Starplex by Robert J. Sawyer

I will read all the Hugo nominees. I really will. At this point, I'm just under half-way done, and for the very first time, I've bought a membership so I can vote on the awards. Hopefully that'll mean I'll read last year's books this year, and not two or three years hence, which has pretty much been the way it's gone for the last little while. When you mostly get books out from the library, you're either on a ton of wait lists, or you're content being a little bit behind.

So as I continued my trek through the Hugo Best Novel nominees, I came to that run of Robert J. Sawyer nominations. He had a very fervent fanbase there for a while, and so, rarely a year went by without a nomination. I am not the biggest Sawyer fan, although I don't mind his stuff. It's straight-forward commercial fiction, and the twists are often fairly good, although his women are mostly identified by the largeness of their boobs.

(That's not really better in this book - at one point, the main character thinks about the woman he wants to cheat on his wife with with the massively unflattering description that she was so attractive he often didn't notice how intelligent she was. Dudes, if you didn't already know, this is not a compliment any woman wants to hear.  I do not, and I keep saying this, mind romances or attractions that are also physical. It's when they're nothing BUT physical, and the brain attached is an extreme afterthought, that I get annoyed.)

There is a lot going on in this book, and then there's the subplot where the main character reaches middle age, and, according to the bullshit evolutionary psychology in this book, inevitably wants to have an affair, to prove his manhood. I mean, how else will you deal with hair falling out? He loves his wife and their marriage is good, but you know, he's attracted to this other woman, and what are you going to do?

You know what I like about being an adult? (I talked this one over extensively with my husband, and he was less forgiving of Sawyer than I was prepared to be.) I like that eventually you learn that while you may know people to whom you are attracted when you're an adult and in a happy, monogamous relationship (as the characters in the book are), attraction does not equal action. Eventually, you learn that you can experience attraction and do absolutely freaking nothing about it. It's totally a possibility. I assume my husband will not only be attracted to me for his entire life. I know damn well I'll sometimes find other people attractive. But you know what? I always find him attractive too, and he does me. What I have is far too awesome to ditch any time I experience pantsfeelings. (Thank you Captain Awkward for the terminology!)

I mean, people can do whatever they want with their lives, as long as everyone's aware and on board. If multiple partners are important to you, sort out your life so that's part of it, with everyone's willing consent. But this notion that that if you want to boink someone half your age, you just have to, because you're middle-aged is nonsense.

So I didn't like that subplot very much.

The rest of the book was fine. Humanity is one of four races on Starplex, a giant ship exploring the wormholes riddling the galaxy, and looking for first contact. They find more than they expected when suns, literal, huge, active suns, start coming through the wormholes, followed by dark matter creatures with whom humans, dolphins, and two alien species have very little in common.

Throw in a little time travel, some intergalactic wormholes, and a sudden attack from an ally, and there's a lot going on. I can't say any of it rocked my socks off, but it was solid SF. If only we could get to a point where not only can we imagine dark matter beings, time travel, and wormholes, we could also make the ultimate leap to seeing women as more than their boobs.