The first book was one of the best sci fi novels I've ever read, the next two were also very enjoyable, but I have to say, this one almost reads either like someone else wrote it using Pohl's notes, or Pohl himself wrote it but only under extreme duress. Characters I had grown to love were reduced in this story to one-dimensional thumbnails. Earlier in the series, I had truly felt Robin's pain, his guilt, and later, I felt a certain satisfaction in watching him struggle through the whole thing and grow as a character, achieving success, and maybe more importantly piece of mind. In this story he was completely annoying and so was his wife. Gaahh! What a shame this was the closer! If you enjoyed the first three books in the story, do what I wish I had done - walk away from this one and forget you ever saw it.

Like the Rama series by Clarke, the Gateway series started out as something seemingly far different from what it became. In the end, all questions are answered, all things revealed... but did we need all of that? If you want to know the final answer to everything, reading Annals of the Heechee will give it to you, but sometimes things are best left to rest. This final story is set up entirely to give the reader the answer, but in doing so alot is sacrificed in terms of the actual tale. It can be finished in two or three hours for a slow reader (like myself), so if you just gotta know reading this won't be a signifigant task. On the other hand, if the mystery of things is what enchanted you to begin with, leaving a sleeping dog lie may be the better alternative.

For those thinking about reading the whole series, it may even be recommendable to stick with just the first two books. 3 and 4 just seem to beat things to death.

Mr. Pohl, I think we are related. I have a cousin that looks exactly like a photo I had seen in our local newspaper. We are from the Chicago Pohl"s.

You gotta be kidding me! This isn't a book, it is a collection of randomly chosen words. If you give this book to someone who have never read a book before, you'll be sure that person will never read another...

How will strange people react to strange beings? This is the main frame of this book. I found it easy to read, nice to understand and the story flows with some surprises. The well written pace and narrative helps, and the stereotypes included are just what you need for a smile or a thought. It takes five days to end it, if you only read at night and it is an enjoyable text before you go to sleep.

I can understand why some won't like this novel, but I for one loved it. I found it very realistic. This is exactly how people would react to Martians, I suspect. Pohl really captured the essence of humanity with this one. The book is a literary piece, not the pulp sci-fi the title might imply.

Far from being a comprehensive tour of science-oriented travels, this is simply a cursory, spotty travelogue.

The bits and pieces are fine and fun, but hardly worthy
of a booklength treatment. This would have made a fine magazine article.

Mr. Pohl has the pleasurable job of being a professional writer who gets to investigate science and what scientists are working on. He discovered the joys of doing this as a tourist after an impromptu visit to the computation lab at MIT after giving a speech there. Since then, he has circled the globe in all directions to enjoy nature and scientists at work in many different dimensions. This book is a guide to show you where and how to enjoy the fun as well!

The book is divided into many different sections, by interest area. These include the U.S. national laboratories that you can visit (like Fermilab, Brookhaven National, Argonne, and Sandia), using a backyard telescope to look at the heavens, visiting various telescopes, space travel sites (from Cape Canaveral to Star City in Russia), volcanoes and earthquake locales (especially California, Italy, Iceland, Hawaii, and east Africa), water phenomena (China, Chicago, Niagara Falls, and the Mississippi River), great caves and tunnels (Lescaux in France, Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, Carlsbad Caverns, and subways), fossil and archeology sites (La Brea tar pits, Great Wall of China, Hadrian's Wall, Machu Picchu), meetings where scientists gather to share knowledge (like sessions of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, various museums in the U.S., and the New York Academy of the Sciences), and opportunities for distance learning (by mail, publications, periodicals, television, and e-mail).

One of the great strengths of this book is a geographical index of all of the sites and sources mentioned in the book. The text also contains information about how to access the scientific community and equipment in many cases. For the most part, not much special effort is required other than getting yourself there.

For me, this book is great because I travel a lot. I can use the index to help pick places to visit when I have a hole in my schedule during a trip. For years I have done this with art museums and other cultural sites, but not as often with scientific locations. I look forward to rebalancing that.

