Customer Reviews

Probability Moon (The Probability Trilogy Ser.)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Probability Moon initially seemed something like an old style Ursula LeGuin novel, studying an intriguing (and technologically somewhat primitive) semi-alien culture within a larger context (in this case, a major interstellar war). And that's pretty much what it was, except the larger context got somewhat short changed, two of the four point of view characters were unlikeable and some of the ideas and logic struck me as pretty fuzzy. The anthropology and details of the alien culture are the strongest elements of the book (or so it seemed to a non-expert); some of the other scientific/logic issues aren't handled as well. The plot has some interesting ironies and unexpected outcomes.

There aren't any out and out villains or heroes in the book, everything tends toward shades of gray. I did find the chief anthropologist pretty admirable throughout, though not always effective, and his Iranian background gave him some interesting/useful insights in a couple of areas. Recommended if you like books about alien cultures.

Not sure why some reviewers wrote so negatively, I think this is a very good book. It has a good and well developed story line that doesn't follow the Science Fiction receipe for the puny hero who defeats the omnipotent/all powerful villian by the virtue of his/her humanity and a lot of luck.

Instead, there are a handful of everyday Joes, each with different strengths and weaknesses, that are basically in over their heads and the ultimate result is... well... failure, but not defeat! That is what is so great about the story! We can't win all the battles, but we never give up the fight! Maybe not the most romantic storyline, but Kress makes it work. I am alway looking for a good SF story that breaks the mold and Kress delivered.

Ms. Kress has created a unique alien culture, which shares a unanimous moral sense of right, wrong, and reality. Any divergent thoughts are punished by a blinding headpain, and individuals who act contrary to the "shared reality" are ostracized. Ms. Kress chose to juxtapose this storyline with a parallel plot about a mysterious artifact from another alien species, and throw in a third alien enemy to boot. The elements of these two story lines just don't work together. Dr. Bazargan is the most interesting and realistic character in the human anthropological team. David Allen is repugnant, and meant to be, but his one-sidedness makes him merely a plot device. The totally unlikely presence of two human infants on the team provides the occasion for a monstrous cruelty, and as such, is a cheap shot at our emotions. I wish Ms. Kress had thrown out this plot outline and explored her idea in a different way.

More accessible than the Beggar's series, Kress' latest series of novels deals with a number of difficult concepts. She manages to deal with the idea of shared or collective reality and how we define it in ways that Phil Dick would have imagined. She also brings a hard science edge to her writing that has, until recently, been on the back burner and secondary to her literary skills. Probability Moon is the first in a trilogy that deals with a number of common themes in a fresh way--first contact and humankind's responsibilities role in the universe.

Well writen and with a quick pace, Probability Moon isn't as powerful as her best work (Beggar's in Spain) but still manages to inject new life into a number of older sf themes. One of her strengths has always been character and narrative and, while both are important in this novel, they seem to be secondary to the hard sf setting and scientific details. Nevertheless, Kress' book is better written and thought out than most of her contemporaries. She's still one of the best writers working in a medium and genre that has fallen on cliches and formulas in the post Star Wars world.

I am glad that I bought this book and read it before reading the other reviews here on Amazon.com. I found both this and Probability Sun to be very engaging volumes. To me, they were more readable than the critically acclaimed Beggars series, which I also enjoyed. Perhaps this is a result of Ms. Kress venturing away from her scientific specialty, genetics, and into a field where she is less knowledgeable, physics.

The character development is certainly the strongest feature of the book. Enli, an outcast in her own civilization, makes an ideal bridge between human and Worlder cultures. The concept of shared reality is well explored and thought-provoking.

The writing is strong throughout and pulls the reader from start to finish.

If you were tempted to read this book until you read the reviews here, ignore them and read it anyway. I predict that you will not be disappointed. While some of the objections in the reviews here are valid, this book is still a strong effort by a Hugo and Nebula award winner, and it shows.

