Asteroids... [was: Unix [was: do...until wisdom needed...]

[Steven D. Majewski]

As we range ever further off topic from Python, Andrew Dalke wrote:

> Steven D. Majewski asked:
> > I think the problem is: If planet-devastating asteroid collisions
> >are rare events, how would asteroid resistance evolve?
> 
> There's a sf book I read about 9 years ago.  I forgot the name
> but it was about a civilization on a planet where astrophysical
> catastrophies were frequent - once every thousand years.  The
> life on the planet evolved to become very compatible with each
> other, so that new "orgnanisms" could arise as they were really
> aggregates of different species working in a non-Darwinian fashion.
> 
> As a result, the civilization was based more on biology than
> physics, because it was easier to breed new useful species than
> to build technology from minerals.

Have you read Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" ? 
There are humans in it, but half of the story line is about
a race that's evolved on an unstable star system, where 
everything hibernates through a 30 year winter so deep that the 
atmosphere condenses and rains out of the sky. 
 (It's the prequel to his earlier book "A Fire Upon the Deep")
 
-- Steve Majewski