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

[Andrew Dalke]

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.

Also an interesting book because there was a complete lack of
humans - unusual in most sf.

                    Andrew
                    dalke at acm.org