- Hardcover: 336 pages
- Publisher: Tor Books (July 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0312874073
- ISBN-13: 978-0312874070
- Product Dimensions: 21.7 x 14.6 x 2.9 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,759,206 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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First Sentence
General Tolliver Gordon looked up from the holocube in his meaty hands. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
General Tolliver Gordon looked up from the holocube in his meaty hands. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This novel is a sequel to "Probability Moon". A couple of centuries into the future, a shipload of scientists from Earth is sent to study artifact discovered on a distant planet, while the military crew of their ship is secretly holding prisoner the only live alien (Faller) ever captured.
"Probability Sun" is a great science fiction novel expected by genre fans of Nancy Kress. The story line is loaded with action, fast-paced and contains strong characterizations including the alien races. By the time I finished Probability Sun, I knew I would be waiting with anxious eyes to see its sequel arrive.
Now having said all that events and facts are often presented twice, from different viewpoints, as if for clarification and reader-friendliness, very much like problem (maybe its just me who thinks it a "problem") with "Saga of Seven Suns" by Kevin J. Anderson. I don't think today's readers, used to being challenged by Peter Hamilton and Greg Bear, need such hand-holding.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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8 reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Hard-Science Success
13 Aug 2001
Format: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
Good hard SF, interesting characters
20 May 2003
Format: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
Character-driven dilemmas and suspense
21 Aug 2001
Format: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.
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