It's far more practical to adapt life to space and other planets, than it is to adapt space and other planets to human life. The problem with writing a story about artificial life exploring the universe is that it's unrelatable without humans in it.
I think humans are stuck on earth permanently because there are no other environments in the solar system we can live in as easily as earth. Traditional sci-fi explained this away using overpopulation pressures, but overpopulation is fading as a reality and plausible narrative device. And forget about interstellar travel, it's too dangerous and takes too long.
If intelligent DNA-based life is still around on earth when it starts getting too hot because of the sun's expansion and it all needs to flee, it will have continued to evolve such that it will be unrecognizable and unrelatable to us. And by then I expect artificial life to have spread to such an extent that biological life on earth is basically a historical footnote.
I actually think life in the broadest sense will spread from earth to other places in the galaxy, but it will be completely alien compared to human life.
I think humans are stuck on earth permanently because there are no other environments in the solar system we can live in as easily as earth. Traditional sci-fi explained this away using overpopulation pressures, but overpopulation is fading as a reality and plausible narrative device. And forget about interstellar travel, it's too dangerous and takes too long.
If intelligent DNA-based life is still around on earth when it starts getting too hot because of the sun's expansion and it all needs to flee, it will have continued to evolve such that it will be unrecognizable and unrelatable to us. And by then I expect artificial life to have spread to such an extent that biological life on earth is basically a historical footnote.
I actually think life in the broadest sense will spread from earth to other places in the galaxy, but it will be completely alien compared to human life.