Reddit reviews A Crack in the Sky above Titan

You might be interested in this paper :

>Membrane alternatives in worlds without oxygen: Creation of an azotosome, by James Stevenson, Jonathan Lunine and Paulette Clancy.

On Earth, all cells are bounded by a lipid bilayer membrane. In water, phospholipids spontaneously form 2D membranes (which, in turn, spontaneously form enclosed cells). This is an abiotic process; when placed in water, almost any medium-length hydrocarbon with a polar group at one end will self-organize into bilayer membranes which form micelles.

The authors of that paper hypothesize the structure and properties compounds that would form micelles in cryogenic hydrocarbon oceans, as found on Titan. It's sort of like the mirror image of phospholipids in water; you have a polar molecule with a non-polar head-group interacting with a non-polar solvent.

They also make a case that the compounds needed to form these structures, which they name azotosomes, should form spontaneously in Titan's atmosphere from light catalyzed reactions between hydrocarbons and nitrogenous species, and rain down on the surface.

Anyhow, if you're interested in a sci-fi treatment of life on Titan, A Crack in the Sky Above Titan builds on current data about the surface conditions and chemistry. It also has some really interesting ideas about sailing, naval architecture and salvage operations on a cryogenic hydrocarbon ocean, which has really different hydrodynamics from water. The lack of surface tension, much lower viscosity and lower density would make sailing pretty tricky.

A Crack in the Sky above Titan sounds perfect for you! It's a short novella about future people who sail on the methane seas of Titan, one of Saturn's moons.