The human race is losing a war against the 'Fallen' a mysterious race who kills rather than communicating. Now the Fallen have discovered a shield that protects them from anything the humans can throw at them. If they don't do something, the human race is doomed.

In PROBABILITY SUN, a small group of scientists and soldiers travel to a fascinating world of 'shared reality' to uncover an artifact that just might have something to do with the interstellar travel that humans have discovered but don't understand, and just might have something to do with the Fallen shield.

The same mission, for no particular reason, also carries the only Fallen ever captured alive.

I loved author Nancy Kress's depiction of 'The World' and the shared reality system that makes it work. The physics that run through the 'probability' aspect of her work are also interesting.

I found the military situation that two such critical missions (saving the human race and communicating with the only captured member of the attacking species) would be conducted by such a small group of scientists (only one of which had any communication with the Fallen). An even bigger problem was with the characters. Tom Capelo is flat, his emotions ranging from rage to a sort of maudlin love for his children. Colonel Kaufman, more or less the protagonist, doesn't really seem to arc much. He does what he has to, but the reader never sees the change or what it means to him.

PROBABILITY SUN is interesting and well written, but it won't stick with you the way Kress intended, nor the way it almost achieved.

...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 ... =)

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.

Kress has written a thorough tome on the major sections of novels. Unlike a certain sci fi trilogy she wrote, this manual maintains consistent value to the end. It certainly shines above most of the other Writer's Digest Elements of Fiction series. In a nutshell, the majority of these Elements are poor excuses for writing instruction. But Kress has made her mark, and this one will live long after WD has realized the weak links in its Elements series must be replaced. So ignore the other WD shortcomings, and the implications of the Beggars falterings, and you will be pleased to have purchased an indispensable volume for your reference shelf.

While I know this book has gone out-of-print and was never widly read I would have trouble thinking of a better science fiction book to recomend. Very intellegent and fairly well written. Kress is just a damn good writer.

Though interesting and fun to see what is contained inside this volume, there is no question that this anthology is for science fiction diehards. The collection includes the 2001 winners of the Nebulas in four basic categories: Best Novel (an extract from "The Quantum Rose" by Catherine Asaro); Best Novella ("The Ultimate Earth" by Jack Williamson); Best Novelette ("Louise's Ghost" by Kelly Link); and Best Short Story ("The Cure for Everything" by Severna Park). Additionally two runner-ups (Best Short Story: "The Elephants on Neptune" by Mike Resnick; and Best Novelette: "Undone" by James Patrick Kelly). A fifth category, Best Script lists the winners. The five categories are clearly defined with the four print ones based on number of words. Other information about the awards including a complete list of nominees makes for an entertaining time for those who appreciate the vastness of the genre.

Harriet Klausner

A reprint of Kress' twenty-year-old first novel, this is the story of Princess Kirila of Castle Kiril. In a land that's perpetually at peace, Kirila tries her hand at the usual things a Princess does, like hunting and creating a tapestry. After her eighteenth birthday, she gets increasingly moody and short-tempered, taking it out on the castle staff. One day, she decides to go on a solo Quest to find the True Heart of the World. All she knows is that it is somewhere to the north, and it has to do with the Tents of Omnium.

Kirila soon comes upon a talking dog, with blue-black fur, named Chessie. He says he was a human prince who was turned into a dog by a wizard. Chessie is also going to the Tents of Omnium, the only place to get unenchanted. They spend some time at the Quirkian Hold, something like a monastery, whose purpose is to make order of all things in the universe. Their four clans are Up, Down, Strange and Charmed. Some feel that is enough to explain everything, while others feel that the Model of Forces may need some revision by adding another clan.

Later, they meet Prince Larek of Castle Talatour. He is handsome, single and totally obsessed with jousting. The castle is the smallest, most poorly maintained castle Kirila has ever seen. Nevertheless, she accepts Larek's marriage proposal. Chessie continues his Quest to the Tents of Omnium.

Twenty-five years later, after Kirila has borne a couple of children, buried Larek, who lost a battle with a wild boar, and started to experience middle age and arthritis, Chessie returns. He got almost to Omnium, but was stopped by a sort of magical force field. On the spur of the moment, Kirila decides to continue the Quest. After several adventures, they reach the Tents of Omnium, where Chessie returns to human form.

This novel is really good. It starts off with some tongue-in-cheek humor, then gets a lot better. Here is a first-rate combination of psychology and fable that is quite entertaining.

