A review by rsledge
Gateway by Frederik Pohl

This is one of my favorite science fiction yarns. That's not to say it's one of the best books ever written, but something about the concept, and the way it's explored, landed with me and has stayed with me for a long time.

Spoiler

The sessions with the "psychiatrist" were my least favorite bits, to the point that they almost ruined the book for me at first. But the story was great -- not just the central idea of using these mysterious ships from a long-absent civilization to explore space, but the exploration of the human toll of such exploration.