Gateway (novel)

The gateway trilogy consists of the books Gateway, Beyond the blue horizon and return to Gateway by Frederik Pohl. The original English titles are: Gateway, Beyond the Blue Event Horizon Heechee Rendezvous and. Within the science fiction literature associates it with the genre of Space Opera to.

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Gateway

On the randomly discovered asteroid "Gateway" near the sun countless alien spacecraft of unknown lost are - Hitschi mentioned - Racial found. No one knows how these ships work, and where her course leads, but they are of daring pilots, known as prospectors, flown to their unknown destinations to look there for further Hitschi technology or to make scientific discoveries. Although the loss rate is extremely high, people understand the Hitschi ships as an opportunity to escape poverty on the plundered resources and always on the verge of international conflict stationary earth. Who is survived an expedition and find artifacts of Hitschi or important scientific discoveries, is assigned for this award. The premiums for important finds are sufficient to earn full medical protection and to spend the rest of his life in prosperity.

The main character Robinette Broadhead has grown up under poor conditions in the food mines of Wyoming. When he unexpectedly wins $ 250,000 in the lottery, he decides this is a ticket to Gateway to buy and try his luck as a prospector. After arriving on the asteroid, but he hesitates and holds initially with unskilled labor above water. At Gateway, he learns the Gelle - Klara surveyer Moynhin, with whom he begins an affair. She already has three flights behind him, but the premium received is not enough yet to sit down to rest. Like Broadhead scares them back before a new flight. After several months, the two eventually wrestle with and take along with three others for a flight, but does not provide the special bonuses. His second flight is more of a response to a dispute he has with Klara. When he learns that she has left Gateway, he takes the first one -person flight, which he finds to be klarzuwerden about his relationship with Clare. With this flight, he finds another way to " Gateway II", an asteroid such as Gateway, but in another solar system. On the basis of this flight, the researchers come to new insights into the control of the Hitschi spacecraft. To test this, they are planning a research flight with two ships.

The two ships are soon to start one after the other and if the theory is true also arrived at the same place. The target coordinates but there is a black hole that attracts both research vessels inevitably. To escape, all prospectors must change into a ship, and the other to be abandoned. During the next hectic Umräumaktion Broadhead remains in one of the ships back alone and actuates the drive. He escapes thus be left as the only while all other pilots in the second ship in the area of ​​influence of the black hole. However, since the flight in scientific terms was a success, Broadhead receives the entire premium alone and returns as a rich man back to earth.

The entire story is told in flashbacks, while Broadhead is undergoing psychiatric treatment at a computer program to process the loss of his friend, for whom he feels responsible.

Beyond the blue horizon

The now Come to great fortune Robin Broadhead funded a research flight in the Oort Cloud to investigate a previously discovered there food factory of Hitschi. As with Gateway is a hollowed-out asteroids, filled with Hitschi technique. Furthermore, there is a remote, " Hitschi Heaven" mentioned, supply station, which is even more active in contrast to the other legacies of Hitschi. In researching the station turns out that the residents not encountered the missing Hitschi, but rather descendants of early humans from Earth are placed on the market by the Hitschi for unknown reasons here. Furthermore, they find the orphan Wan, the child of a lost pilot who could not turn back after docking to the station, because the automatic disabled the ship. Also located in the factory computer scanned consciousnesses of many other stranded pilots, but they are all damaged because the Hitschi technique which, although dominated the transfer of living consciousnesses on machines in human brain structure came to erroneous results.

Broadhead succeed with the support of its private KI " Albert Einstein" to fly with a Hitschischiff to the factory, where he can defeat the robot, which is responsible for the collection and scanning the intruders. He manages to bring the Hitschi Heaven, who turns out to be the largest yet discovered space transport the Hitschi to Earth. With the technology of food factory and the immense reserves CHON (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen) of the comet belt feeding the world's population is now secure.

In the epilogue is told where the Hitschi have disappeared: they have retreated behind the event horizon of black holes, in order to conceal themselves from an unknown enemy.

Return to Gateway

The earth is set on terrorist organizations in fear and terror. At the same time, the evidence of more alien races are increasing. In addition, the Hitschi appear for the first time. Alarmed by reports of their outpost they left their black hole to look after things. Worried, the old enemy could pay attention to her and the others, managed by the Hitschi breeds, they collect the slush dwellers, extremely slow thinking, whale-like inhabitants of cold gas planet and lead an invasion of the solar system through to dissuade people from further space flights.

Throughout history, Robinette Broadhead suffer age-related death. Due to advances in Hitschi research - you know by now the use of the known as " prayer subjects' data memory - his dying consciousness is scanned and transferred his mental substance.

Broadheads long-lost lover Klara is hardly aged fetched from Wan, who studied in different black holes to find his lost father, from the black hole, Broadhead place but only as AI ago - the tragic end of an unfulfilled love story.

People submit to the orders of the Hitschi, because they accept the threat of the universe through a living as a form of energy race. This is behind ball lightning called Black Holes of pure energy at the edge of the universe, has an inexplicable hatred of all that is material and has, as the Hitschi, in the past several times already intelligent life forms extinguished. More information is not given, the end remains open it.

Annals of the Heechee ( Annals of Hitschi )

The nachgeschobene fourth part of the original trilogy plays primarily on a space station far outside the Milky Way. The Hitschi have now agreed to the effect of the human race that it probably has no use to hide from the speed cameras. Instead, one wants to investigate unobtrusive means of manned outpost if the speed cameras have become active again, and take appropriate countermeasures. Serve telepathically gifted people whose minds extends to the regions of the Blitzer.

Through an oversight the speed cameras but precisely because attention to the Milky Way. Although seemingly doomed, the people and Hitschi manages a surprising end - Impressed by the Broadhead AI and other people who have voluntarily given up their biological existence in favor of a massless, virtual life, they refrain perform their Extermination.

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The novel gateway received the 1977 Nebula Award, and in 1978, the Hugo Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Background

Strictly speaking, the title "Gateway Trilogy " is misleading, since there are other books that deal with the Hitschi and the characters of the three volumes. The third volume of the trilogy Return to Gateway listed above is by no means the conclusion of the saga, because only in the following books, many remaining questions about the Hitschi be answered. Unlike America, were only issued in Germany, the first 3 books - those so-called trilogy. In fact, there are now seven books in which the Hitschi play a role or be mentioned. In English-speaking, therefore, find a total of the following books:

• The Merchants of Venus (1972 ), a short novel in which the Hitschi are first mentioned ( German: Merchants of Venus included in the short story collection Beyond the Sun)
• Gateway ( 1976), German: Gateway, the first part of the " trilogy"
• Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (1980 ), German: Beyond the blue horizon, the second part of the " trilogy"
• Heechee Rendezvous (1985 ), German: Return to Gateway, the third part of the " trilogy"
• Annals of the Heechee (1987 ), the fourth part (only available in English )
• The Gateway Trip ( 1990) ( A collection of short stories), a collection of short stories (only available in English )
• The Boy Who Would Live Forever: A Novel of Gateway ( 2004), Pohl's last Hitschi novel, the fifth part (only available in English )

Other media

In 1992, Legend Entertainment released the computer game gateway. The player is in the Interactive Fiction doing a prospector who seeks his fortune on the gateway. In 1993, Gateway followed II: Homeland, whose gameplay is largely the same and takes place ten years after the first part. Both games are considered to be so-called abandonware.

In March 2014 it was announced that the production houses De Laurentiis Company and eOne working on a series adaptation of this material.

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• ISBN 3-453-87905-8