stevensfo wrote:during its anticipated collision with the Andromeda Galaxy.My memory may be playing tricks, but I think that two galaxies colliding, and the consequences, appeared in a SciFi book by E.E. Doc Smith. I can't remember it very well. When I was about 12-ish, I started his 'Skylark of Space' series and loved it. It was only years later that I discovered that he started writing them before 1920 !! The fact that concepts of force fields and interstellar travel predated William Shatner was a revelation!
Steve
In E E Doc Smith's Lensman space opera the two galaxies had collided two billion years ago creating lots of planets in the process including Earth (the timescales are of course wrong as the Earth is more than twice as old as that). I never really got into E E Doc Smith so I'm not 100% sure if the Skylark and Lensman series are set in the same universe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lensman_seriesThe series begins with Triplanetary, beginning two billion years before the present time and continuing into the near future. The universe has no life-forms aside from the ancient Arisians, and few planets besides the Arisians' native world. The peaceful Arisians have foregone physical skills in order to develop contemplative mental power. The underlying assumption for this series, based on theories of stellar evolution extant at the time of the books' writing, is that planets form only rarely, and therefore our First and Second Galaxies, with their many billions of planets, are unique.
The Eddorians, a dictatorial, power-hungry race, come into our universe from an alien space-time continuum after observing that our galaxy and a sister galaxy (the Second Galaxy) are passing through each other. This will result in the formation of billions of planets and the development of life upon some of them. Dominance over these life forms would offer the Eddorians an opportunity to satisfy their lust for power and control.
Although the Eddorians have developed mental powers almost equal to those of the Arisians, they rely instead for the most part on physical power, which has come to be exercised on their behalf by a hierarchy of underling races. They see the many races in the universe, with which the Arisians were intending to build a peaceful civilization, as fodder for their power drive.