Greg Bear wrote an excellent pair of books based on this premise : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forge_of_God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forge_of_Go

Greg Bear wrote an excellent pair of books based on this premise : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forge_of_God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forge_of_God and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anvil_of_Stars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anvil_of_Stars Anvil of Stars is often said to be the weaker of the pair, but it haunted me for several reasons, not least the extremely spooky ending!