Probability Moon

Probability Trilogy #1

by Nancy Kress

Humankind has expanded out into interstellar space using star gates-technological remnants left behind by an ancient, long-vanished race. But the technology comes with a price. Among the stars, humanity encountered the Fallers, a strange alien race bent on nothing short of genocide. It's all-out war, and humanity is losing.

In this fragile situation, a new planet is discovered, inhabited by a pre-industrial race who experience "shared reality"-they're literally compelled to share the same worldview. A team of human scientists is dispatched-but what they don't know is that their mission of first contact is actually a covert military operation.

For one of the planet's moons is really a huge mysterious artifact of the same origin as the star gates . . . and it just may be the key to winning the war.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Aliens, Speculative Fiction, Space, Science Fiction Fantasy

320 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2000

About the author

Nancy Kress is an American science fiction writer. She began writing in 1976 but has achieved her greatest notice since the publication of her Hugo and Nebula-winning 1991 novella Beggars in Spain which was later expanded into a novel with the same title. In addition to her novels, Kress has written numerous short stories and is a regular columnist for Writer's Digest. She is a regular at Clarion writing workshops and at The Writers Center in Bethesda, Maryland. During the Winter of 2008/09, Nancy Kress is the Picador Guest Professor for Literature at the University of Leipzig's Institute for American Studies in Leipzig, Germany.

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Khalid Abdul-Mumin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Old school classic stuff.
A new spin on a popular answer to the Fermi Paradox. Very intriguing speculative science, interesting alien visualizations and an all round page turner of a space opera.

Read I
2023

[Dirk Grobbelaar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, if this novel doesn’t just open with one of the most awkward opening paragraphs ever. But that’s neither here nor there.

Probability Moon – review attempt #1 #2 #3

Through the space tunnels, humans had discovered thirty-six other sentient species, and thirty-five of them had been, in essence, human. They possessed only minor variations in skeletal structure, biochemistry, genome, and neurology. The prevailing theory was that something -- or some race -- had seeded the galaxy with a common pseudo-human ancestor, and subsequent evolution had diverged only as various planetary conditions favored.

Okay, I need to own up to something. I dislike criticizing books. I mean, what’s the point, with so many varying tastes? Besides, it’s not like I could do better! That said, I do form opinions. They are mine and may not be yours, which is why I will try to (as much as possible) qualify what it is that I didn’t like about this book, since these may be the very things that may appeal to someone else.

Don’t be fooled when this book gets touted as a novel about a big dumb object, though. Yes, there is an artifact. No, it doesn’t really get explored (at least not in any way you might expect). Probability Moon is basically an Anthropological Science Fiction tale taking place planetside, which isn’t, by default, a bad thing, but…

Probability #1

….here’s the problem with recipes: you can have the best ingredients, but you can’t just place them on a plate and present it as cake. This novel certainly has the makings of a good (even great) story: there are some cool ideas, but the end result falls just a bit flat. The Worlders are a right bunch of Muppets and I couldn’t have cared less for them and their shared reality (or their flowers) if I had tried. I also didn’t really click with any of the human characters. On the flip side, I did somewhat enjoy the underlying mystery of Orbital Object #7 (Purpose? Origin?), but this was smothered by too much exposition-via-dialogue and an unrewarding pay-off. I just found the whole approach to the artifact a bit subdued (i.e. not generating any excitement). And last but not least, the story struck me as too political and preachy.

Probability #2

…what really annoyed me the most is that I’d been looking forward to finally reading Probability Moon. I wanted to like it, but I couldn’t get all that into it because it wasn’t what I had expected. That said: the Worlders are still a right bunch of Muppets.

Now what?

If this is, in fact, a case of disappointment trumping objectivity, then I will revisit this review in the near future, but for now this will have to do. In fact, in light of this possibility probability (ho ho) I am settling at two stars, since it probably wouldn’t be fair to give it only one. If you like character driven Anthropological Science Fiction stories (with a lot of really hard science) you may yet enjoy this, if you can identify with the characters. Also: flowers, flowers, and more flowers.

[Lightreads · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s weird, considering how much scifi I read, that I don’t actually like aliens much. We get into someone’s made-up extra-terrestrial culture, I glaze over. And alien point-of-view chapters, oh man. Pretty close to a death knell. A lot of people use the same stupid author tricks on aliens that they do on minorities – ‘here are my aliens! They are all monolithically the same!’ ‘Here are my aliens! Their function is to make you review this book and say how it made you think deeply about humanity!’ ‘Here are my aliens! They’re here because I think stuntwriting is just so fucking cool and I want to spend three hundred pages referring to everything in the neutral gender! Suck it!’ “Here are my aliens! They turn me on!’

These aliens, though, these aliens were pretty cool. She pulls off the ‘there is only one major difference between this race and humanity’ thing, and it actually works. The difference is that this is a neurobiological monoculture. There is a biological mechanism preventing intergroup discord because it requires concurrent understanding of what is ‘true.’ So they can’t war with each other, oh, and they also slaughter their analogs for the mentally disabled, those who don’t have the accordance mechanism and who can’t participate in shared society.

