Gateway

Gateway
Frederick Pohl

Summary (with spoilers):

When Robinette (Bob) Broadhead wins the lottery, he spends the money to get out of his job at the food mines and travel to Gateway, a space station built by long-gone alien civilization called the Heechee. The story is told by shifting between two time periods: flashbacks of Bob's experiences at Gateway and his sessions with his robot physiologist, whom he calls Sigfrid, in the present.

Gateway was abandoned by the Heechee, but it still has working space ships. Prospectors travel in the ships to unknown locations, where they hope to strike it rich by finding a cache of Heechee artifacts or by getting a large science or danger bonus from the Gateway corporation. There are 3 types of ships (Ones, Threes, and Fives), named based on the number of personnel they can hold. The humans haven't figured out what most of the stuff in the ship does or how to tell where the ships are going.

Bob starts dating Sheri, a woman in his class on Gateway, but they break up when he decides not to go on a mission with her. The truth is, Bob is scared to go on any missions. The majority of them don't return. 

He starts dating Gelle-Klara Moynlin, a woman who has been out on two missions, but who is also scared to go out on any. Eventually, they go out in a Five with three gay men. They aren't able to land on the planet they pop out next to, so their mission is not very profitable. One of the men goes insane.

When Klara and Bob get back, they grow apart. Bob sleeps with Louise Forehand (who is waiting for her family to get back before going on a mission, although her daughter has been out long enough that she is probably dead.) Klara sleeps with Dane Metchnikov, who was Bob's assigned mentor when he first arrived at Gateway. Bob and Klara get in an argument, and when Klara punches Bob in the shoulder, Bob beats her up really badly.

Klara leaves on a ship for Venus, and Bob signs up for a One mission. At the end of several months, he arrives at Gateway II, a known location. In anger that his trip has been useless, he changes the settings in his Heechee ship, and becomes the first person to break a ship without having it explode.

Back on Gateway, the scientists have some new ideas about what the colored bars in the ship panels mean in relation to coordinates. They plan to send two Fives out to the same destination, posting a hefty danger bonus. Bob and Dane Metchnikov end up in one ship. Bob's legless friend Shikitei Bahkin wants to go, but Bob doesn't put in a good word for him. (As you may have realized by this point, Bob is a selfish jerk.) Klara shows up and signs up with the other Five. The two ships pop out at the destination. It is a black hole! They all try to pile into one ship so that they can use the momentum of the other ship to push them out of the black hole. They only have a few minutes to transfer everything in and out between the ships, and in the hustle, Bob is the only one who is not able to get back to the correct ship in time. Instead, he punts the other 9 people into the black hole to save himself by using the momentum of their ship.

Throughout the book, Bob is going to the robot psychologist, and at the end, finally reveals this secret. Also, due to issues of time and black holes, although years have passed for Bob, only a few seconds have passed for Klara and the crew. Knowing that Klara is out there somewhere probably at that second (in her time) thinking Bob is an awful guy makes Bob feel even guiltier.

****EDIT*****

Okay, so wiki says that actually Bob was trying to close the hatch and then push the other ship away to safety, but that somehow his ship was the one that got pushed out of the black hole. I read that part again, and it's ambiguous what actually happened. Bob also seems not to know what his intentions where, or if someone on the other ship pushed a button first. He's convinced himself that he was trying to save himself. Unclear what actually happened.

My Thoughts:
I liked the first part of the book better than the ending, mostly because the main character becomes less likable throughout. Learning about the Heechee was interesting. I especially liked that the book had these little asides (snippets of lectures on the Heechee, classified ads on Gateway, etc.) However, the asides took up a full page each time and were placed somewhat randomly throughout the book, often cutting a sentence in half or detracting from the action. I would have preferred if they were placed more strategically for minimal disruption of reading flow.

Bob is revealed to be a fairly terrible guy. I can understand that in a fit of fear he punted the 9 other people into the black hole. That's a rotten thing to do, but it's a move I think a lot of people would make to survive. However, Bob becomes an unsympathetic character when he beats up his girlfriend. (It's so bad that she looses a tooth.) He feels remorse for beating her up, but not enough to satisfy me. Also, she shows up randomly and forgives him, which I didn't like.

There are problems with how the missions are set up. Throughout the book, many prospectors die because they run out of food, and all prospectors are worried about resources until they reach turnaround (the half way point of the trip out). If this is such a big problem, why don't they send out less people in the bigger ships? They could send out two people in a Five with a lot more food. In the story, when one of the longer missions fails, it's even noted that perhaps one person in the Five could have survived. Also, when a prospector dies during the trip, the other prospectors split the money she would have earned. When Bob dooms his nine shipmates to drawn out death by black hole, he actually makes 9 million dollars. If I were a prospector, that would make me nervous.

An interesting theme is the emotions/humanity of robots, as shown by Sigfrid, who reveals at the end of the book that he hypothetically envies Bob's ability to feel emotions, even though Bob feels negative emotions like guilt.