Kairos by Gwyneth Jones

(Gollancz SF Masterworks, 2021)

Reviewed by Nick Hubble

It’s fantastic to see Gollancz reissuing so many of Gwyneth Jones’s novels in the, ahem, ‘Masterworks’ series. Whether one should wish classic status on any author is a moot point, but I can’t think of many writers in the SF field whose work over the last four decades is as distinctively personal and yet as universal in its significance. While the Clarke-Award-winning Bold as Love (2001) and Life (2004), previously unpublished in the UK, are perhaps the most obvious selections for this series, the inclusion of Kairos is the one that gives me the greatest joy. This is in part because some of it is set in Brighton, where Jones lives, in areas well known to me such as the wasteland near the racecourse and the Whitehawk neolithic camp. Generally, the ambience is evocative of the rundown alternative Brighton, rather than the developers’ nightmare which has emerged in recent years. However, more importantly, Kairos is the novel which best captures the magnitude of the change during that strange period in the 1980s when British history was to jump track so catastrophically.

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Review from BSFA Review 17 - Download your copy here.