ENDLESS UNIVERSE by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Ha! Didn't expect a book review on a Saturday. Did ya?
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Well, I picked up this little gem at the used bookstore and it's only 26 years young. I've been meaning to read a little Marion Zimmer Bradley for a while. All I had to do was thumb through this one and see the word 'babies' and I was hooked.
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At first, I was a little put off. The Explorers are leaving a planet and the protagonist is bitter over a broken love affair. The person in charge of their starship's nursery sends him on a mission to buy a half dozen babies. I was curious enough to keep going. Doran transmits to a planet where babies are sold out of a warehouse. They're kept in special containers which feed, clean, and entertain them until they are sold. The seller's only ethic is he won't sell them for food.
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Through the course of the baby-buying and bringing back, I learned the Explorers are sterile. The reason they're 'buying' is because babies are not place for adoption. Instead of abortion or contraception, babies are sold from the womb like animals. But, to the Explorers, the babies are their precious children and their future.
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Sterility is just one sacrifice the Explorers make to do what they do. They have to undergo special adaptations to cope with hyperspace travel. As the story went along, I realized how lonely they were, how homesick. Yet, re-joining people living dirtside is very difficult for them.
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Doran becomes attached to one of the babies and wonders if that's what it's like to be a father. Even though he's young, he's made captain through the casting of lots. Likewise, the babies are raised communal-like. I was about to throw the book against the wall if the author was going to present that as the ideal way to raise human babies. She doesn't. Like regular humans, the Explorers developed this method of parenting over the course of hundreds of years.
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While the humans provide medical care, personal attachment care in the first months, and regularly volunteer in the Nursery, the children are primarily cared for by the Poohbears. No one knows why they're called Poohbears, except that they're big and furry. They're extremely long-lived and no one knows where they came from. They've always lived with the Explorers on their starships and worked as the childcare providers.
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The plot of the story centers on the Explorer's survival as a people and a culture when they cannot procreate. A series of tragedies results in deaths which leaves the starship short-handed and the children can't grow up fast enough to replace them. They're faced with their own extinction. They have to decide whether to live dirtside or join up with another Explorer ship and crew. Either choice is gut-wrenching for them. Their starship, the Gypsy Moth, is their universe, their family, their culture. Accepting the presence of others and adapting to working with others, even if they are Explorers too, is extremely disconcerting for them. I won't tell you what they decide.
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This was a fabulous start for me with the novels of Marion Zimmer Bradley. I usually take a week to read a book in between everything else I do in my uber-schedule. ENDLESS UNIVERSE took three hours and that's why I'm telling you about it on a Saturday instead of a Thursday. Marion Zimmer Bradley has been around for decades. You can find her books in any bookstore or library.
:o)