It should be didactic and heavy-handed, but it really isn’t. There’s no glory here, or vilification. Just a culture, and how it works. This is one of those books about an anthropological expedition with, oops, military motives, and that sort of thing usually bores me, but this one had something extra to it. It’s thinking about normative understandings, and how they work, and what happens when someone’s mind goes howling off at a perpendicular. And I’m not 100% sure I’m cool with a particular plot point involving a mentally ill character, but it’s been a few weeks and I’m still thinking about it, so that’s something right there.

[Kara Babcock · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is exactly what I needed after the disappointing Clan of the Cave Bear. Nancy Kress is an author whose ability to make me think never fails, even if I don't always enjoy her characterization. She doesn't just touch on or grapple with Big Ideas; she stalks them, lassos them, and puts them to work doing her bidding. And she is really, really smart. Wikipedia doesn't tell me what she specialized in during her formal education, so I'm not sure how much of the knowledge that shines through her stories comes from that and how much is the result of careful research. In any event, Nancy Kress is a truly amazing author. I've read several of her novels, but they have all been set in the near future. Probability Moon, on the other hand, is hard science fiction set in a universe where humanity has begun colonizing the stars. I couldn't wait to see Kress' take on this.

This book has great back cover copy. I read it aloud in a dramatic voice twice, and it rocks. It could be the opening narration for a video game cutscene. To summarize the summary: humans get around using space tunnel technology left behind by a long-gone species. They're in a war with another species, the Fallers. They've discovered a planet whose inhabitants experience "shared reality". More importantly for the human military, one of the moons orbiting that planet is an ancient weapon built by the same species who built the space tunnels. It's Nancy Kress, and it's hard science fiction. So it's going to be awesome, right?

In hindsight, I confess my expectations for this book were probably too high. As the first in a trilogy, it concludes one of its plots but leaves the larger mystery behind Orbital Object #7 unresolved. When I finished, I felt like I could have begun Probability Sun immediately, and I was sorely tempted to do so. I have avoided that temptation, partly because I don't yet have a copy of Probability Space. But these books are short and the action and dialogue makes them snappy reads; I could easily devour this trilogy in a weekend.

As has been typical in my experience with Kress, we differ when it comes to characterization. I found the villain in Beggars in Spain to be rather disappointing. Occasionally, Kress' characters approach a level of caricature that does not reflect well upon the story. The same thing happens here with David Allen, graduate student in xenoanthropology who accompanies the expedition to World and slowly succumbs to delusions of grandeur and megalomania.

Antagonists who are mad are much less interesting, in my opinion, than run-of-the-mill garden variety sane antagonists. There is something of a loss of volition that accompanies madness, or at least a loss of judgement, that makes these characters less threatening in an ideological sense. In that respect, someone like Jennifer Sharifi from the Beggars trilogy is a superior antagonist to someone like David Allen—she might have seemed cold and inhuman, but she was rational and all of her faculties were functioning. That made her much scarier. If the choice is between a villain who is aware of what he or she is doing but utterly believes in his or her position and a villain whose actions are the result of a medical condition, the former is always going to be more imposing. I couldn't take David Allen very seriously, and I found the parts of the book where the narrator visits upon his perspective more annoying than anything else.

I am relieved and happy to report that this is the only major flaw with Probability Moon. Although the other two plots do not quite approach the levels of epic awesomeness required to make my head explode, they still combine to create a decent science-fiction novel.

On World, everyone experiences "shared reality". This is a very interesting and, at least at first, poorly-explained concept. Basically, Worlder who does not "share reality" will experience headaches of increasing intensity. "Sharing reality", as far as I interpret Kress' explanation, means sharing the way other people look at the world. We don't actually get that many concrete examples aside from how people who do share reality regard those people who don't—the unreal, as they are called, who are ignored or driven out until the government department of Reality and Atonement declares them real once again. One of the central issues in Probability Moon surrounds the ambiguous status of the Terran expedition: are they real or unreal? Until Reality and Atonement makes that call, they live in a limbo where other Worlders deal with them, but always somewhat uncomfortably. The Terrans take steps to ensure they give the appearance of sharing reality, but of course it's difficult. One of their goals is to uncover the source of shared reality—is it a pathogen, is it genetic, is it a neurological feature? In the end, as one might expect, it turns out to be related to the mechanism of Orbital Object #7.

The weapon orbiting World and military physicist Syree Johnson's attempts to understand it are the most interesting parts of Probability Moon for me. Don't get me wrong: the combination of both plots are what make this book so interesting and, ultimately, successful. Probability Moon is, to use a term I hate using even though I've used it several times in this review, "hard" science fiction in the way Kress treats space travel and technology in general. Yet it is also "social" science fiction. It is a blending that testifies to Kress' talents as a writer and belies the very possibility of meaningful distinctions like "hard" and "soft" or "social" science fiction. Probability Moon is just science fiction, really good science fiction.

Still, I will own up to favouring the investigation of Orbital Object #7 over what's happening on World. I'm a technophile, OK? I can't help it. I love technobabble, and to Kress' credit, she is either familiar enough with these concepts or has done an impressive amount of research to make her technobabble sound plausible to people who are actually familiar with these areas. For example, here's how she describes Orbital Object #7:

The artifact emitted no radiation of any kind, had no magnetic field, and no thermal gradations. The hull, 0.9765 centimeters thick, was made mostly of an allotropic form of carbon that resembled a known class of fullerenes but was subtly different. The artifact contained no heavy metals, nothing with atomic number above seventy-five. It massed slightly less than a million tons. Inside was mostly hollow, although unidentifiable structures were suspended inside (how?) in an extremely complex but partial manner, without direct connection to each other. These unknown but stable structures appeared to be without any mass—an impossibility. When the computer ran mathematical analyses, the suspensions suggested a complicated web wherein each curve folded back on itself many times, a sort of multidimensional fractal. Computer breakdown further suggested a strange attractor, a region in which all sufficiently close trajectories were attracted in the limit, but in which arbitrarily close points over time became exponentially separated. Syree figured the Hausdorff dimension of the suggested fractal. It was 1.2, the same dimension as the galactic filling of the universe.

