Scan barcode
criis's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
ericlklein's review against another edition
4.0
Actually more direct and action packed than the first book: Gateway. This one opens up the first person point of view to other individuals than just Robinette (Robin, Rob, Robby, Bob).
Makes a nice continuation to the first book, while leaving the an opening for the rest of the series.
Makes a nice continuation to the first book, while leaving the an opening for the rest of the series.
coastl's review against another edition
3.0
pretty standard action story - competently enough written.
bruc79's review against another edition
2.0
Apesar de revelar os Heechee não me conseguiu manter o interesse como o livro anterior. Explora exageradamente temas técnicos e hard sf. Uma pequena desilusão.
ecath's review against another edition
3.0
Reading this series and just loving it all over again. Best chapter here is the last chapter. :D
pussreboots's review against another edition
4.0
Back in December I started the Heechee saga with Gateway, one of the best science fiction novels I've read in a long time. The series continues with Beyond the Blue Event Horizon. The wild west days of space travel are over and things have settled down to a more controlled methodology. No one still knows who the Heechee were (or even if they still exist) but even that mystery seems possible to solve now.
Robinette Broadhead the depressed ex-prospector is now wealthy and owns most (all?) of the space exploration interests. He is now married but still haunted by the tragic events that made him his fortune.
Mostly though, Broadhead is a secondary character. The novel focuses around a family of explorers more akin to Swiss Family Robinson or more recently Lost in Space. Their journey out to the CHON Food Factory in the Oort Cloud was interesting and almost as entertaining as the prospecting in Gateway. Unfortunately they have to run into Wan, a wild child of outer space who ends up dominating much of the plot of Beyond the Blue Event Horizon and Heechee Rendezvous.
Wan is one of the major detractors in the novel. He has about as much appeal as Wesley Crusher in Next Gen. combined with the temper and sex drive of a Vulcan going through Pon Far. I spent much of the book wishing evil things at Wan.
Despite Wan running amok in the novel, there is still the fascinating world building and imagined technology of Gateway. This time it's combined with long lectures on cosmology which are interesting but basically filler. If you don't want to sit through the long discussions of how the universe works you can read up on the basics in The Whole Shebang first.
Robinette Broadhead the depressed ex-prospector is now wealthy and owns most (all?) of the space exploration interests. He is now married but still haunted by the tragic events that made him his fortune.
Mostly though, Broadhead is a secondary character. The novel focuses around a family of explorers more akin to Swiss Family Robinson or more recently Lost in Space. Their journey out to the CHON Food Factory in the Oort Cloud was interesting and almost as entertaining as the prospecting in Gateway. Unfortunately they have to run into Wan, a wild child of outer space who ends up dominating much of the plot of Beyond the Blue Event Horizon and Heechee Rendezvous.
Wan is one of the major detractors in the novel. He has about as much appeal as Wesley Crusher in Next Gen. combined with the temper and sex drive of a Vulcan going through Pon Far. I spent much of the book wishing evil things at Wan.
Despite Wan running amok in the novel, there is still the fascinating world building and imagined technology of Gateway. This time it's combined with long lectures on cosmology which are interesting but basically filler. If you don't want to sit through the long discussions of how the universe works you can read up on the basics in The Whole Shebang first.
firstspeaker_'s review against another edition
4.0
I liked this book. Specially I liked the idea of Heechee's experiment. I have always thought the universe as someone else's Petri dish :-).
photonqyv's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
informative
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
rainy_day_reader's review against another edition
2.0
BtBEH has quite a few problems which really detracted from the enjoyment of the story, at least for me.
To start, it has not aged well. It seems to have positioned itself as "hard" science fiction but as the Heechee are treated as magical black boxes, that leaves the science of black holes and human technology. And it gets both of them frustratingly wrong. Black holes are treated like doorways or lines in the sand which you can walk around without ill effects but with so many great science and sci fi books in the last few decades, most people now know about spaghettification and the physical destruction they wreak before crossing the event horizon making the central idea of the book really hard to swallow. Since this is the central motivating factor behind the main character, I was repeatedly brought out of the story to say "seriously Fred, that's the story you're going with, really?". At the end of the book it's all resolved with an even more absurd, elementary-level garbling of physics to explain faster-than-light travel and, oh yeah, make the Heechee into gods. Bleh, ptooie.
