Nope, definitely Simmons, and thinking about it I’m fairly sure this is in Ilium. There’s a passage talking about two men, and he sticks in some throwaway line to the effect of “they were partners, but not in the ridiculous sense that men pretended to be married in the 21st century, which was stupid, of course”. I remember how jarring it was. And iirc there were some previous bits of world-building that had set my Islamophobia radar on high alert - I didn’t become aware of his bigoted views until later but it was exactly the kind of thing I’d smelled in the novel.
5 Likes
