The future is a grim place in which the declining human population wanders drugged and lulled by electronic bliss. It’s a world without art, reading and children, a world that people would rather burn themselves alive than endure.

Even Spofforth, the most perfect machine ever created, cannot bear it and seeks only that which he cannot have – to cease to be. But there is hope for the future in the passion and joy that a man and woman discover in love and in books, hope even for Spofforth.

A haunting novel, reverberating with anguish but also celebrating love and the magic of a dream.

Frederik Pohl was on a streak when this Hugo Award finalist novel was published in 1980. Now back in print after an absence of nearly a decade, this unique science fiction novel is as fresh and entertaining as ever.

The story begins when the hero of “Gateway” finances an expedition to a distant alien spaceship that may end famine forever. On the ship, the explorers find a human boy, and evidence that reveals a powerful alien civilization is thriving on a transport ship headed right for Earth .