Frederik Pohl

In Book Two of the Heechee Saga, Robinette Broadhead is on his way to making a fortune by bankrolling an expedition to the Food Factory--a Heechee spaceship that can graze the cometary cloud and transfor the basic elements of the universe into untold quantities of food. But even as he gambles on the breakthrough technology, he is wracked with the guilt of losing his wife, poised forever at the "event horizon" of a black hole where Robin had abaondoned her. As more and more information comes back from the expedition, Robin grows ever hopeful that he can rescue his beloved Gelle-Klara Moynlin. After three and a years, the factory is discovered to work, and a human is found aboard. Robin's suffering may be just about over.... THE HEECHEE SAGA Book One: Gateway Book Two: Beyond the Blue Event Horizon Book Three: Heechee Rendezvous Book Four: The Annals of the Heechee From the Paperback edition.

Beyond the Blue Event Horizon

Sarah Sammis

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.

Beyond the Blue Event Horizon

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