The Next Stage

Organisms cannot exist in vacuum and hard radiation. See Cosmic Processes. They need to take their environment with them. See On Board Jaccavrie. However, although organisms exist in only a very small part of the universe, stellar processes are necessary to fuse the elements necessary for life. Thus, it is as if the whole universe had been designed to generate life.

Next question: Since life has emerged from the sea onto land, might its next stage be to emerge from a planetary environment into interplanetary space? This might not be possible by natural selection but nor need it be. Three intermediate stages:

human beings in orbiting self-sustaining habitats, as in Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars;

intelligent beings at home in their natural environment, needing neither clothes nor buildings, like Anderson's Ythrians;

the space-traveling post-organic intelligences of Anderson's Genesis.

Might beings more akin to organic intelligences be able to exist in space or is that asking too much?