I think Gateway is one of the master pieces of scifi. I also enjoyed the next two Heechee novels. But The Annals of the Heechee just seems like a completely pointless book, that doesn't even involve the Heechee. Nothing really happens. Instead Pohl fills 300 pages of Robinette talking about him (but not really physical him, wink wink, over and over again), or eccentric AI, or Robinette endlessly complaining about how slow "meat" people are, all the while me asking why he doesn't just adjust his virtual clock to run slow when he's interacting with "meat" people. The entire book is just tedious. So disappointed because, primarily due to Gateway, Pohl is one of my favorite authors. But this one is a stinker.