I admit I have no idea how to build a space tunnel myself, and I'm not quite sure what Kress means when she says "galactic filling of the universe" (quantum foam, maybe?). Regardless, it tickled me to see her talk about fractals and Hausdorff dimension. I was reading this while having lunch with my friend Aaron, who is actually studying such areas of mathematics for his masters degree. So I immediately distracted him from the Dresden Files book I had lent him to make him read that paragraph. This is, as far as I can recall, the first time I have seen the Hausdorff dimension mentioned in a science-fiction book. Go Kress! Later references to concepts like Swarzschild radii, while less exotic, were still quite welcome.

Syree Johnson is also probably the most interesting character, such as she is. Kress gives us quite a bit of her backstory, explaining how she comes from a long line of strict military families and thus excuses herself nothing when it comes to weakness. Nevertheless, Syree is obviously not just a military officer but a genuinely curious scientist who wants to understand how Orbital Object #7 works. She is torn between that curiosity and her duty to destroy the object before it can fall into Faller hands. And she's also the face, for us, of the human military.

In Probability Moon, humans sort of drop out of the sky (TVTropes alert) to visit the World. They are mindful of possible contamination but still rather blasé about the entire business. Worse still, it's all just a cover so that the human military can steal one of the planet's moons. Sure, the moon happens to be an ancient superweapon. But still. It's a moon. It's kind of important, not to mention nominally the World's. We don't see any sort of arguments related to cultural imperialism or the fact that taking Orbital Object #7 without even asking is nothing short of theft. Nevertheless, I think it's implied in the way Kress frames the entire situation: at least, to me, it was clear that we humans were waltzing into the system, taking what we wanted, and leaving little if anything of value behind. It could happen. (TVTropes)

Probability Moon has its fair share of action and tension; as far as drama and pacing goes, this book is pretty good. As is common for trilogies, it leaves me wishing I had learned more about the war with the Fallers—in particular, I'm curious to learn about the political fallout from what happens regarding Orbital Object #7. The book ends rather abruptly, not so much with a cliffhanger but with a definite sense that the story is far from over. This is definitely not something I would read if I were looking for a standalone novel, although your mileage may vary. I enjoyed this new facet to Nancy Kress' writing; I liked reading a story by her that involves space ships and relativistic weapons and quantum phenomena. It makes me look forward to the rest of the trilogy, which I'm sure will have more answers. Probability Moon did not, unfortunately, quite manage to make my head explode—but as with anything Kress writes, it still took me hostage.

My reviews of the Probability trilogy:
Probability Sun →

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

My 2001 booklog says, Probability Moon (7-00), “Flowers of Aulit Prison” universe: "A", very nice. Definite reread sometime. [as of 5/27/20, I haven't.] “Flowers of Aulit Prison” won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award in 1997. The story has been widely reprinted. Free audio version of "Prison" at http://www.starshipsofa.com/blog/2009...

I went on to read #2, which I thought was OK. #3, Probability Space, kinda falls apart. So, best to stop at #1?

[DivaDiane SM · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really, really enjoyed this novel. World is an interesting place and the scientists sent from Earth do not understand the “Shared Reality” which governs society. Kress straddles soft SF and hard SF easily and satisfies both itches. I think that’s what I like so much about her SF.

The narration is very well done and I was able to listen to it at 1.25x speed. It's probably just me, but I find it difficult to grok hard sf data dumps in audio format, especially when I'm driving! Luckily, Kress doesn't do long drawn out, pointless data dumps, but I do want to understand the science a bit. I figure it must be important if she put it in there. I've read enough of her SF to be able to say that with confidence.

I highly recommend this novel.

[Mike Finn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the ideas in 'Probability Moon' intriguing but the writing was a little dry until almost the end of the book. Oddly perhaps, it was the humans in the story who I had difficulty engaging with. I eventually became quite engaged with Enli, the main alien character.

The humans are split into two: a four-person team of anthropologists down on the planet 'studying' the indigenous culture's concept of 'shared reality' and a military ship carrying out the real mission - to acquire what is believed to be an ancient alien weapon in orbit around the planet.

The military mission was more interesting for the physics being discussed and for providing the background on how the interstellar human diaspora, enabled by a network of 'gates' built by an ancient, now vanished, race are at war with an alien species who use the same inherited technology and who no interest in anything except expansion and extermination. The military characters were an unconvincing collection of stereotypes whose main function seemed to be to exposition.

The anthropologists were more interesting. I've never seen classic Persian poetry used as a reference for divining the meaning of events on an alien planet before in the way the Iranian team leader did. There was an American character with an undiagnosed God complex, a woman xenobiologist who seemed to be there to explain the physical differences between humans and aliens and a large jovial German geologist who was the easiest to like and also the least introspective.

