Harvest Of Stars Conclusion

I said before that Harvest Of Stars takes off as imaginative hard sf near the end but what is remarkable is that it takes off three times:

(i) the history of what happens in the Solar System with AI claiming that it can model all possible forms of life and will survive Solar extinction;

(ii) the history of what happens at Alpha Centauri, on Demeter and between planets, with population growth, military conflict and further interstellar exploration;

(iii) the vision of life spreading through the universe.

The premise of the cosmic scarcity of organic life makes it unlikely that there will be some as close as Alpha Centauri but Anderson counteracts this by dooming that life to imminent destruction in a planetary collision. Life, in either sense, is not easy for his characters.