Heechee

The original Heechee novella was published in the July–August 1972 issue of Worlds of If[4] – or If, a magazine Pohl had edited from 1961 to 1969 – and almost simultaneously in The Gold at the Starbow's End (Ballantine Books, 1972), a collection of short fiction by Pohl. In 1990 it was included in an all-Heechee collection, The Gateway Trip: Tales and Vignettes of the Heechee, comprising the novella and nine new short stories. The 1972 magazine story was illustrated by Jack Gaughan[4] and the 1990 collection by Frank Kelly Freas.[1][lower-alpha 1]

The Heechee originated [5] as a plot device enabling Pohl to give a plausible reason for humans to make the effort of colonizing the inhospitable planet that space probes had proven Venus to be. In "The Merchants of Venus", the Heechee (a name given to them by humans since nobody knows what they called themselves) are nowhere to be found, and humans know of them only from their advanced artifacts.

The first evidence comes with the discovery of tunnels constructed under the Venusian surface, each tunnel distinguished by a mysterious light-emitting cobalt blue metal covering the interior sections. The tunnels facilitate colonization, since they can be adapted to human use at a fraction of what it would cost to dig them from scratch, and they and the other artifacts attract scientists who want to study them; then adventurers and prospectors who hope to make money by discovering more artifacts; and finally tourists rich enough to travel to Venus. By the next parts of the series, enough people have come to Venus to make it a sovereign state and a major power.

In the main part of the series, the frontier moves away from Venus after explorers discover an asteroid orbiting perpendicular to the ecliptic plane, filled with cobalt blue tunnels, and hundreds of small Heechee spaceships. The asteroid, named Gateway by the discoverers, is occupied by the powerful nations of the world, who subsequently form the Gateway Corporation to administer the object.

By happenstance, one of the asteroid explorers enters a ship and hits a button, activating the vehicle and sending him on a thirty-day journey to another solar system. Upon his return, the Gateway Corporation decides to allow explorers (called Prospectors) to take trips on the mostly still-functioning ships. Even though the ships function, they have unknown pre-programmed destinations that cannot be changed, and humans cannot figure out the Heechee technology. Prospectors who find valuable materials or make discoveries are rewarded with substantial bonuses. Some Prospectors, though, become lost or arrive at worthless or dangerous locations. Ships on the asteroids come in three sizes and are defined as a "one", a "three", or a "five" based upon the number of passengers that they can carry (for the most part uncomfortably). Not every vehicle returns and there are other great hazards to the explorers.

The novel Gateway was serialized in Galaxy beginning November 1976, with illustrations by Vincent DiFate, and was published as a book by St. Martin's Press in April 1977.[6] It won four major awards as the year's best English-language speculative fiction or science fiction novel.[6][lower-alpha 2] Translations into French, German, Dutch, and Italian were all published during 1978 and 1979.[6][lower-alpha 3]

Gateway focuses on the exploits of one of those explorers, Robinette Broadhead. Broadhead hits the jackpot by becoming the first person to return from a black hole's event horizon. In the sequel, Broadhead uses the money to fund further discoveries involving Heechee technology, locating a Heechee food factory that is capable of turning raw carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen (CHON) from comets into edible food for an overpopulated Earth.

The Heechee do not appear until book three in the series, in which the reason for their absence is explained. Some 500,000 years earlier, the Heechee were active in exploring the galaxy, including an Australopithecine-inhabited Earth (where a sampling of the creatures were extracted and left to propagate to modern time on a Heechee station). The Heechee found out that there was a race of pure energy called simply The Foe (or alternatively called either The Assassins or The Kugel) wiping out civilizations on any planet where they emerged. The inherently cautious Heechee retreated to the interior of the black hole in the Galactic Core hoping to avoid being destroyed. Due to time dilation, only a few hundred years have passed for the Heechee in the interior of the black hole since they left the normal universe. While in hiding, Heechee scout ships are periodically sent outside the black hole to check on developments through the universe in general and the emerging Earth in particular.

When the latest Heechee crew exits the black hole, they are shocked to discover that humans are flying Heechee spaceships to all parts of the galaxy—and one of those places happens to be the Kugelblitz (a black hole made of energy and not matter), where The Foe is concentrated. The Heechee expected humans to discover the ships, but the cautious race believed Earth people would study and unlock the ships' secrets over a period of hundreds of years—and not simply take the equipment out for random rides in the dangerous galaxy.

When the Heechee finally arrive in force, it is decided that the human intrusion cannot be reversed and The Foe must be confronted.

The Heechee have collected evidence that The Foe have been adding matter into the universe. The Foe intend to tilt the balance and allow the Big Bang to be reversed and the universe to collapse into a Big Crunch billions of years into the future. The Foe intend that once the universe rebounds into a second big bang, it will do so in the form of pure energy, removing the atomic matter that The Foe regard as so much clutter. A détente is created between Broadhead and The Foe, allowing the aliens to continue their project and humans and Heechee growing to accept that they too will eventually progress toward bodiless minds.