Heechee Rendezvous - Frederik Pohl

A while ago publisher Baen experimented with an online game. By playing it you could win free e-books. It didn't last for very long but I did manage to gather enough points to get a few free books out of it and since I enjoyed Gateway (1977) and Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (1980) quite a bit, this third volume in Frederik Pohl's Heechee saga was one of them. It's one of a number of Pohl's novels Baen converted to e-books. It would appear it was a bit of a rush job. For some reason they couldn't be bothered to put on some decent cover art (granted, given what passes for cover art at that publisher, it might actually be a blessing) and my epub edition contains an annoying number of typos and formatting errors. Quite frankly, it is a good thing I didn't pay for it or I'd want my money back. But in the end it is the story that counts, so let's have a look at that.

In this third volume Pohl takes us back to see his main character Robinette Broadhead again. He is still rich as Croesus, happily married to a beautiful wife and in the possession of a top notch health insurance policy that keeps him healthy even though he is getting on in years. Despite this, or maybe because of this, guilt still gnaws at him. So much so that he feels impelled to seek out his old councilor Siegfrid once more. As it turns out, Robinette is not done with the Heechee quite yet, or with sophisticated computer programs for that matter.

Where the first two novels managed to rake in quite a few award nominations and awards, Gateway in particular is considered one of Pohl's finest, at this point in the series interest was clearly waning. It was nominated for a Locus SF Award but lost to Larry Niven's The Integral Trees. In 1984 the peak of Pohl's writing career lay some years behind him. Heechee Rendezvous still has that undertone of satire in it but the story itself and the way it is told, will grate on more than a few readers.

Robinette himself is the main narrator but part of the story is also told by an artificial intelligence based on Albert Einstein. The story switches point of view between those two frequently and not always in a smooth way. Albert's tone is a bit pedantic, whereas Robinette himself has a tendency to throw in cliffhangers and if-I'd-only-known type of phrases. It is, in other words, a very good example of how to annoy your readers.

The story itself is amusing enough though. We even end up in Rotterdam for a bit. Having lived there for a couple of years, I recognized some of the places Pohl mentioned. He even mixes in a bit of poor Dutch. Of course he then manages to mortally offend a whole nation (or maybe two) by having Robinette's Russian wife mention that in her opinion speaking Dutch is much the same as speaking German. Ouch! It makes me wonder if Pohl has ever been here though, or if it is all book research.

Pohl throws in quite a bit of cosmology and astrophysics in his story. It is not so much that your average science fiction reader can't follow but enough to know that you are reading a book by a man for whom science fiction contained actual science. One of the major plot points is Albert's inability to convince himself of the validity of quantum mechanics for instance. He still firmly beliefs in a universe governed by predictable laws of nature. Or as he himself puts it: God does not play dice. There is also a bit of Stephen Hawking hidden in the text and some speculation about the ultimate fate of the universe. Some of it has been overtaken by new theories already but not so much as to make this aspect of the story seem very dated.

The plot itself unveils a new layer in the mystery of the Heechee, their sudden disappearance and the reason for their self-imposed exile. You could even say that the story ends on a bit of a cliffhanger. Pohl does tie up the plot in some ways but he also leaves the door wide open for sequels. He would eventually write three more Heechee books, The Annals of the Heechee (1987). The Gateway Trip (1990) and The Boy Who Would Live Forever (2004). Judging from this book, I'm not entirely sure there is material for three books in this series. I do have two of the three sequels though. I may give the next one a go too.

Given the high standard Pohl sets in the first novel of this series, Heechee Rendezvous is a bit of a disappointment. It is entertaining in a way but simply not very well written. Robinette is not the most sympathetic of characters. This is something I can deal with but Pohl somehow manages to continually make him get on the reader's nerves. Quite an achievement, but when I start feeling it is a blessing the book is only 273 pages long, he may have overdone it just a bit. Still, if you enjoy the riddle the Heechee pose, it is very  readable. Just don't expect Pohl to rise to the level he attained in the 1970s.

Book Details
Title: Heechee Rendezvous
Author: Frederik Pohl
Publisher: Baen
Pages: 273
Year: Unknown
Language: English
Format: E-book
ISBN: 978-1-4516-3781-6
First published: 1984