 At first, I couldn't see any connection between the two human missions. It took longer than it should have done to see that the book title was a clue to the concept behind both military and anthropological missions. This concept linked the apparently sociological phenomenon of Shared Reality with the observer effect in quantum mechanics.

The thing I liked most about the book was seeing the world through Enli's eyes. I liked that when I first met Enli, she was an outsider in her own culture. I quickly learned that she was 'Unreal'. Understanding what that meant and how it worked was, for me, the most interesting part of the book. I thought that Nancy Kress did a great job of making human behaviour seem odd by establishig Enli's people as a baseline for normal.

I enjoyed the ideas in the book but I couldn't engage with the human characters. I wasn't invested in the outcome of the military mission, even when the crew was at risk. The anthropologists were interesting mainly because they demonstrated how hard it is to see another culture clearly when you are unaware of the blindspots created by your own cultural biases.

'Probability Mon' is the first book in a trilogy but I won't be moving on to the other books. I think these stories at too abstract for me.

[Doug Dandridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had heard about this book through Nancy’s blog when she was discussing making up a new fundamental particle for a novel. It was in here, a particle that influences probability, called a probon. Also in here was an offshoot of humanity that had evolved in the presence of an ancient artifact that manipulated probability. The Worlders, people of the planet World, had developed something called Shared Reality, which meant that there was almost instant agreement on things between people once they shared ideas and probability shifted the mind of one to the viewpoint of the other. The idea would then travel around the world until everyone believed the same thing. In this way the people of World were of one accord, and there were no wars, and very few murders. Of course the flip side is that there is no independent thought, and no innovation. Come the people from Earth through the ancient gates, involved in an interstellar war with the Fallers, the only non-human race yet found. The war is not going well for the humans, and they look at the artifact in space around World as a possible salvation.
I thought the culture of World was very well developed, and Nancy laces it with a dark side as well. People who don’t share reality and unreal, and to be killed, including Earth explorers who show independent thought. The characters were very well developed, especially the Anthropologist who thinks that shared reality will be the salvation of mankind, in the middle of a war of survival in which Earth needs all of its murderous instincts to survive. Another winner by a master writer that I highly recommend.

[Gendou · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was really 2 stories loosely tied together.

The more interesting, to me, is the story of man's exploration of a network of wormholes built by a long-gone alien race.
In many systems, kin to homo sapiens populate habitable planets.
There is an antagonistic alien race called the fallers who's aim is to repel human explorers back to their home system.

Upon this back story is the main thread: explorers visit a planet called "World".
The inhabitants have a sort of religion called "shared reality".
They experience head pain if exposed to non-consensus views/thoughts.
This shared reality has made for a peaceful existence, but for one flaw.
If a child is born that does not develop this shared reality by a certain age, it is killed.
So much for utopia.

I never felt a clear moral message in the book, so much was unsettling.
The crazy man ended up being worshiped as a hero; unsettling.
The vicious murder of children brought about a peaceful society; unsettling.

But really the most unsettling for me was the bad physics.
The shared reality mechanism was a result of evolution in exposure to a "probability field".
This is one of the dumber science fiction ideas I've ever heard.
Not only does it turn humans into conformists, but it also causes heavy elements to become radioactive.
This is where the two plot threads are tied together... poorly.

I hope the physics is more believable in the next 2 books.

[Ken-ichi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I barely remember this book, but my hazy recollection is that the writing wasn't that bad, and that I wanted to try another book by Kress. I also seem to remember a bicycle. You know, remembering stuff like this was why I joined Goodreads in the first place...

[David Swisher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Brilliant concept, frustrating execution.

We start with a truly original alien society, one where everyone feels literal pain if they disagree. It’s weird, thought-provoking, and loaded with potential. Brilliant concept. The story, however, moves agonizingly slowly. Characters spend whole chapters theorizing in technical scientific jargon instead of doing anything remotely interesting, and the dialogue often reads more like a seminar or thesis paper, and less story. It's just plain boring. Frustrating execution.

The worldbuilding is extensive, but the plot feels like it’s dragging its feet the whole time. I kept waiting for the tension to kick in. Every once in a while you get a real juicy nugget of story and think,"okay here we go," but then back to the dull This one takes more patience than I have to give and for that reason "I'm out."

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now that I think about it, I can't name any other science fiction novel by a woman author with such a hard science focus (though my knowledge is not exhaustive).

Kress weaves together a story that relies upon sociology, quantum physics, neurochemistry, and in some parts geology. Unfortunately the subjects become tightly bound, and if you miss the expositive infodump on one topic, then you lose the thread of the novel.

The alien society (of the Star-Trek-rubber-forehead variety, and Kress handwaves through that) is interesting and possesses entirely different cultural referents from anything human.

[Douglas Cosby · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars -- Kress uses some pseudo-science around quantum-level neurotransmitter events to explain how the natives of an alien planet, called World, create a "shared reality". Additionally, she utilizes the ubiquitous sci-fi space tunnel to achieve deep space travel. While both stretch credulity, at least Kress goes for it, and this book turns out to be good fun. Plot events are split between the planet's surface, dealing with the Worlders and their strange flower-based society, and the orbiting support ship that may actually have the more important mission of exploring one of the mysterious moons of World.

