The Colonists — Keith Fenwick

The Colonists is the long-awaited sequel to The Lifeboat. The MFY program is now sending astronauts on a one-way trip to Mars funded by a reality television show documenting their every move.

The few people who begin to question how an organisation starting life as a Ponzi scheme could suddenly develop the capability to send people into space and develop a settlement in the harsh Martian environment find themselves transported to the other side of the galaxy to a very different world.

Ultimately, the MFY program is a front for a project initiated by the Transcendents who inhabit a galactic version of the cloud to supply human bodies to meet their species continuity requirements. Sometimes the Transcendents decide to cut their own track which threatens to derail the entire project.