Gateway

A foundational text for me, this is 1970s, New Wave, fun, smart sci fi. Its vibe of the irreverent and the mundane, as seen through the eyes of a protagonist in a high-tension, kinda shitty “space adventure”, is just pitch perfect.

Robinette “Bob” Broadhead gets mixed up with other desperate (usually poor) human guinea pigs on the Heechee space station near Earth called “Gateway”. The Heechee are a species of mysterious alien life forms that have disappeared from the universe, but not before littering it with their stuff - including a space station full of small ships loaded with pre-set coordinates. Humans have just figured out how to turn the ON switch on the little space ships, but these inadvertent galactic leaps more often than not lead to ignoble, painful deaths. The ultimate glory that drives all these pilots: another Heechee archeological bits, to help solve the puzzle. (Pilots get MASSIVE royalty payments.)

The book's structure is a mix between: (1) present day therapy sessions between Robin, now the richest man on Earth, and his AI therapist; (2) a flashback retelling of his journey from no-name poor boy to Gateway test pilot; (3) ads in the local Gateway newspaper, running the gamut from “tri-marriage” proposals to desperate calls for information on lost pilots.

It's hilarious, funny, and it features a sharp eye for multiculturalism and feminism (always a problem in the American/male-dominated genre of sci fi). One of my favorite books eva.