Vernor Vinge introduces many fantastic ideas in his really excellent scifi book A Fire Upon the Deep. He has many fascinating concepts like what if somehow there are parts of the universe where you can go faster than the speed of light, and you would be smarter there, that's where the super intelligent beings go. Guess what, we humans live in the slow zone, you morons. Also there it's a ftl communication method that is like good old Usenet. There is (what looked credible to me) a fascinating set of multiple brain beings, thing like dogs where together 5 of them form one "intelligence" where the different personalities combine in interesting ways.

And I was sad to notice he died this year, aged 79. A real cs prof who wrote sci fi.