This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Ununnilium: Highly-recommended, BTW.
Say, I was struck by how Vinge devotes some time talking not only about how his alien biologies work, but how they integrate to the planet's ecosystem, how they could have evolved and even gives them some close evolutionary cousins, like monkeys are to us. I get the feeling this is very rare, and I was looking for some "you fail evolution forever" trope this was an aversion of, but I can't see anything that quite fits. Does such a trope exist, or are well thought-out ecologies more common than I thought in SF ?
Camacan: Cut these two example tropes while fleshing out some examples given without explanation: No details given and I just can't think of where they are meant to turn up.