I appreciate how Kress explains the rules and scope of each pseudo-science, and as long as you buy into them, she never breaks the rules or injects a deus ex machina. For instance, who really cares about another theoretical explanation of the science of space tunnels (and to be fair, Kress spends little or no time trying to explain it) -- it is the logistics of the tunnels and all the different cool ways to use them that end up driving the action scenes. This style of setting-the-rules-and- sticking-to-them is in stark contrast to much of the Harry Potter-esque fantasy popular today where "trying really hard, even harder than before" or figuring out at the last minute that you "had it inside you all the time" has become the standard cop-out for writers.

Similarly, Kress sets up the Worlders' "shared reality" ability by explaining its pros and cons (honest group communication vs. head pain when it goes wrong), and then uses the plot to dig into the details of its implications on society. It doesn't turn into a magical force field or explode bad guys' heads, it just creates interesting interpersonal pressures and societal mores that aren't necessarily obvious to us humans. I will most likely read Book 2 in this series.

[Frank Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this, however remain perplexed by it. Quick summary, inhabitants of the planet 'World' experience a shared reality and they would like to know whether the visiting Terrans are real or not.

There were two main things I wanted to comment on.

The first is that I'm still uncertain exactly how tangible the "Shared Reality" is for Worlders. At times it seemed telepathic, like one Worlder would be said to already know how another Worlder would respond due to their Shared Reality. But then at other times it seemed as though it only meant that Worlders would pass on all information to each other openly and honestly, like when Worlders brought each other news updates, verbally.

So I don't know if I understood well enough to write a proper review. But it was all very interesting, and it ventured into strange ideas of consciousness that relied on aspects of evolutionary biology and quantum physics. Not an unlikely mix but maybe an unlikely outcome. Who knows? I don't.

The other thing about this was that I had just finished the 'Yesterday's Kin' series by Kress, in which her aliens also lived on a planet called World and also referred to the humans as Terrans.

So there was a degree of confusion at the beginning, when one of the Worlders was referring to the return of the Terrans who had not long since left World (a scenario exactly matching the end of the 'Yesterday's Kin' series), and I was spinning out thinking I'd unwittingly picked up a continuation of the story.

Sometimes the benefit of a series can be that the strange stuff from one book is explained well in the next book, by virtue of becoming the norm in the story. I'm certainly hoping for a bit of that relief in the next one.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first in a series by Nancy Kress. I first came across her work when I read An Alien Light. I really enjoyed that book. I haven't read much of her other work but I picked this up because it sounded interesting and it seemed like it would be perfect for reading on the flights to and from India.

As it turns out I didn't get to start it until I got home. I guess the trick to sleeping on airplanes is to bring enough reading material for 50 hours of travel time. I was so loaded up with books that I guess lugging them around tired me out enough to sleep!

In any event, I read it this week and enjoyed it enough that I'm certain to get the second book.

The novel is set in a future where humanity has discovered these "interstellar tunnels" that transport ships instantaneously from one star system to another. They are artifacts from a long vanished race. Humanity has encountered several sentient species though only one has achieved space travel. Unfortunately that one seems to take an instant dislike to us and a war ensues.

This is the backdrop for the story where the main characters are an anthopological team studying the natives of World, a species that "shares reality" and a military team that is secretly investigating a small satellite of World that is believed to be an artifact of the star tunnel creators. That premise fits the mold of many science fiction novels but Kress carries it off pretty well. The characters aren't the strongest element of the story but, with perhaps one exception, they aren't one dimensional and that one exception has at least a plot point for being so single minded. For me the joy in reading the story was to explore the ideas she presented.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a weak four stars. Nancy Kress has pretensions...this is a decent attempt at hardish sci-fi. I appreciate that, even though it's awfully up and down. I deliberately avoided rating the book lower just because she has a horrifically, comically bad fictional geology for World (two words: pumice caves). I think there's both good and bad physics.

The book has a small piece of what you might call classic Star Trek, 4X space computer game sci-fi (Earth vs. the Fallers) but mostly concentrates on the alien psychology exercise on World. I like the plot better than Beggars in Spain, the only other Nancy Kress I've read so far, but they have in common the theme of exploring the consequences of weird changes to human psychology. Beggars in Spain explores the creation and sociology of people who've been altered so as not to require sleep. This book features a race of near-humans who "share a common viewpoint," which is unfortunately fairly vague. Getting out of sync with your fellows, however, causes ostracism, to the point of being labeled "unreal."

There's plenty of drama, and despite being unenthusiastic about the World plot at the beginning, it managed to draw me in. I will probably dig out the sequels at some point (oh, you just realized it's part of a series? Me too.)

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

A tiny moon orbiting a distant planet turns out to be an artifact with inscrutable quantum properties that was manufactured by a very ancient and mysterious agent. The idea is interesting, the science and speculative science is rock solid and the characters are mostly appealing enough----though several die and one goes batshit crazy (but only to deliver long, tedious monologues). What made this a total failure for me was the writing, which consisted largely of too much explaining and rumination and back and forths punctuated by rare moments of action. It reads like a short story padded out not by further plot developments but by exposition and conversations (some of the latter repeated verbatim from different pov's to no evident purpose). Don't see any reason to read the sequels.

[Cruz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was surprised this was published in 2000. When I first started reading science fiction in the 90's, it was before the massive boom we're currently in where there is a more diverse amount of people writing emotionally resonant fiction pushing the envelope on how these kinds of stories can be told.

