Dr. Bazargan commands the scientific team sent to a newly discovered world to study its humanoid natives: beings who literally perceive only one reality. To lie is to be unreal--and condemned to death. The humans must flee for their lives across the unknown planet when they and the aliens learn the scientific mission is a lie. It's the cover for a secret military exploration of the moon Tas, which is another artifact of the gate-makers: a superweapon capable of annihilating all life in a star system, and already known to the Fallers.

Nancy Kress has won the Hugo, the Sturgeon, and three Nebula Awards. She is justly acclaimed as a literary SF writer, but receives little acknowledgement that her work is hard SF. Probability Moon should change this, winning her many new readers while pleasing her fans. It's a rare and desirable hybrid: a literary, military, hard-SF novel. Set in the same world as her Nebula- and Sturgeon-winning novelette, "Flowers of Aulit Prison," Probability Moon is the first book of a trilogy, but it has a self-contained story line. The sequel, Probability Sun, will appear in 2001, and the concluding book will be The Fabric of Space. --Cynthia Ward

Product Description

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.


A Missed Opportunity   July 8, 2001
 9 out of 10 found this review helpful

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.


An entertaining read   September 24, 2003
 7 out of 9 found this review helpful

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.


Flower power   January 3, 2001
 6 out of 7 found this review helpful

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.


Not your average predictable SF novel   January 18, 2003
 5 out of 5 found this review helpful

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.