The epilogue takes place ten years later and contradicts the nigh-incomprehensible conclusion. The colonists have established utopia on faraway Eridani. Characters who weren't on the ship are somehow present. Machines are evil. So are ancient gigantic multidimensional alien space spiders.
People are good.
Everything is beautiful. Everyone is happy. I wish I were making all of this up. I could fill up a book as big as The Marriage of the Living Dark enumerating all of this book's faults and problems, detailing its countless examples of bad writing, bad plotting, bad characterization, explaining the many ways in which it betrayed itself and its readership. But it doesn't deserve that much attention.