Most distracting of all are the many, many detailed discussions about future computers which range from naive to absurd. To mention but a few, a plot point requires an advanced AI computer to run out of disc space and print out messages (which, here's the twist, get lost). Right there, anyone today would know any document that can be printed must be just a few kb or the printer would have to be spewing out thousands of tonnes per hour. In an era where 100 Gb fits on your fingernail, a temp folder can fill up with 20Gb without us noticing, it's beyond laughable to think that printing files could ever be a reasonable strategy for any computer. (Especially considering any AI program would likely take a billion times more drive space than could possibly be saved by printing.) The AIs themselves are weird - they're so advanced they can easily understand human speech and respond in colloquial speech themselves, but they are so dumb a child with no training beats one in chess 499 times out of 500. This isn't just a rapidly changing technology either - in 1980 there were many chess programs that were Grandmaster level. Then towards the end Robin needs to smuggle a computer onto the Food Ship and it is so big that it fills up a ship designed for five people, leaving no room for the human pilot. These things might be quirky & a little nostalgic if they didn't drive plot points.
The characters didn't sit well with me either. Cringe-inducing sex talk is rampant including a scene where the first thing a character does upon meeting strangers is to drop to his knees and masturbate. This character in particular speaks of little else but sex, and when he isn't talking of sex he is almost always described as "shrilling" or sulking. We get chapters devoted to skeevy old dudes giving sex advice and pickup lines to a tween, and a young girl goes into a machine where she gets hundreds or thousands of virtual sex acts.
Stepping back, I found the Heechee were dull and lifeless, the suspense and mystery of the first book was missing, the characters were drab and lifeless where they weren't icky, the science was laughably dated and the plot & resolution were disappointing. I had hopes with the first book but this did not build on any of the promise. I don't see myself reading any more of this series.
To start, it has not aged well. It seems to have positioned itself as "hard" science fiction but as the Heechee are treated as magical black boxes, that leaves the science of black holes and human technology. And it gets both of them frustratingly wrong. Black holes are treated like doorways or lines in the sand which you can walk around without ill effects but with so many great science and sci fi books in the last few decades, most people now know about spaghettification and the physical destruction they wreak before crossing the event horizon making the central idea of the book really hard to swallow. Since this is the central motivating factor behind the main character, I was repeatedly brought out of the story to say "seriously Fred, that's the story you're going with, really?". At the end of the book it's all resolved with an even more absurd, elementary-level garbling of physics to explain faster-than-light travel and, oh yeah, make the Heechee into gods. Bleh, ptooie.
Most distracting of all are the many, many detailed discussions about future computers which range from naive to absurd. To mention but a few, a plot point requires an advanced AI computer to run out of disc space and print out messages (which, here's the twist, get lost). Right there, anyone today would know any document that can be printed must be just a few kb or the printer would have to be spewing out thousands of tonnes per hour. In an era where 100 Gb fits on your fingernail, a temp folder can fill up with 20Gb without us noticing, it's beyond laughable to think that printing files could ever be a reasonable strategy for any computer. (Especially considering any AI program would likely take a billion times more drive space than could possibly be saved by printing.) The AIs themselves are weird - they're so advanced they can easily understand human speech and respond in colloquial speech themselves, but they are so dumb a child with no training beats one in chess 499 times out of 500. This isn't just a rapidly changing technology either - in 1980 there were many chess programs that were Grandmaster level. Then towards the end Robin needs to smuggle a computer onto the Food Ship and it is so big that it fills up a ship designed for five people, leaving no room for the human pilot. These things might be quirky & a little nostalgic if they didn't drive plot points.
The characters didn't sit well with me either. Cringe-inducing sex talk is rampant including a scene where the first thing a character does upon meeting strangers is to drop to his knees and masturbate. This character in particular speaks of little else but sex, and when he isn't talking of sex he is almost always described as "shrilling" or sulking. We get chapters devoted to skeevy old dudes giving sex advice and pickup lines to a tween, and a young girl goes into a machine where she gets hundreds or thousands of virtual sex acts.
Stepping back, I found the Heechee were dull and lifeless, the suspense and mystery of the first book was missing, the characters were drab and lifeless where they weren't icky, the science was laughably dated and the plot & resolution were disappointing. I had hopes with the first book but this did not build on any of the promise. I don't see myself reading any more of this series.
jaybatson's review against another edition
3.0
The interesting part of this book (to me) was the structural ideas about how AI software worked that Pohl introduced at the beginning of chapter 12. Remember: This book was first published in 1980, and the technical ideas are only now possible - and credibly could be considered underlying how AI could work now in the cloud, or in IBM Watson, or ....
Much of the Heechee story arc now shows its age, but stands up quite well to time. It is not at all a waste of a SciFi reader's time to read both this and the first book (Gateway). Given the dated-ness of the ideas, it's debatable whether I'll keep going in the series. Maybe one more....
Much of the Heechee story arc now shows its age, but stands up quite well to time. It is not at all a waste of a SciFi reader's time to read both this and the first book (Gateway). Given the dated-ness of the ideas, it's debatable whether I'll keep going in the series. Maybe one more....