The war between mankind and the Fallers goes unabated as humanity's enemy still ignores any transmissions from their opponents. If anything, the hostilities are turning worse at least for humans as it looks inevitable that the Fallers are going to win. An alien victory means the end of humanity because no one survives a battle let alone a war with the enigmatic Fallers.

The taste of defeat leads to an earthly coup with the new leader apparently willing to use a "not of this earth" doomsday machine (that the Fallers also possess) to annihilate the enemy. However, not everyone agrees with the wisdom of deploying a device not fully understood as to its ramifications and most likely will also rip the space-time continuum. Physicist Capelo, Major Kaufman, and sensitive Grant try a Hail Mary ploy to communicate with the Fallers before the galaxy as it is relatively known is ripped asunder forever.

The final novel in the "Probability" trilogy (see Probability Sun and Probability Moon) is an exciting climax to a strong series. The story line of Probability Space can stand alone yet brings closure that will please fans of the series and coax newcomers to seek out the previous books. Though the probability of some of the events occurring as written seems statistically unreliable, Nancy Kress furbishes a strong climax to a delightfully intelligent triad.

Harriet Klausner

This was my first book by Nancy Kress. Without knowing anything about else about her writing career, I could tell she is an experienced writer, with a good ability to communicate fairly complex ideas in straight forward fashion. She takes a solid premise - fertility has dropped to the point where the future of the species is threatened - and runs it through the impact on society. Youngsters are a treasured, indulged resource, while old folks litter the parks and streets, and infertile couples yearn for even one child, human or otherwise. That piece of the story is pretty well done.
The science fiction part of the story is a little weak, a danger when writing about the "near" future. The setting isn't that far into the future so there isn't THAT much different from society and technology today. For example, a hooker isn't wearing just a wig. No, this is sci fi, so she's wearing a holo(gram) wig. Kind of a cheap add-on thrown in during the editing process I thought as I read along. However, I have to add that there was a nice, light non-intrusive techno touch late in the book when Shana, the young female hero, rents a car. She pulls into a gas station to use a terminal to print out driving directions. That was nice, and almost here now. Sort of like making MapQuest easily available in public.
I also liked the multiple, first person approach. The story evolves through the eyes of the several main characters, Shana, a young, rough and tumble female soldier, Cameron, the young, gay male dancer and an old, wealthy scientist with political ties in addition to money (I'm forgetting his name right now.)I enjoyed this by the time I got to the end but had doubts as I was reading along. This sort of story is handled much more deftly by writers like Neal Stephanson in Snow Crash and Diamond Age. I would read another novel by Kress but I'm not going to actively chase it down.

Kress is one of the current bright lights in science fiction. "Maximum Light" makes her shine all the brighter.

The story is set in the near-future, where an ecological disaster has savaged male fertility and the remnant aged population has legislated away technology need for the survival of the human race.

Kress weaves a story of a dying "senior citizen" scientist/politician, a young hellion, and one of the minority fertile men (who happens to be gay) into a punchy story. The story is well written. It is almost cyber-punk. Kress handles the three character perspectives well, although not perfectly. The two male characters had (IMHO) very female perspectives. These shaded into the "true" female character's. In addition, I paged through the didactic passages on "mankind fouling their own nest via better living through chemistry". However, the story's 250-odd pages meant these sections were mercifully short.

This book was a big surprise to me. The book seemed to thin to be any good. However, it was dense with ideas. In a period of bloated trilogies, pre-sequels, and never-ending-stories it is an example of how a talented author can write a story and end it without requiring the readers to wait two years. In places "Maximum Light" reminded me of Sterling's "Holy Fire" (recommended). These two novels ("Maximum Light" and "Holy Fire") may be the leading-edge of a gerontology sub-genre.

This book is real good. It not perfect, but "real good". Recommended.

This is a first rate science fiction novel by one of the best writers in the genre. It is set in the near future, about thirty years from now, when chemical contamination of the environment has resulted in a precipitously falling birth rate and a high incidence of birth defects. Three totally different characters work to uncover an illegal business in the growing/manufacturing of human-animal babies. The intricate plot is beautifully constructed with suspenseful and logical twists and turns. Its greatest strength, though, may be its rich and believable character development. The three major characters are a successful young gay dancer, a sexy and wildly manipulative girl from the gutter, and an aging scientist. The chapters rotate between first-person narratives by each of them, and all three narrative styles are totally believable. This is one of the best science fiction novels of recent years, and I recommend it most highly.

