Katherine's Reviews > Proof of Concept

On a failing, crumbling, future Earth, where climate change has pushed the remaining human civilizations into every smaller and more dangerous areas, the remaining hope for humanity lies in an experimental science installation currently testing new capabilities for navigation towards distant, habitable exoplanets. Kir is one of the scientists confined to The Needle for the duration of the project, but she understands her role at this underground compound has less to do with her skills and everything to do with the quantum artificial intelligence, Altair, hosted in her brain. While aboard, Altair tries to warn Kir about the mission- he knows something that he can’t tell. But between the inconsistencies of communication, his own safety barriers in Kir’s brain, and the speed of the revolving dangers, he may not be able to get the message across before it’s far too late.

Proof of Concept was peculiar. I think, reading the synopsis again a few times after finishing this novella, it makes slightly more sense than I thought it did during most of the reading. There were a lot of fictional-futuristic concepts floated around in the book, characteristics of a science-minded plot that was almost too contrived to be easily understood. I hard a very difficult time getting a good sense of setting or character from any point in the book. Descriptions of the characters were relatively minimal, The Needle itself is left up to our imaginations other than science labs, common areas, which are relatively easy to conjure. Altair only makes a couple appearances, which was disappointing after being led to believe that he might play a much more central role- his existence is almost incidental in the story overall. There were just too many concepts, and not enough time to explore in the speedy 138 pages, to make this novella feel grounded and intentional. I wanted to be delighted, but Proof of Concept mostly left me feeling bereft of a richness of detail and crafty world building that could have elevated the story to much higher levels.