Hugo and Nebula Award winner Nancy Kress (the "Beggars" trilogy and "Maximum Light") sets "Probability Moon" in a distant future in which humans colonize space through a series of star gates, technological remnants of an ancient civilization. This vanished race also seems to have seeded the galaxy with humans - planetary populations who differ solely because of evolutionary isolation.

The newest discovery is a flower loving race who commune in planet-wide "shared reality," a universal inability to lie, even by omission. Although shared universal empathy hardly seems an evolutionary advantage to the visiting humans, deviation from shared reality causes unbearable head pain. Those who cannot share reality - the mentally impaired - are killed at an early age. Others are excluded from shared reality - shunned -as punishment for their crimes.

Enli, punished for her brother's death, is one of these. Assigned to spy on the human scientists to determine if they are "real," she gets involved beyond her sorriest imaginings. Meanwhile, the real mission, unbeknownst to the scientists, is a military study of an ancient artifact masquerading as one of the planet's moons. The military, engaged in an escalating, mysterious war, hopes it's a doomsday weapon.

Naturally all this is moving toward an explosive climax which Kress resolves handily in this volume while leaving plenty of intriguing questions for a future novel or two. Her characters and the planetary setting are well developed and the story moves at a brisk, suspenseful pace.

Nancy Kress' new novel is _Probability Moon_. It's set in the same milieu as her award winning story "The Flowers of Aulit Prison": a planet, called World, with humanoid inhabitants. These people differ from Earth humans in one very important way: they experience something called "shared reality". If their fellows do not perceive the truth of something the same as they do, they feel intense physical pain, "headpain". This results in great cultural homogeneity, and a certain apparently lessening of ingenuity, but also in apparently greater empathy, and in a lack of war. However, those who fail to show this empathy are called unreal. If they are children, they are put to death. If they have already been proven "real" and attain adulthood, then commit an "unreal" act, they might get a chance to atone over a period of time, and be declared real again, but while they are unreal, they are generally shunned.

A quasi-military expedition has been sent to World to investigate a strange artifact, the Moon of the title. As cover, a group of 4 anthropologists, plus, rather unbelievably, two very young twin children, has been sent to the planet, and will be living among the people of World, investigating them, while the people of World try to reach a "shared reality" consensus as to the reality of humans. The lead native character is Enli Pek Brimmidin, who is unreal as a result of a crime she shared with her beloved brother. As part of her atonement, she is given a job as a spy on the Earth people. There are four Earth scientists, of whom the leader, Dr. Bazargan, an aging Iranian, and the youngest, David Allen, who is clinically insane, are viewpoint characters. In addition, an old space Colonel, Syree Johnson, is the POV character for the artifact investigation scenes in orbit. So the narrative proceeds in parallel, as Enli learns what Earth people are like, while the Earth scientists learn more about the nature of shared reality, before being forced to flee to the forbidden, radioactive, mountains; and while in space, as some of the artifact's secrets are discovered, a ship of the malevolent alien Fallers appears, prompting a desperate race to escape.

The action is pretty involving, and there are some neat concepts, both big, like the nature of "shared reality" and of the alien artifact, and small, like the Earth people taking a mix of brain-affecting drugs everyday to maintain "balance". Some mysteries are solved, and fairly satisfactorily, but others, too many, I thought, remain open. As there will be a sequel, that's no surprise, I guess. Still, I felt a bit cheated or let down in the context of this book. The aliens are well-depicted but there are a few holes in their culture. More damningly, the humans are less believable, particularly David Allen, who is very unpleasant and, as I said, insane. The plot is weakened because it is to some extent driven by the actions of an insane person. I had a hard time believing a couple of the setup conditions: Allen's presence, for one, and that of the twins (without parents!) for two. (Reasons are given for both situations, but not sufficient, I thought.) It's in the end, I think, interesting but unsuccessful. I am interested in the sequel, though.

