The Annals of the Heechee

By: Frederik Pohl

Narrated by: Oliver Wyman

At last - the ultimate book in the renowned Heechee Saga!

Advanced Heechee technology had enabled Robinette Broadhead to live after death as a machine-stored personality, enjoying his life by flitting along the wires from party to party with a host of other machine-people. But suddenly his decadent existence ends when an all-powerful alien race intent on the utter destruction of all intelligent life reappears after eons of silence, and threatens the lives of all heechee and humans. Even Robin, virtually immortal and with unlimited access to millennia of accumulated data, cannot discover how to stop these aliens. It began to seem that only a face to face meeting could determine the future of the entire universe....

©1987 Frederik Pohl (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

a good continuation of already good story

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

If you like scifi, the heeche series are a good bet. This is the 4th book in the series, and i enjoyed all of the book, i only wish 5th and 6th were available as audio books...

Keeps getting better

I was underwhelmed by the first books, but all of the sequels have been great

awesome series

loved every second of it! a new favorite! a must read/listen. just do it! now!

Good book, but a great deal of mansplaining

I enjoyed the story. the arthur mansplained the time difference between meat people and digital beings about a thousand times. it felt like he repeated the point 1/4 of the book. other than that it was great.

Okay but nearly as good as the previous books

Would you try another book from Frederik Pohl and/or Oliver Wyman?

Yes, I definitely would, one bad book from Pohl won't turn me off yet.

What was most disappointing about Frederik Pohl’s story?

Spoilers for previous book:


We are constantly reminded that the virtual people are living in a virtual world. "I could see space through the viewscreen, but off course I wasn't really seeing it because I don't actually have eyes nor was the viewscreen real either..." Over and over and over, I get it has some point in the story but my goodness I felt beaten over the head with it.

What does Oliver Wyman bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Nothing, his voice acting was superb.

Was The Annals of the Heechee worth the listening time?

I'm iffy on that, I wanted another book because I felt the last one ended abruptly but part of me feels like I should have stopped there.
I liked getting some closure (sort of) on Robin.

robinettes whining got old fast

the science fiction is intriguing and fun but the character robinette really got old in the fourth book with his incessant griping. I like the idea of making lead characters human and all but it was really too much.

Excellent Narrator

Oliver Woman’s narration was in my opinion masterful. He made it seem as if different people were actually speaking the parts, not just one narrator. I enjoyed listening to him through the whole Heechee series of books.

It got tedious in places...

The problem with Frederick Pohl's writing is that it is pretty dense. And he is pretty insistent on teaching us something.
Which can get a little long winded.
He is very much Albert Einstein, and I am Robinette Broadhead.
But he does write a heck of a good story.

from my phone while at therapy, made it easier

have just finished the series again, first time was reading and second was audible. enjoyed both immensely.

beyond anticlimactic

if you thought book 3 was a plodding anticlimactic mess book 4 is here to say hild my beer. it legitimately feels like me Pohl had about 5 different ideas on what to do the book on and instead tried to mash them all together. at some points you get needless lectures on theoretical physics. and at others you are following the misadventures of 3 pointless kids and their later abduction by 2 pointless terrorists who serve no purpose in the overall plot. all leading up to the big moment where they meet the big enigmatic energy beings and literally nothing happens.