Gateway, by Frederik Pohl, has been one of my favorite science fiction novels for 30 years, ever since I first read it in 1978, and it's also one of the few books that have won both the Hugo and the Nebula, two of the top awards given by the sf community. Quite simply, it's a grand read. Robinette Broadhead relates the story of his life on (and off) the asteroid Gateway to his psychiatrist, a robot whom he's nicknamed Sigfrid von Shrink. (Even though he's fictional, I've often thought that the AI--artificial intelligence--Sigfrid sets the gold standard for psychotherapists.) When Broadhead wins a lottery in his native Wyoming, he uses his winnings to get a seat on the first space ship that's heading for Gateway, in order to make his fortune prospecting. Now run by a huge multinational corporation, Gateway appears to have once been the home of an alien race whom the humans call Heechees. (What they called themselves is anyone's guess.) These aliens quite clearly left Gateway millennia before the humans arrived, but they left behind a large number of working spacecraft, as well as other artifacts, that continue to puzzle human scientists, who would love to discover their original function and/or use. Any prospector who comes to Gateway can choose to go back out into space in any of the remaining spacecraft. The only catch is that each one is preprogrammed, and no one can figure out what its intended destination is, how long the trip will take, or how to change destinations once it's underway. When you're in a Heechee craft, you're forced to put your faith in Heechee plans and know-how. And what's wise for a Heechee is not necessarily wise for a human. These unpredictable journeys occasionally lead to fame and fortune for the risk-taking prospectors, but more often end in tragedy. What happens to Broadhead turns out to be a mix of fame, fortune, and tragedy, all of which involve Klara, a fellow prospector and the great love of his life--hence the necessity for his visits to Sigfrid, many years after the events he's describing. I think what keeps me rereading this novel is not the characters, well-drawn and interesting as they are, or the story, but rather wondering, down through all the years since I first discovered Gateway, if I would ever have had the nerve to take one of those Heechee spacecraft out into unknown, uncharted, and oh-so-dangerous territory. (Probably not.)

Although you'll find Difficult Conversations: How To Discuss What Matters Most, by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen, on the self-help shelves in most bookstores, the library will probably have it cataloged more accurately in the "interpersonal relationships" section. Refreshingly plain spoken, the book was researched and written by the deputy director and two affiliates of the Harvard Negotiation Project, at Harvard Law School, which defines its mission as "to improve the theory, teaching, and practice of negotiation and dispute resolution, so that people can deal more constructively with conflicts ranging from the interpersonal to the international." One of the reasons I liked it so much is that the authors so clearly respect the intelligence of their readers. At the core of Difficult Conversations is a thorough and coherent analysis of the ways and whys we talk to each other when the stakes are high and our defenses are up. Using the information gained from a fifteen-year study, the authors' insights are humane, incisive, and wonderfully useful for those of us interested in both understanding and changing habitual responses. Conversation, in the authors' view, is as fascinating and complex as the people who engage in it, and getting better at the tough talks we find ourselves in so often is something that can benefit us all. One of my favorite parts of the book addresses our tendency to think that we need to stay rational and keep the messy feelings out of a difficult conversation with our significant other, our children, our co-workers, and our friends. "The problem with this reasoning," the authors point out, "is that it fails to take account of one simple fact: difficult conversations do not just involve feelings, they are at their very core about feelings. Feelings are not some noisy byproduct of engaging in difficult talk, they are an integral part of the conflict. Engaging in a difficult conversation without talking about feelings is like staging an opera without the music. You'll get the plot but miss the point."

In my seemingly never-ending search for engrossing mysteries, I was delighted to discover Fred Vargas' Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand. (Although two other titles by the French author are translated into English and available in the U.S., this is the first one I've read.) The job of tracking down murderers gets personal for Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg of the French National Police when a serial killer, long thought to be dead, seems to have risen from the grave and resumed his fiendishly clever murders. The Commissaire's connection with the killer known as "the Trident" (because of the method of his murders--use your imagination), began when, as a teen, Adamsberg's own brother was (falsely?) convicted of killing his young girlfriend, a crime Adamsberg always believed was committed by the Trident. In the course of his investigations (which have to remain secret from his superiors and most of his co-workers, since only Adamsberg is convinced of the return of his old nemesis), the Commissaire and members of his squad travel to Quebec for some training in CSI techniques, which come in handy at a crucial moment in the story. An engaging hero, a smooth translation, and a creative plot all add up to one of the best new mysteries from across the Atlantic that I've found in ages.