
Series: Heechee Saga #1
I think this may have been my first book by Pohl, and I’m not sure whether there’s any point in my trying to continue the series.
The concept behind the book was interesting. Humans discovered an alien space station (rock) with a lot of ships with pre-programmed courses and they blindly set out on missions in these ships to try to discover Heechee alien artifacts. Sounds cool, right? But then the book seems to just go on and on and on, and nothing seems to be happening because the main character, Bob Broadhead, is too scared to actually go on any of the missions. He does eventually go but by that point I was already tired of him and his whining. Meanwhile we keep bouncing between the past at Gateway and the present in Bob’s computer-psychiatrist’s office who apparently puts great stock in dreams. Yawn. Did I mention that he blames his girlfriend for triggering her beating by hitting him? [Aside: I’m not defending her hitting him but he beat her very badly and justifies it to himself that way.] And I was already tired of him before this point.
Classic science fiction and I are not a very good match, apparently, and this book was only published in 1977.