I only saw two flaws in the book. First, Mr. Pohl omitted a major way that thousands have enjoyed science over the years, an Earth Watch expedition. This is a non-profit organization based in Massachusetts that helps volunteers find experiments to fund and work on during vacations. One of my sons and I have done this, and found it very rewarding. In my case, I worked on the ways that whales communicate while riding in a Zodiac off the coast of the big island of Hawaii. While there, I had a chance to visit the volcanoes, so I enjoyed two types of science in one trip. It never occurred to me to try to visit the observatories there as well. Next time!

Second, the book does not present many ideas for biological field research visits. Birding is especially good in Central America and Kenya. Whale watching is outstanding in Hawaii, Baja California, Alaska, Massachusetts, and in the Galapagos . . . depending on the time of the year. Perhaps if there is another edition, these kinds of ideas will be added.

If you think you like science or you have family members who do, this book will bring you many hours of pleasure by guiding you into many of the most interesting sites that are easily accessible. I have already visited many of these locations, and can certainly agree that each one was well worth the trip.

After you have read the book, I suggest that you pick themes of things you would like to learn more about. I had the chance to spend time at the Amazon exhibit at the Smithsonian two years ago, and the scientists there were very good at describing all of the research needs we have for the rain forest. Since then, I have learned a lot more in that area. That has turned out to be very intellectually rewarding for me.

Once you find an area that appeals to you, learn about it in as much depth as you enjoy. That will prove more satisfying than just getting a smattering of a lot of areas. Perhaps you can find ways to get your employer involved in supporting the scientific work that needs to be done. Wouldn't that be great?

Have all the science fun you want!

An alliance of humans and alien species form a mission to investigate a Dyson Sphere, codenamed Cuckoo. Storyline involves the investigative team's moral/ethical problems involving Tachyonic Replication, the method of travel used to reach Cuckoo. (From the book cover, "Tachyonic replication was a marvelous invention. A man could send copies of himself anywhere. If one got killed, so what? He could always send replacements!") Additionally, the story involves the struggles of a young Cuckoo inhabitant named, "Fifteenth", against the cannabalistic masters of Cuckoo. All in all, it's an interesting read with fine concepts and characters.

I read this book over 20 years ago, so I'm working from an old memory here! While dated in its description of stellar mecanics, Pohl does pose an interesting premise: Stars have all the necessary ingredients to be MASSIVE thinking machines! From there, it's a short step to consider sentient stars. In the text, fusion research on earth creates a baby star that quickly reaches consciousness, sentience, and self actualization. Old Sol doesn't seem to like it very much! As with other Pohl works (like "Man Plus"), it has an interesting central concept, but the science is not very deep and the characters aren't particularly well developed.

This is a fun "page-turner" of a book filled with all sorts of trivia and anecdotes about some of the greatest science fiction films ever made. The problem is the author was careless with facts...there are many errors and generalizations in this book. Still, the book is fun so long as you're not trying to do serious research using it as a source.

I'm the first to review this book. Hope this will be helpful to would be buyers.
This book is not very interesting for an advanced SF reader. Why?
Writers featured in this book are Asimov, Bester, Bradbury, Clarke and Norton. Good and popular writers, but their work is still very easy to come by. Want stories of Asimov? Buy his two-volume collection. Same for Bradbury, who has a very nice one-volume collection, and for Clarke and Bester. The stories in this anthology will tell you that these writers deserve to have a single-author collection on your bookshelves. Why buy stories you already own?
For starters then. Buy this book. Some stories in here are classics, others are mere filler. They point out to you their writers' vision. Still, it's your decision. The truth: There are better anthologies out there.
Whatever your decision, do check out the first item in this series. It's somewhat better.
I appreciate this series. A good Idea. You won't throw your money away.

