In terms of “accidentally aroace space fiction representation,” check out the Bobs from the Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor and Pleck Decksetter from Mission to Zyxx.
Bob: has one love as a human adult. Becomes a sentient machine intelligence SPECIES with THOUSANDS if not MILLIONS of members. How many romantic partners? One Bob has one girlfriend. He lives thousands of lives as thousands of people interacting with numerous other communities and societies and species and he is completely unbothered by lack of other companionship and only ever finds ONE person he is interested in, and only ONE of him is even interested, the rest are like “weird, dude, but I guess, she seems cool”. Like Dennis E. Taylor doesn’t seem to notice that he made the most demi character in all of existence, but he’s right there. Absolutely content with either being solo or hanging out with his bros, there’s a one in one million chance of even MAYBE being interested in someone, and even then it’s not a huge thing and seen as explicitly uncommon/odd/unnecessary.
Pleck Decksetter is the incompetent human “leader” of a team of aliens and machine intelligences, and Mission to Zyxx is a long-form improv comedy podcast. It takes like three seasons for the actor playing Pleck to realize just how aroace all of his choices are, at which point he leans into it, but it is just. As far as I can remember, he NEVER responds to characters flirting with him and NEVER initiates and ALWAYS avoids sexual implications and situations. He just Does Not Do That. He considers himself just like a normal dude iirc, but unlike most of his companions who are frequently having raunchy dalliances, he absolutely ducks ANY of that and is very uncomfortable when he can’t wiggle out of weird sex stuff. (It’s a comedy improv podcast, there is of course lots of weird sex stuff.)
Dennis E. Taylor’s work is very much not queer in any way. He’s a white Canadian and you can absolutely read that throughout the text. Mission to Zyxx IS pretty queer, lots of gender and sexuality play. I enjoy both series, though I never got around to finishing Mission to Zyxx, and I only remember to look for more Bobiverse books every 3-5 years. They’re fun, funny, sometimes introspective (but never too deep) comedy sci-fi set in space. If you are looking for more accidental aroace MCs in light fiction, give them a go.
