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One of whom destroys the Earth, perhaps accidentally, while fighting another... the plot also involves a human colony ship or planet that loses contact with the Earth; I think a small boy is also involved with the plot, although it's been 20-30 years since I read this story. Any help would be appreciated! It's driving my brother and me a bit batty.

Here's the batty brother's take: the main being has created others who are now at war, exploding stars. To escape, the main being accelerates the star of the human colony as a decoy. However, most of the story centers on some guy who winds up living forever, as they keep sticking him in cryogenic sleep and reawakening him. If memory serves me right, they abandon the colony planet for a while and move to asteroids as the star is weakening because it is using it's energy to accelerate. When it decelerates, it is the only star left in the universe. The one "being" was almost reduced to living off the energy of a black hole when it appears, and he sees it and sets off to go there, with a cryptic ending that the humans very well might fight him off.

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    Sounds somewhat similar to Saga of the Seven Suns, but Earth didn't actually get destroyed, just attacked.
    – DVK-on-Ahch-To
    Commented Sep 23, 2014 at 22:07
  • Ring by Stephen Baxter also has enormously powerful creatures (known as Photino Birds) residing inside stars. Also, there is also a generation ship, which loses contact with Earth.
    – Kao
    Commented Sep 24, 2014 at 7:18
  • My brother provided some additional information which might help: "most of the story centers on some guy who winds up living forever, as they keep sticking him in cryogenic sleep and reawakening him. If memory serves me right, they abandon the colony planet for a while and move to asteroids as the star is weakening because it is using it's energy to accelerate. When it decelerates, it is the only star left in the universe. The one "being" was almost reduced to living off the energy of a black hole when it appears, and he sees it and sets off to go there, with an uncertain ending."
    – Brian Hayes
    Commented Sep 24, 2014 at 20:00
  • That's it!! Thank you so much, John Meacham...
    – Brian Hayes
    Commented Sep 25, 2014 at 3:27

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You are most definitely refering to The World at the End of Time by Frederik Pohl. It alternates chapters following 'wan-to' one of the star based creatures and a young colonist.

I always enjoyed this book, as well as the superficially similar book by Larry Niven A World out of Time as they both deal with deep time.

On a re-read it is interesting to read just the odd or just the even chapters and get a complete story, just with more mystery about why things are happening.

World at the End of Time follows the story of a young Earth-born human, Viktor Sorricaine, on a colony expedition to a distant star system. The colonists are frozen for the long trip between stars. Unknown to both the humans of Earth and the colonists, the stars around them are home to immensely long-lived (effectively immortal) plasma creatures—with no knowledge of, or interest in, the activities of insignificant matter creatures.

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