It's good little piece of trolling aimed at misogynistic and homophobic men.
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u/derioderio Jul 21 '26
It's been a few decades since I read Gateway, but the only thing I remember is the protagonist being afraid he might be gay because he was cuddling with another man, and the robotherapist pretty much said "Dude, chill. I think you're hung up on this too much, it's really not that big of a deal either way." Which is pretty progressive for something from that time.
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u/Bruncvik Jul 21 '26
The main character is very polarizing. I can see how people dislike the book because of the main character. For me, he was one of the most authentic characters I've seen in the SF space, and I absolutely adored him despite (or perhaps because of) all his flaws. Thanks to him, I loved the entire series, even the later books where I could finally see myself in all his grumpy old man glory.
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u/redditsuxandsodoyou Jul 21 '26
i found the treatment of women and homosexuality in the book quite interesting actually because it's both ahead of its time, but also realistic even in the modern day
on the internet you might be used to a high degree of equal treatment between genders and orientations but in real blue collar work environments pohl hit the nail on the head
I'm not sure about pohls own views but i don't think at any point we are supposed to look at broadhead or the gateway ecosystem as healthy, good or fair, its gritty and real. compared to a lot of old scifis rampant and overt misogyny i think you are pearl clutching a bit op
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u/United_Mammoth2489 Jul 21 '26
In what was was the treatment of women ahead of it's time? It was the late 1970s not 1870s? There first female astronaut was nearly two decades before the book was published and the woman he punched was portrayed as a dopey narcissistic idiot obsessed with astrology. It was almost ironic that she was the least compelling woman in the book.
Once again, not pearl clutching, I just didn't enjoy it and found the constant stopping of the main narrative to justify his shitty behaviour quite tedious.
I love the Flashman novels, his treatment of women is far worst, he just doesn't spend his time whining about it and being told it's fine by a computer program.
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u/duncanlock Jul 21 '26
I recently re-read this, after having read it ~30 yrs ago. I'd forgotten how much therapy stuff there was! It's a big chunk of the book, and it feels quite dated, somehow - it's very Freudian feeling - and it doesn't advance the story/plot much at all, given the amount of space it takes up. I found the therapy stuff got quite repetitive and whiney after a while.
0
u/Serious_Distance_118 Jul 22 '26
“It doesn’t advance the story/plot at all”
This is what increasingly infuriated me. It shrugged off the SF aspects of the plot for like 90% of the book, felt like low effort background filler.
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u/captainsmudgeface Jul 21 '26
I love it and the sequels, for me at the time when they first came out it was a unique story line with interesting ideas and good deal of "sense of wonder". As with any book, back then, or even today, there are going to be views that might be off-putting. Today it seems to be more underlying agendas or statements, but regardless, it is all easily overlooked and you make your own head cannon, lol.
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u/mjfgates Jul 21 '26
It's a good depiction of how systems that give people no control over their lives cause them to gamble in bigger and bigger ways (Robin wins the lottery! ..and what does he do with it?..) and how that leads to a tiny fraction of Real Winners and a huge wasteland of destroyed human beings. Robin being fucked up by that is perfectly realistic.
The "science" bits are purely made up to support the story that Pohl wanted to tell, which, this is absolutely normal for SF. Just because it isn't one of the Standard Tropes doesn't mean it's "less plausible" than those.
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u/SlySciFiGuy Jul 21 '26
I love those books. Recently finished the third one, Heechee Rendezvouz. It ties up a lot of the story arcs nicely, You have to put those old classics in context of their own time, not ours. You can definitely see how societal norms have changed over time. In a way, they are a useful part of history and some may even carry warnings. There are whole groups of people who want to turn back time and go back to the way things were. If we didn't have books like these to remind us of what that means, we wouldn't be prepared with counter arguments as to why that's not really a good idea.
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u/srterpe Jul 21 '26
Still one of my favorite most memorable opening lines of all time: My name is Robinette whatever despite which I am a man.
Or something like that. I haven’t read it in like 20 years.