The alien possession theme was not to my taste, but some stories were okay. "Fiddling for the water buffaloes" by S.P. Somtow was mostly interesting for the slices of Thai life. Nesvadba's (Czech) was an interesting satire on extreme rationalism, & Lundwall's (Sweden) managed to turn his into a time perception story with aliens like DS9's prophets only written yrs earlier. The 2 that worked best ,as sf & as stories, were back to back. First German author Armer had the nicest story because the alien & the human ended up helping each other & I'm in the mood for nice sf stories lately. Yano's story I think should have been expanded on. In fact with a little work it could be an interesting Sarah Canarylike novel, except this story was written first I believe. It had too much sex ,especially concerning 12 yr. olds, for me, but had an interesting myhological/poetic bent to it. Also it is very Japanese. I hope someone collects the "best" for! eign language sf into an anthology someday because I'm starting to think the non-English speaking world IS producing good stuff. However they'd be smart to add some classic stories from the English speaking world so it'd sale. On a side note the Chinese stories had the most positive view of the aliens, excepting the German story. I'm not sure what that means, but it's interesting.

I just borrowed this book and the prequel from the library. I have loved Frederik Pohl's books in the past and thought that this sounded good. The prequel was a great read, bringing forward some very interesting ideas and creating a believable if somewhat depressing view of the future. This book on the other hand, was what can best be described as filler. Nothing really happens in this book and it is much more a political potboiler than a science fiction book. It's sole purpose seems to be to show how petty and greedy people as a whole can be and to set up the next book.

It is fine to put in some political intrigue and background information into a book, in fact it made the first book in the series very satisfying. But there still has to be some new ideas or at least some action mixed in or the reader feels cheated. All I can say is that if I had actually paid for this book I would definitely have felt cheated.

Pohl has managed to write a novel in which I could not care about a single character. His plot moves along with the finest leaders of earth performing some of the stupidest action. Oh let's see, here is an alien who can erase memories, implant machinery in your body without your knowing, a representative a race who is so far beyond our science that we can't begin to understand their abilities. Let's try to grab the personal property of these creatures and then insult and treat them badly. Does this seem likely to you? Not to me. And the ending was sudden and left me with one regret, that I had spent my time reading this book.

Although not quite as entertaining as "The Other End of Time", this is still a good read. It is basically building up to what I hope is a climactic ending in "The Far Shore of Time". Most of the book deals with USA's/NBI's reaction to the duplicates and the aliens once they arrive back on earth. It also describes the political posturing by the various UN nations to gain access to the aliens and their technology aboard the Starlab. Things become more interesting toward the end of the book when the Scarecrows' spacecraft is detected and a broadcast is received. At the end of the book there is the dreaded realization that the Scarecrows have already infiltrated the populations of earth and have begun their conquest which should set up the third novel in the series very well. One thing I didn't care for was the comment boxes that Pohl inserted randomly throughout this book. It is somewhat annoying to break from the story to have to read these. Perhaps they would have been better placed at the beginning of each chapter.

The first part of this book is really good, the story of Audee Walthers will keep you reading and maybe you will learn something about Venus, the rest of the book is going down and down as you read, it doesn't have any punch to keep it reading, I can tell you that when you finish the story of Audee Walthers close the book and you will be very happy, if you decide to finish it don't expect to much from it.

Mostly dry and repetitive narrative, but does fill in some detail in the history of man's investigation of the Heechee, and does include at least one good short story. A fairly light and quick read.

This book is not a continuation of the Heechee saga. However, it does provide a wealth of background material. Much of the book will already be familiar to readers of the Saga. Two bonuses are noteworthy. There is a long short story (around 100 pages) detailing the life of Audie Walthers when he was an airbody pilot on Venus. This story is pretty engrossing, and gives further insight into the goings on on Venus in the world of Gateway. Also, for those curious after reading Gateway as to the adventures of the other prospectors, there is a section that deals with the successes and disasters encountered by these people. If you are a [big] fan of Gateway, this book should be obtained. Otherwise, the short story about Audie and some additional background material might still convince you to get the book.