Armwrestling the Dead

Oriel is a planet with a roof, a crusted atmospheric ceiling that falls in chunks like oversized snow. The snow is alive, the Ologists joke. It mimics life, but only out of the corner of your eye...or behind your back.

Oriel is a far-flung world whose raw potential is contested, although not understood. A deliberately crashed spaceship throws the planet's atmosphere into turmoil, kick-starting an evolutionary process that accelerates out of control. There is indigenous life on Oriel but in a form unrecognised by man. Soon though this, along with man himself, is transmuted into a pastiche of Earth-like forms, people and buildings grown from the land itself in a matter of days, briefly flourishing before falling into conflict and decay. It is difficult to tell what is human and what mutant. A few surviving humans struggle to make sense of this new world, whilst others are drawn to Oriel in a hopeless search for answers, redemption and even lost love.

In the end even reality itself is twisted.