It's also a theme in some of Stephen Baxter's books, where lots of very "hot and fast" life developed almost immediately after the big bang in very extreme (to

It's also a theme in some of Stephen Baxter's books, where lots of very "hot and fast" life developed almost immediately after the big bang in very extreme (to us) environments, and influenced cosmological history by doing things like changing the balance between matter and anti-matter. Human-like life, on the other hand, developed later and is physically larger, colder, and slower.