Starplex

There is much to be appreciated about this novel: big ideas, extrapolated from what we actually know about the Big Bang and our universe. There's also a subplot involving the main character going through a midlife crisis, feeling unsatified by his wife and lusting after a much-younger colleague -- which was no doubt of great interest to the author, who was 36 when this book was published, but it has not aged well and it is just eye-rollingly tedious.

However, this subplot for the most part occurs in the first half of the book, and if the reader can resist the urge to throw the book at the wall up to that point, the latter half of the book ends up being much more rewarding, encompassing some interesting hypothetical physics and musings on what interactions between extremely different alien species might be like -- and what might be considered most important in a multi-species universe. Worth reading for the big ideas, despite the self-absorbed aspects in the first half of the novel.