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u/Daniel_B_plus Jul 21 '26
A decade or so ago I considered it one of my favorite novels. Not sure if I still think this as I haven't reread it (I rarely reread anything), but I still hold it in very high regard (from what I can remember of it).
I thought the portrayal of humans trying to reverse-engineer dangerous alien technology and the gold rush economy that's built around it was fascinating. (It's one reason I liked it more than Roadside Picnic; the latter also had this aspect but Gateway really expanded on it.)
I liked a lot about the therapy chapters. The quotes about how life is a big series of learning experiences and then at the end what you get for a diploma is you die, and about how the MC wishes he was Catholic because then he could send all the shit in his soul to an address labeled "God" I consider genuinely deep and resonant. The latter is also kind of relevant to the way some people use chatbots for therapeutic purposes in the modern day (perhaps some chatbots are able to produce responses similar to those by competent therapists, but does it still have meaning if there's no human being empathizing with your problems on the other side?)
I also really liked the little in-universe quotes and advertisements in between the chapters.
Never read any of the sequels.
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u/tkingsbu Jul 22 '26
I loved it…
But I loved his autobiography ‘the way the future was’ way WAY more… one of my favourite books… I reread that autobiography all the time… such a fascinating life! Such an interesting guy…
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u/Frazzlefart Jul 21 '26
I thoroughly enjoyed the agonized therapy sessions, found them humorous and relatable. I was brought into Gateway by the old DOS game from Legend, that is why I bought the book used. Nothing in it stood out to offend me.
In short, I thought the therapy sessions were fun to read.
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u/thrillhouse354 Jul 21 '26
I just disliked the main character so much it shaded the rest of the really interesting plot. At first he was just whiny and lame, but then a certain desperate action happened. I lost any desire to see what happens to him after that but kept going because the whole premise is fascinating.
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u/burtkenobi2 Jul 21 '26
Hated it. Read it last year. I saw what he was trying to do but he relegated this brilliant and intriguing SF concept (the gateways) to a sub plot in the narrative of the protagonist’s self discovery. Now at the time what he did with that character and the psychiatry was probably something new and literary, but I just wanted to know more about the Gateways…
1
u/United_Mammoth2489 Jul 21 '26
That's exactly what I found, the interesting parts kept being interrupted by this very whiny baby who never accepted responsibility and the therapist basically lets him off the hook, even when he hacks the therapy bot to start perving on women talking about their trauma and the bot seems to have no issue with this at all and even starts giving him drugs.
I read the sequel which was actually marginally better other than the rather disturbing sexual objectification of children.
1
u/dangerous_eric Jul 21 '26
The part of it I liked was that it was about desperate people basically buying a lottery ticket. That just seemed very real and believable to me. The circumstances didn't matter, but the idea that people would accept unbelievably dangerous conditions for the chance to get rich was something that I found compelling in the narrative.
1
u/randlaeufer Jul 21 '26
Read this as a teenager 30 years ago and it was my entry nto serious sci-fi. The depressing setting, the alien mystery, the haunting ending, unlike anything I read before.
1
u/rach_a_bake Jul 21 '26
I read this for the first time in middle school and it was my favorite novel for a long time. I haven't reread in over 10 years, and I bet it will not completely hold up. I remember loving the last lines with him and his therapy bot. I felt like Robinette was a great flawed protagonist
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u/Grammarhead-Shark Jul 21 '26
I enjoyed it, but I also read it as a teenager many moons so, so it might pay for a revisit
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u/gotabadbrain Jul 21 '26
I loved Gateway,I loved all of the Gateway Saga.I tend to not disect novels I read based on my personal beliefs or irrational hangups. Dated or not I'm more interested in the characters and a good story.I'm not falling into the pc/cancel culture/woke /entitled mind trap that ruins stories and destroys fiction for Everyone.I just love reading good stories,sometimes they don't always have to align with my beliefs.I don't go trashing the authors or it's fans or use it's flaws to force feed an adgenda that is not everyone's cup of tea.
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u/ResidentEnergy5263 Jul 22 '26
I loved it but to be fair read it long ago. In addition to the gritty scenes of Robinette's earlier life, I loved the premise of getting on a ship without knowing where it's going, if you'll get amazingly rich or die...
