By placing itself in some unimaginable future, and by taking as its theme the confrontation of human beings with the unknowable, Gateway veers close towards a kind of eleventh hour myth-making. And since there are no viable literary myths left (the nearest we come to them now is in television advertising), Frederik Pohl has had to adapt and exploit all of the old plots and images which now lie scattered on the ground. Gateway is an album of silhouettes.

The mind becomes a darkened room where innumerable outlines and images flicker across—the Western myth, the myth of 'the unconscious', the idea of romantic love—and it's only by an effort of will on the reader's part that they can be collected together and made coherent.

But because the images of science fiction can be so fanciful and extravagant, it is sometimes difficult to know quite how seriously...