This book reads like the plot could have been written decades ago, but some of the science is pretty eyebrow-raising. Definitely uses the "hey, you're supposed to suspend your disbelief" approach to writing, so I did, which helped my reading of the novel. What elevates it is her focus on character, and many of the small touches to flesh out her cast illustrates the gulf between her and some of the masters who, if I'm being honest, weren't good at getting me to care about the people in their stories. Kress has a fascinating setup with her "shared reality" alien culture, but the way her cast of anthropologists having to constantly adapt to the dangers of human culture interacting with it is what kept me reading. Surprisingly compulsive.

So yes, the book has plenty of flaws that others have highlighted in the reviews here, but they're not fatal. It's an imperfect character study.

[Bryan at Postmarked from the Stars · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nancy Kress. I am impressed and unimpressed at the same time. I knocked your audiobook out in a week which means something in itself. I would definitely give this a hard sci-fi label. Pretty complex/wild science/physics in this book.

I'm tired so enjoy this rambling hot take...

I didn't really care for the Worlders, the main alien race portrayed heavily in this book... if anything, I liked the Fallers aka the baddies warring against humanity in the story because we literally know nothing about them. They have advanced tech, we're losing against them, and we have almost no intel on them.

Wasn't into the whole untouchables caste system "Shared Reality" thing.

Overall, it was different. It's hard sci-fi with interesting social implications to reflect on for humanity. The plot and task of this story is pretty grand and challenging in scope, so I've gotta give Kress credit on achieving what she does. I probably won't go after the sequel.

[Jean Hontz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard SciFi which actually forced me to look up some science stuff I wasn't really conversant with. I love when that happens! Terrans arrive on an alien world to study the locals (who are apparently an offshoot of Earth Humans seeded by unkown ancestors who created tunnels to travel across through the galaxy as well). Unkown to the scientists on the ground, the ship that brought them is here to investigate an alien object that the locals think is just another moon orbiting their planet.

Quite interesting ideas, involving physics and earth science and sociology. I'm looking forward to more in the series.

[Roddy Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘A Desperate Bid to Save Humanity

Humankind has spread out into interstellar space using star gates – technological remnants left behind by an ancient, long-vanished race. but the technology comes with a price.
Among the stars, humanity encountered The Fallers, a strange alien race bent on nothing short of genocide. It’s all-out war, and humanity is losing.

In this fragile situation, a new planet is discovered, inhabited by a pre-industrial race who experience ‘shared reality’ – they’re literally compelled to share the same worldview. A team of human scientists is dispatched, but what they don’t know is that their mission of first contact is actually a covert military operation.

For one of the planet’s moons is really a huge mysterious artefact of the same origin as the star gates… and it just may be the key to winning the war.’

Blurb to the September 2002 Tor paperback edition

Some time in the distant past and Elder Race scattered ‘gateways’ around our galaxy which connect instantaneously to each other.
Humanity has explored some of the galaxy via these wormhole portals and discovered several humanoid races with near-identical DNA to Humanity, suggesting that many planets had been seeded with Humanity millennia ago.
One of the races discovered, The Fallers, is implacably hostile and Earth is now engaged in a war with them, as they too have access to the gateways.
A scientific expedition has been sent to a humanoid-occupied planet called World, where the peaceful residents have a religion/philosophy based around Flowers and what the Worlders describe as ‘shared reality’
The Worlders have evolved some form of empathic contact amongst themselves which causes anyone not in agreement with the majority world-view to receive headaches. Thus, harmony is maintained, as is ‘shared reality’.
The central figure of the novel, about whom the narrative revolves, is Enli, a young female Worlder. Enli has been declared ‘unreal’ by the Department of Atonement and Reality following the death of her brother. She is therefore a leper among her own kind. As an ‘unreal’ she is excised from the world-view of her people and is treated as though she is invisible.
Meanwhile, a Terran scientific expedition has returned to World following the hasty recall of the previous team without explanation. The Worlders have yet to determine whether the Terrans are ‘real’ or ‘unreal’.
Enli is summoned to the Department of Atonement and Reality and given a post at the Terran base, on the understanding that she will spy on the Terrans and report back to the Department.
The real reason that humans have returned to World is that one of its seven moons has been discovered to be a vast alien artefact, created by the long-vanished Gatebuilders.
While the team on the planet work toward understanding the Worlders and why and how they evolved their ‘shared reality’, Colonel Syree Johnson on the ‘Zeus’ is trying to unlock the secrets of the alien moon. It slowly becomes apparent (at least to the reader) that the two investigations are fundamentally connected.
Enli is the thread which runs through this, the first in a posited trilogy) and follows a journey of rejection, acceptance by a new community, guilt and confusion at having to spy on her friends. She is also bullied and manipulated by her various spymasters, but carries on with her own strange goals set in her mind, and ultimately redeems herself and becomes ‘real’ again.
This is in contrast to the character of David Allen, a young man only placed on the mission through his politically powerful father.
David begins his journey as a confident, almost arrogant linguist, but one whose behaviour sinks slowly into the irrational, before descending into madness.
There is also Ahmed Bazargan the Iranian head of the mission; Gruber, the German geologist and Anna, the biologist.
Kress didn’t seem to have time or space to develop these characters to any great degree, which is a shame. Bazargan has an interesting habit of running Persian poetry through his thoughts and sharing it with the rest of us, but doesn’t add an awful lot to the plot.
Similarly, we have a lot of Colonel Johnson’s back-story; her terrifyingly strict military family, her soldier ancestors who died in battle, the loss of her leg, her grandmother’s stern rebukes. In fact, it seems we have more of Colonel Johnson’s past life than of her present. The scenes on the ship seem somewhat sparse compared to her memories and the rich scenes down on the planet.
It’s not a novel that’s making any profound points or seeking to change anyone’s life, but then it never pretends to be. It’s a light enjoyable read and I look forward to reading more in the series.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't really enjoy the first half of this book. The close-to-human aliens have a culture that's just too, I don't know, clean. Sure, they might steal, and kill people who are not real. But their religion revolves around flowers! Plus, it was never clear to me (in this or the later two books of the series) what their shared reality actually felt like and how it worked. The characters were interesting, but none of them really pulled me in. And the obnoxious young human with his wrong-headed opinions was almost a (painful) caricature.

