We Came Back Wrong

by Hough

Mars was supposed to be the hard part.

Turns out the hard part is what comes after, when the emergency becomes normal, and normal starts to feel like a promise.

At Site Alpha, they’ve built something that looks almost like a future. Not comfort, not safety, but continuity, the ability to wake up, work, argue, laugh, and plan for next week without pretending next week is guaranteed.

Then an impossible signal breaks the pattern.

It doesn’t come from Earth, and it doesn’t come from any human system. It arrives with the calm certainty of something that already knows the answer, offering a path deeper into the Solar System, and the kind of knowledge that could remake civilisation again. Fusion was only the first door. This is the corridor behind it.

But corridors have rules.

Rules you can obey without understanding, right up until the moment you misunderstand them once.

To accept is to step beyond the map, and trust that whatever is inviting them wants more than entertainment. To refuse is to stay on Mars, and live with the knowledge that the universe knocked, and they pretended not to be home.

Either way, humanity doesn’t get to go back to not knowing.

506 pages, Kindle Edition

Expected publication May 1, 2026

About the author

Phil Hough has been writing since the early days of the internet, when he kept a diary as part of Jerry Pournelle’s “Daynotes Gang.” These days he writes near-future science fiction that blends technology, intelligence services, and a mischievous AI with too much personality for its own good.

He lives in Oxfordshire, where he balances writing with family, an inquisitive greyhound, and an enthusiasm for bikes both pedal- and motor-driven.