Although the plot of Probability Moon had elements in it that have been done before in science fiction, they were brought together in a way that I found to be fresh and engaging through the different points of view of the various characters --- including the alien characters. Kress' writing style is clear and her prose does not get in the way of the story and the characters, though not all totally three dimensional, were, for the most part, fleshed out nicely. I especially enjoyed the character of Enli, the Worlder who has to spy on the humans in order to atone for her crime and become "real" again so she can again truly be an insider in her culture. I also liked the fact that the plot was driven by a combination of physics and anthropology, a usually uneasy marriage of disciplines. Many previous reviewers obviously did not care for the book, but I liked it and will read more of her work, including the sequel Probability Sun. So there.

"Probability Moon" is an easy read, much less challenging than Kress's "Beggars in Spain." The story takes place mainly in two settings: in orbit of the alien planet aboard a human starship with a military crew sent to examine the ancient artificial moon of the planet, and a scientific team on the planet's surface sent to keep good relations with the native race.

My favorite aspect of the novel was the "head pain" that the natives experience whenever they encounter information or experiences that do not jive with their preconceived notion of "reality." Such a trait has encouraged their society to be very homogeneous and peaceful. However, if the humans among them prove to be "unreal" they may be killed. Kress's eventual explanation of the evolution of this head pain is creative, but perhaps not so believable.

Many rituals of the society of the native population revolve around the adoration and exchange of flowers; their "god" is called the "First Flower." Some of their customs are quite beautiful.

The main native character (whose name escapes me at the moment) who befriends the humans is quite lovable, and her struggle with the "unreality" of the humans among her people is fascinating. There is something of a parallel phenomenon among some of the human characters, who daily take a drug regimen to get them in the appropriate mental and physical state for the day's activities. Although, to us, the humans are indeed "real," are they true to themselves?

Okay enough philosophizing. The secondary plot, in which the humans in orbit study the ancient machine moon and vie for control of it against the advanced alien Fallers, converges with the planet-bound plot in an intricate way towards the end of the novel.

Nancy Kress has written an entertaining adventure. I'll surely pick up the sequel, "Probability Sun," some day soon.

Probability Moon introduces a neat idea: along with the standard forces of gravity, strong and weak nuclear forces, and electromagnetism, there is a fifth force, probability, which can be controlled (in this case, via a left-over artifact of a long vanished civilization). The major effect: the ability to make almost any element radioactive (after all, the fission of an atom, proton, meson, etc, is all described as a probability of decay in a given time period). At a different 'power' setting, it can used to affect how the human brain works, by changing the probability of which (and how) neurons fire. It's this latter item that forms the basis for this novel: an entire world, under the artifact's influence for several thousand years, has developed a society that has 'shared reality', where quite literally people can feel another's pain, where there is only one view of the world, and new and different ideas can cause serious 'head pain'. As such, it paints a picture of a type of utopia, with never the less some warts, some people who don't quite fit, or who have performed some action beyond the pale that gets them labeled 'unreal' (and therefore not just stigmatized but almost literally unseeable). Into this world come the Terrans, at war with a truly alien species, and most anxious to grab and understand the ancient's artifacts, which includes not only the 'small' device affecting the world, but the entire moon of the planet.

The good things about this book are decent hard science concepts and competent characterization. What drags it down is an almost stereotypical plot in terms of both the Terran war and the changes caused in the society by Terran interference. I felt that her depicted society could have used a lot more exposition; in too many places how it really works is only briefly sketched. And the near mindless depiction of the Terran military is poor, a prop used to bring 'action' to the plot. But her prose is very readable, and the story flow is smooth, with a net result of a quick read with some excitation of the reader's 'sense of wonder', a prime ingredient in a 'hard' SF work.

This is my first introduction to Kress at novel length - she has been a rapidly rising star at shorter lengths as evidenced by her Hugo and Nebula awards. From the evidence here, she will be a fine addition to the limited stable of 'hard' SF writers as her story telling ability at longer lengths improves.