When the plot moved beyond I-give-you-a-flower and you-give-me-a-flower, the action picked up. The characters still seemed a bit wooden, but the plot and ideas pulled me right along.

My criticisms of the book are based on expecting incredible writing from Nancy Kress, and getting good writing instead. I went ahead and read the other two books right after this one.

[Gwyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probability Moon is a a decent hard sci-fi book that didn't quite live up to its potential. Overall, it is an enjoyable book with a plot that keeps you reading and a pretty interesting alien culture. Unfortunately, it never quite makes the jump from okay/good to good/great. It's further hampered by a few important problems, one of which is the characters.

The story is told through four narrators: two researchers, one ex-military officer, and one native. It would have been better told through three, both to tighten the narrative focus and to remove the incredibly annoying David Allen. In fact, Allen is so annoying that he is almost a dealbreaker, since he just made me want to put the book down and leave it down. When he finally goes insane its actually a relief. Most of the other characters are fine, however, except for the native Enli, who is probably the closest we have to a true main character. She is just inconsistent enough to bother, though not inconsistent enough to frustrate: sometimes cowardly and timid, other times professional and optimistic.

Enli's species is another source of difficulty for this book. On a planet so lush and full of flowers, it is perhaps logical that the people living there should honor flowers and make them a part of everyday life. Unfortunately, every part of everyday life is filled with flowers, from flower altars to exchanging flowers when entering houses to speaking of a person's health in terms of the soil he or she grows in. The flower-obsession eventually reaches the point of disbelief. The shared-reality the Worlders possess also struggles with believability. At first quite fascinating, the author waffles on what it actually is. Sometimes it is confined to what an individual knows--something cannot enter the shared reality of a group until they are informed of it--while at other times is seems more like telepathy--if one person knows it, everyone knows it. The rules of how it functions and what does or does not violate shared reality also vary during the course of the story.

The book's greatest strength is its plot, which does a pretty good job of moving forward and keeping up the suspense: what is the moon, really? How are the radioactive mountains related to it? What motivates the Fallers? The desire to answer these questions is what will make the reader pick up the second book in the trilogy--Probability Sun. If you are a fan of hard science fiction and enjoy exploring alien cultures, give this book a try.

[Nicolas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Réalité partagée est un roman extrêmement étrange, complexe, aux ramification nombreuses, et qu’il est somme toute difficile de cerner. En effet, dès le départ, deux histoires (au moins) se déploient parallèlement : d’une part l’étude d’un artefact extra-terrestre en orbite, et, d’autre part, une expédition xenobiologiste sur la planète autour de laquelle gravite cet artefact. Comme en plus les autochtones diffèrent subtilement des humains, il y a là assez de découvertes pour peupler plusieurs romans. Et pourtant, l’auteure utilise tout ça pour former un seul roman(1). Et quel roman ! Brossant avec beaucoup de finesse le thème de l’alterité, elle explore très subtilement cette société où le système de réalité partagée garantit à chacun la même connaissance du monde. Malheureusement, il n’existe pas de milieu idéal, et ce premier tome en est l’illustration parfaite. A la manière du Moineau de Dieu avec lequel existe un nombre incroyable de points communs, les deux sociétés, humaines et extra-terrestres, se fascinent mutuellement(2), mais ont également la capacité de se faire énormément de mal. Pourtant, tout comme dans le Moineau de Dieu, l’auteure choisit de ne pas s’apitoyer sur le sort des uns et des autres, mais en profite également pour nous montrer que ces humains sont quand même assez loin de nous ressembler. Bref, c’est un roman très fin, très profond, explorant plus la psychologie des personnages, humains comme extra-terrestres, que les possibilités d’intrigue offertes par les outils technologioques créés pour l’occasion. Et pour cette finesse, mais aussi parce que les problématiques soulevées d’ingérance sont très intéressantes, ce roman mérite largement d’être lu.

(1) Enfin, pas tout à fait, puisque celui-ci est le premier tome d’une trilogie. Mais tous les éléments présentés ici sont utilisés dans le premier tome.

(2) Toute la symbolique florale évoquée de manière pregnante dans le roman n’est pas là pour seulement pour donner un côté "gentil" aux extra-terrestres, elle révèle également beaucoup de choses sur la profondeur de leurs croyances et leur système de valeur.

