Anna's Reviews > Proof of Concept

I’ve had this obscure novella by Gwyneth Jones on my to-read list for a few years and recently located a copy on eBay. I’m not generally a completist, but have read a good many of Jones’ novels. Her Bold as Love series is one of my favourite visions of the future: a guardedly utopian Britain in which technological civilisation has largely collapsed and government is by attractive rockstars. I highly recommend it. Her other sci-fi tends to be intellectually interesting but isn't as emotionally compelling. That certainly holds for ‘Proof of Concept’, which contains some fascinating ideas while not doing a lot to develop the narrator. The setting is an overpopulated world of environmental collapse, in which the richest 1% are funding scientific efforts at interstellar space travel. Nothing hugely original there. The specific setting of the story is far more distinctive and intriguing: a massive underground cavern, in which scientists and reality TV stars are sealed off together for a year. The purpose of this is to enable experiments on the Needle, which may allow colonisation of a distant planet. Kir, the narrator, has an AI in her brain and is trying to work out what the heck is going on. This eventually becomes clear, although the twist was not hugely surprising. I preferred the creepiness that built up to the revelation, as the atmosphere in the cavern was compellingly peculiar. Gwyneth Jones has a specific knack for evoking caves and underground tunnels; she also did so in Spirit: or, The Princess of Bois Dormant. I have no further commentary to make as, despite some excellent world-building details, ‘Proof of Concept’ wasn’t as memorable as I’d hoped.