Silicon is often brought up in science fiction as being very similar to carbon, just below it on the periodic table. The silicon-based "organic" molecules are more tightly bound and thus would find a higher temperature to be appropriate.

Being too hot for liquid water, what would it use as a solvent? That is, what would the Horta drink?

Hal clement wrote a novel where the aliens found Earth to be extremely cold, so much so that their base on Mercury's (thought at the time to be tidally locked) day side was further heated another hundred degrees with reflected sunlight. They breathed sulpher (an analog of oxygen) as a gas. I don't recall if he went into the chemistry in more detail.

Given a toolkit of a few kinds of atoms with different numbers of binding sites, the heavier ones in the same period might substitute for what we are familiar with, to a first approximation.

So once you switch Silicon for Carbon, what other changes might be useful to make a workable toolkit-for-life? What solvents are available/possible in different temperature and pressure regimes?

Silicon is often brought up in science fiction as being very similar to carbon, just below it on the periodic table. The silicon-based "organic" molecules are more tightly bound and thus would find a higher temperature to be appropriate.

Being too hot for liquid water, what would it use as a solvent? That is, what would the Horta drink?

Hal Clement wrote a novel where the aliens found Earth to be extremely cold, so much so that their base on Mercury's (thought at the time to be tidally locked) day side was further heated another hundred degrees with reflected sunlight. They breathed sulfur (an analog of oxygen) as a gas. I don't recall if he went into the chemistry in more detail.

Given a toolkit of a few kinds of atoms with different numbers of binding sites, the heavier ones in the same period might substitute for what we are familiar with, to a first approximation.

So once you switch Silicon for Carbon, what other changes might be useful to make a workable toolkit-for-life? What solvents are available/possible in different temperature and pressure regimes?