This article and the posts remind me of a science fiction novel I read many years ago. The premise was an ancient advanced civilization would send out robotic “factory ships” to pre-colonize worlds by mass producing everything needed for them. Houses, appliances, cities, everything. Then when the people showed up a few decades later, a whole planet with every robotic convenience was already waiting for them.
However, one of the factory ships got too close to a supernova on the way out, or something like that, and landed with a damaged central computer on Titan or on Triton, not sure which. Well, it tried to produce the items it was programmed to produce, but they were not what they were supposed to be. In the end, the “defective” robotic devices it produced became self-replicating, and evolved into mechanical life forms, eventually the most advanced of them evolved to the point of the becoming sentient. The life forms were all metallic robots, but the materials they used were all complex hydrocarbons found on the cold moon, in a reversal of our hydrocarbon life/metal instrumentalities form of life.
The humans arrived and found this “robot civilization” and had to deal with them, and there was a very interesting interplay between the two species.
Damned if I can recall the name of that book.
Don’t feel too bad. I can’t even remember posting this thread..-}
I made a half-ass attempt to search for it, bupkis. You’ll need to find a more avid reader of sci-fi.