Wilderness Five by C. R. Walton

SPSFC 2024

Extinction is only the beginning . . . Accelerated evolution ‘Manifold’ technology has changed everything – dead worlds and asteroids bloom with strange new life. People flocked to colonise the new wilderness only barely to survive obliteration by a Manifold experiment gone wrong. Like so many others, Bryn watched his people burn that day. Unlike the rest, Bryn finds himself hailed as the lone hero who saved his species. Only he knows better. Bryn’s grim new life of solitude in the depths of the wilderness is shattered when the past comes calling. His presence is requested on the ringworld Wilderness Five. There, at the edge of inhabited space, the oldest and richest man in the System has expended every drop of his money and influence to launch the most daring Manifold experiment ever attempted. Bryn’s moment has come. Plunged back into a world of faceless corporations, hell-bent scientists, and terrifying engineered species, he must learn to finally live up to his reputation. Otherwise, nature will take its course with humanity once and for all. On Wilderness Five, the fate of the species comes down to one question: whom to trust and whom to kill?