As a molecular biologist and a HUGE fan of the Beggars books, I looked forward to reading "Miracles and Oaths". I was very disappointed: the science wasn't very good, the conspiracy aspect was sloppy, and the writing was overall rather dull. I'm not into techno-thrillers, so I can't assess how well "Miracles and Oaths" fits in that genre; it certainly doesn't inspire me to seek out more though. Someone mentioned The X Files books: "Miracles and Oaths" was not nearly as much fun as the MOTW (monster of the week) novels by Kevin Andersen or Charles Grant.

I've also been disappointed by An Alien Light and Beakers Dozen. Stick to the Beggar books.

If you like the X-Files you will enjoy this book. More a mystery with sinister biochemistry overtones than sci-fi, it gives you the creeps and ultimately leaves things unresolved. Our fearless FBI guy keeps trying to make the pieces fit. It takes 6 months and a lot of coincidences, but finally it all comes together. I found this an exciting read with lots of page turning suspense. The lingering meanace at the end made the premise more credible. And my hat goes off to anyone who can set a story in Newark, NJ.

I am a Nancy Kress fan and have read several of her books including the Beggars series. This is quite different, no really awesome science or brave new future world. A good read for someone just starting out in science fiction and not wanting too much sci-tech.

I must say that I was amazed to see this book with an average rating of only 3 stars. Gotta have my eyesight checked, I guess, or my memory, because that's actually my favorite Nancy Kress novel. I love her short stories, but usually I find her novels somewhat tedious and predictable (especially the endless Beggars cycle). Here we have some twists, some turns, some unflinching looks at violence - even as a thriller per se, it's really above average. But it's also a nice novel about damaged relationships, and perhaps it was that aspect I liked most. Anyhow, in my opinion this book is great. End of story.

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.

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.

It's a credit to Nancy Kress's skill that she got me to read to the end of the book, though I think it might have been more a case of wanting to see the entire train wreck.

The Beggars World series started off with a simple premise that quickly got out of hand: people who don't need to sleep are...well, omnipotent supermen. Eh? Having written herself into a box, Kress keeps the Sleepless offstage for nearly the entire book, then dispenses with the problem entirely through a pair of perfunctory, Sterling-esque plot twists. It kills me that I can't reveal them. Suffice to say that they're logically implausible given the nature of the people they affect, as painstakingly delineated over the preceding hundreds of pages.

Fine. But who are the Emergency Backup Protagonists? We've met them before: whiney milquetoast-with-a-woody Jackson, his daffy sister, quasi-Hellbitch Vicki, and Certified Hellbitch Cazie. Oh, don't forget sooper-genius hacker Lizzie, who reverts to Liver speech, her, when under stress, notices, and then just keeps doing it, her. Gaak.

Well then. Maybe the overarching theme redeems the book. Why yes, it does: Feeling sad? Feeling blue? Turn that frown upside down and just whistle a happy tune! I can't imagine this book actually suggests that one can overcome crippling anxiety and depression by make-believe and goodthink, so I must have misunderstood this part.

Did I mention the whole series is set in one of the most numbingly unpleasant dystopias ever to grace the SF field? If you're going to go that route, you'd better give us characters that make us care, that engage our sympathy or outrage. But all the groups we meet--Livers, donkeys, Sleepless--are so thoroughgoingly repellent that you kind of wish the bad guys *would* win and exterminate the species already, so we can start over with monkeys or penguins or something.

The Beggars Trilogy is a sordid tale depicting a drug addicted U.S. population a century into the future. The bio-engineered, genius tribe called the Sleepless decide to play god with the common man. They essentially turn man into plants. They used an injection of nanobots to grow a network embedded in man's skin- enabling him to feed from the soil as roots nourish a tree. Further, man's skin could also use photons like plants do in photosynthesis. How does that sound? The leitmotif reminds me of Eugene O'Neill's LONG DAYS JOURNEY INTO NIGHT. If in a century nanotechnology engulfs genetic engineering it appears the result shown in this book will be artificial life, not enriched life. Genius in this tale snuffs out both hope and free will. The Super sleepless had as much fear of innovation as the retarded sleepers. As both sides fought to retain the old and curtail the new, we are led to a total impasse. A snake swallowing its own tail.

This series is quite an undertaking. The craft of writing is mastered, the suspense sustained to the end, and lots of learning was dispensed on how the brain parts work. The question that must have kept cropping up with Ms. