I have read the sci-fi short novel when I was a kid, and that was 80ies. The future earth have found signs of life on some distant planet and the science ship was sent to investigate, they got there but could not find anything on the empty rocky planet, the somewhat detective story leads them to realize the life is on the star of that system, not on the planet, and intelligent creatures are plasma based life forms. Unfortunately I barely remember this story, and cannot remember the name or author, I've read hundreds of sci-fi back then.

I also read some random popular science post about subatomic processes in cells, it gave some examples of which I recall one that fascinated me, it appears that there is a gate in a cell that opens or closes by a single electron to let a water molecule in or out I guess. This ignited my fantasy, what if there are more subatomic stuff going on in out bodies? How far it can go in reality and in fiction? What if our memory is subatomic? Could we build something on subatomic level, a logic gate for example? Can a life form be fully subatomic?

Also there is a galaxy on the Orion's belt, and the Orion is a cat, they briefly and somewhat humorously explored the idea in Men in Black which I watched many times.

There is quantum realm in the Ant-Man series. If it existed I guess super civilisation would try to go there or stay there to be more energy efficient.

There is also dr Manhattan, whose blue body I believe is photons. Imagine he was not the only one in that experiment, and our entire human race followed him, what would our civilisation be? No buildings, no machines, no crops, no transportation, would we even stay on the planet? What we would do freed from servicing our fragile bodies most of our time? I guess we would just gather together, have fun, party, make new life, teach each other endlessly. So maybe that's what stars are, each just have trillion of dr Manhattan offsprings and that's why we cannot see any signs of life cause we're looking for meatballs.