[Ruben DeLaRosa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very engaging book. I loved the social/cultural/religious aspects of the story along with the scientific explanations for the way things were. I also really like the idea of Humans stumbling upon a technology left by the mother race of humanoids that enabled interstellar travel , and how by using it, we also accidentally tipped off a race of hostile aliens to the tech which they were now using against us.

The Worlders are a race of humanoids which despite being 99.995% genetically the same as Terran humans differ significantly physically and culturally from us that first contact and attempts to form an alliance have been awkward at best and possible disastrous at the worse. The story starts with a scientific mission which is dispatched to World to help establish the alliance, however, the expedition's military escort has plans of their own. It seems that they have discovered that one satellite of the planet World is not natural, but in fact another artifact of the same ancient race that built the Space Tunnels which allow both Humans and our enemies to travel vast distances in space almost instantaneously. The artifact may be a weapon and may be the key to winning the war against the Fallers, as the hostile race is called.

The story is told through several characters viewpoints rather than one central character, although you could argue that Enli, the Worlder is the main character as she is the bridge between the Worlders and the Terrans. I couldn't put this one down and I am anxious to read the next book in the trilogy. This is a story of the differences between humanoid races and their attempts to try to get along that is juxtaposed against the struggle for the humanoid alliance to win a war it is now losing. This is done to great effect. Strong recommendation.

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Academics in space, screwed over by the military they are unwittingly serving... that's a good start. One of the main characters is Iranian... I like that, I am really sick of everyone in the future being into Shakespeare or the ancient Greeks, nice to have a character who refers to great Persian poets. I felt like the culture of World, that is, the aliens that the anthropologists are studying, was a little thin on the ground. There must be more to life than headaches and flowers. There was also a big plot point that I saw coming, like hundreds of pages before it happened, but that didn't bother me too much when it did happen, there was enough other stuff going on and it wasn't all "Plot Twist!" I mean, it was telegraphed but then it wasn't that big a deal after all.

What is with the German character being some kind of übermensch, the only one really prepared for when the shit hits the fan? Is this a riff on Hitchcock's Lifeboat? Plus, the weird physics talk made me want to learn some real science about radioactivity and quantum something-or-other so that is old school science fiction cool. Speaking of old school SF, it also felt like it was tipping into YA territory, like the language or the style of writing seemed kind of simple and each character gives us an internal monologue and then they do it again and it is pretty much the same. It's like, yeah, I get your motivation already. Yeah, I know that's what you think about the others and the plan. All in all though, a good start and I plan to read further in the series. Once I got to the last third of the book, I was like, I am going to finish this today. So, points for "immersion."

[Kira Nerys · Rating 3 out of 5]

What an odd book. Parts of it reminded me of others I've read, but almost universally, I preferred those books to this one. I'm uncomfortable with that because I was very excited to read Nancy Kress and tried to choose a well-liked book.

I very much enjoyed her writing style and felt the characterizations were wonderfully done. Enli was a fascinating character. She supplied the reader's understanding of World, in many ways, and explained it to us as only one ostracized can. I loved Dr. Ahmed Bazargan so, so much--more every time I got insight into his mind. Truthfully, all the humans had moments to shine throughout this book, and all of them became vivid individuals. Dieter Gruber had such a nose for common sense (or exploration, depending on the moment). Ann Sikorski was--I don't know, except for always seeing her through others' eyes. David Allen brought something very needed to the story.

On the other hand, this story leaned into "hard sf," which is to say, scientific-sounding explanations for made-up stuff. Kress does an okay job at it. Certainly there are moments that feel like flashes of insight (or did to me, as a reader) and there's a clear choice to pare down intense scientific complexity into simpler explanations for the other scientists, with different specializations. I finished the novel with a vague and growing sense that I understood what that science had been, but while I was reading it, I was struggling to process it. I don't feel this type of sf is where Kress's strength lies.

Nonetheless, there's a decent chance I'll continue the trilogy. I want to know what happens next.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the first book in the Probability series. I must say I was disappointed in this one. It sounded good what with a race of humanoid people on a planet with an alien artifact in orbit disguised as a moon. Also an implacable alien foe bent on the total extermination of mankind. The humanoid people, who call themselves Worlders, have a "shared reality" that is supposed to be a moral compass for the entire population. War is unknown but lying, cheating, stealing and even killing are still known. Also if you are judged "unreal' which means you can't experience the shared reality, you are put to death or expelled from the population. Also I thought there would be much more action with the Fallers, the race out to destroy humanity, but it was rather limited. All in all I was disappointed with this book and I doubt I will read the next two in the series.

[Salem · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kress doesn't do a great job of establishing the science upon which her fiction is based, which makes some of the plot developments difficult to follow. Also, the characters lack any proper sense of inquiry, rendering them absolutely incredible. Apparently the characters are so used to discovering ancient alien technology they cannot understand that they've stopped wondering about the who's and why's of its creators; a feature I found quite odd and disruptive.

[Jasmine · Rating 5 out of 5]

My second favorite Kress novel after Beggars in Spain. She invents an incredibly unique but still humanesque race, and a character from that race that has to have a foot in both worlds. Fascinating, and highly recommended for anyone looking for rigorous but not too "hard" scifi. There's plenty of science for those who like that sort of thing, but you can also sort of scan those parts and still enjoy the strong characters and adventure plot.