[Steely Tom]

I know that far too many scientists believe in the Goldilocks zone, and that for life to happen, the conditions need to be like Earth.

Well, I don’t believe conditions need to be like that on Earth, or a preferable distance away from a star for life to survive.

In one of Arthur Clarke's stories, he describes a form of life that might exist on a planet that orbits a far hotter star than our sun, burned to utter desiccation by intense blasts of ultraviolet and soft x-rays. On that planet (he wrote) that life existed as two-dimensional orderly patterns that etched themselves in the surfaces of rocks. Powered by the intense flood of energy all around them, they took a thousand years to complete a single thought... but they didn't care, they had billions of years ahead of them.

Sorry I don't remember what book. It may have been in Childhood's End, or in one of his novellas, like Against The Fall of Night.

[EvilOverlord]

The Voor from A.A. Attanasio's Radix and The Last Legends of Earth evolved in a harsh environment as well. Their planet orbited a black hole that showered them with radiation. Consequently, life arose inside the mountains on the barren planet, shielded enough from the radiation to be non-lethal, but allowing enough through to supply energy for life.