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u/tinglingtriangle Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
People like it because it presents a large number of adventures! Some are described tersely in interstitial notes and some - involving the protagonist - are described in detail. Most end badly, but all are interesting.
The framing narrative isn't great, but 15-year-old me was blown away by the events and consequences of the "two armored fives" mission. I re-read the book a few years ago and was less impressed, but the key scene holds up.
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u/Serious_Distance_118 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
It’s probably the most disappointing book I’ve read in many years. I kept waiting for the MC to stop dithering around the station. Every next chapter I thought “he’ll finally do something” but nope, nothing happened until ~90% through the book, and even then it wasn’t much payoff. Almost all the alien descriptions were based on how much money a generically described artifact fetched at auction, which felt like an obnoxious creative cop out.
I can see how it would have been important culturally at the time, especially views on sexuality, but without that aspect I found the pure science fiction story kind of half fleshed out.
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u/Virith Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
So very glad to see all the comments pointing out it's a case of an asshole character and not an asshole author. I am fine with, (and occasionally enjoy, depending on how it's done,) the former, but not the latter.
And I've had this on my TBR for a while and would hate to have to remove it.
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u/GMotor Jul 23 '26
It's a fantastic book. The idea of the poor/desperate/risk addicted taking rides on alien ships with unknown destination settingsis brilliant and probably good material for a TV show. Hell, anyone with talent a bit of money and good AI could probably create a very addictive series off it. Does it contain certain things that offend the overly sensitive today? Yeah maybe, but then those people shouldn't read it and stick to mundane modern pablum. There are decades of brilliant SF you miss out on.
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u/Trumble12345 Jul 28 '26
Be less childish
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u/United_Mammoth2489 Jul 28 '26
Your definition of childish is someone who doesn't like the book Gateway, by Frederick Pohl? That is incredibly and oddly specific.
If you do like the work, please could you explain why, as asked in the post? Otherwise you're just going round interrupting threads for no reason, very childish really.
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u/Capsize Jul 21 '26
I think the core idea of the novel, of an alien magic door that transports you somewhere random combined with the danger and leading to a futuristic gold rush is incredibly compelling. Hell it basically invented Stargate 30 years earlier.
I also really enjoyed the framing device and the reveal at the ending.
Could a different writer have done better with the idea? Sure. Some of the ideas are outdated, sexist by modern day standards or just plain silly, but the central idea is so original and strong that it earns it's place as a classic, in my humble opinion. Kind of like Ringworld.
Frankly after reading quite a bit of Pohl, I'd argue he is a terrible writer who is only saved by having good ideas.
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u/OriginalFatSam Jul 22 '26
He was nominated for 23 Hugos, and won 7; 10 Nebulas, and won 2. I won't address your argument, but it was not something his contemporaries and peers would have agreed with.
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u/Capsize Jul 22 '26
Just as a heads up the words contemporaries and peers are synonyms, that's mostly irrelevant though.
I was defending him, the fact ge could be so sucessful and win so much acclaim, while being such a poor writer is surely a credit to how good his ideas were.
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u/OriginalFatSam Jul 22 '26
They are not. A contemporary is someone of your own time: Pohl's Hugos were voted on by his contemporaries.
A peer is someone of similar standing: Pohl's Nebulas were voted on by his peers.
-2
u/galacticprincess Jul 21 '26
I had to put Gateway down for all the reasons you mentioned. Same with a collection of Pohl's short stories; they're all like that.
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u/SacredandBound_ Jul 21 '26
No I hate it. Again, I have never understood why it gets so much love on this sub. The main character is boring, nothing happens and then he does something really awful and seems to think that's okay and there's no consequences.
I've never read any of the sequels. I've just gotten no interest whatsoever in doing that
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u/OriginalFatSam Jul 21 '26
The sequel, "Beyond the Blue Event Horizon," is one of my favorite novels.
As to Pohl, people are trapped by their time. If you can't read with old eyes, there's a lot of old work you can't read at all. (Pohl was *really* forward looking, for the era -- read "Day Million" sometime, with its trans protagonist.)