Gateway
The alien Heechee left automated spaceships programmed for unknown destinations. You climb in, you launch, you find out where you're going when you arrive. Pohl structures the novel as therapy sessions with a traumatized survivor, mirroring the central question: can you face what you can't control?
Robinette Broadhead draws sustained hostility, a “whiny jackass narrator” and “casual playboy misogynist” readers feel the book never redeems even allowing for the unreliable narration. A scene where he strikes a partner is flagged as rawer than the text registers, the book staying ambivalent about whether it condemns him. The therapy chapters that fans call the spine are the ones others want cut, “Freudian Therapy in Space” dominated by dated pop-Freudian material, and their handling of a character’s sexuality reduces same-sex desire to a maternal explanation that reads as offensive now rather than merely dated.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
