Probability Sun [Mass Market Paperback]

Nancy Kress (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 2003

Salvation or Annihilation?

A strange artifact has been discovered on a distant planet, an artifact that may be the key to humanity's salvation. For we at war with the Fallers, an alien race bent on nothing short of genocide, and this is a war we are losing. The artifact is not only a powerful weapon, but possibly the rosetta stone to a lost superscience . . . a superscience that the Fallers may have already decoded. Or it may be a doomsday machine that could destroy the very fabric of space.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Human beings (aka Terrans) have a brighter future in this fairly standard space adventure than they did in Kress's Probability Moon (2000), which introduced the enemy Fallers, friendly Worlders and space tunnels left behind by a long-lost alien race. In the previous book, Worlders pushed humans off their planet because they didn't "share reality." Now the Terrans come back to try to retrieve the Worlders' "artifact," a machine that generates a probability field and holds the key to human survival in the fight against the Fallers. The action moves from colonies on the moon and Mars, to a military space ship, the Alan B. Shepard, to World, a planet at a great distance from Earth that's inhabited by a harmonious alien race of total empaths. The author grounds her morally complex plot in the physics of probability. As usual with Kress, her eccentric characters add depth. Major Lyle Kaufman, a military leader who dislikes leadership; Tom Capelo, a brilliant, antisocial physicist still grieving for a dead wife; and Ann Sikorski, a xenobiologist who questions their right to take the artifact, all struggle with their roles. In addition, female Worlder Enli must work with humans and with her own kind to create a compromise. Readers will start this novel because of Kress's reputation, will read it for the adventure and will like it for the characters and the science.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

The immediate sequel to Probability Moon (2000) continues humanity's war against the alien Fallers, a war humanity is losing. It again shows scientists and the military at odds if not in outright conflict while portraying the strengths and limitations of both with admirable even-handedness. A shipload of scientists has come to study the alien artifact discovered on the planet World, and the ship's military crew is holding the only Faller POW as a secret captive. The questions that permeate the tightly paced story are whether scientists and the military can cooperate to learn the nature of the artifact--scientific storehouse or doomsday machine--and whether either of those parties will procure the cooperation of the captive Faller, whose perception of reality is unfathomably different from that of any of the humans. Displaying a typically strong synthesis of Kress' many gifts, the novel leaves the door wide open for at least one successor. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Tor Science Fiction; 1st edition (February 17, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 076534355X
• ISBN-13: 978-0765343550
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #558,556 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hard-Science Success, August 12, 2001

By 

David H. Carmer "Illjord" (Cary, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Probability Sun (Probability Trilogy) (Hardcover)

I've read just about everything I can that Nancy Kress has written, which naturally included her Beggars series. She doesn't normally take on subjects like this one (and it's predecessor Probability Moon), but she excels.

Like most women authors, she brings to life a side of relationships that men often do not understand, but she is not too heavy handed. And as most good stories are, this one is a tale about human nature. But the scientific theory and the primitive setting are very well done.

She sticks close to the latest in physics and I was very impressed.

I'd say that anyone that likes hard-science fiction, and particularly if you like Greg Egan's work, you'll find Probability Sun an engaging tale.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good hard SF, interesting characters, May 20, 2003

By 

Joe (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Probability Sun (Mass Market Paperback)

...Any good SF reader knows Nancy Kress, and knows her writing style well. In Probability Sun, she does not reach the pinnacle of her success (though Moon is pretty close), but she nonetheless writes a decent novel. Particularly interesting are her complex characters, for which she is well known throughout her Beggars in Spain series; (*minor spoilers follow*) you find yourself agreeing with Capelo's desire to murder the Faller, you find yourself sort of surprised at the backbone of Kaufmann, and the dwellers of World continue to hold your interest throughout the book. Not to mention the science, which is great as usual for Kress (whose husband helped out just a bit, according to the author's note =)

So, for real SF readers, the review is in: great characters, interesting science (though nothing spectacular), good plot. Pick it up, and pray Space comes out in paperback soon ... =)

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Character-driven dilemmas and suspense, August 20, 2001

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Probability Sun (Probability Trilogy) (Hardcover)

The foundation of this Hugo and Nebula Award winner's latest series is an interstellar war with the mysterious Fallers, a civilization so alien there has never been any communication other than killing. Both sides use a little-understood series of space tunnels left by a vanished race.

The first in the series, "Probability Moon" introduced World, a planet of empaths whose "shared reality" makes lying impossible. While a team of anthropologists established relations with the Worlders, a military team studied the planet's artificial moon, another of the vanished race's artifacts, which they hoped would turn the tide in the war. The story ended in disaster, with the humans declared "unreal" and the moon destroyed.

The sequel, "Probability Sun," neatly telescopes the earlier story as humans prepare for a new mission to study a second artifact hidden in World's sacred caves. The mission includes two characters from the first book, blunt, straightforward geologist Dieter Gruber and his thoughtful wife, xenobiologist Ann Sikorski as well as brilliant, eccentric physicist Tom Capelo, gene-engineered empath Marbet Grant and Major Lyle Kaufman, the mission's reluctant leader, a mild, politic man who doesn't recognize his own strengths.

While the scientists swarm over the artifact and re-establish relations with (and studies of) the Worlders, including Enli, whose previous experience gives her more insight into humans than she wants, the military secretly uses Marbet Grant to study the first Faller ever captured alive.

The character-driven action moves between the ship and the planet, the alien enemy and the enigmatic artifact, military ambitions and scientific goals, building to choices that may destroy Worlder civilization, tip the balance of the war or end the universe as we know it. Kress' story is well organized and well written and her characters multi-dimensional. The story is an engaging blend of military and psychological strategy, speculative science, moral dilemmas and suspense. The ending provides satisfying closure while leaving the door open for a third book.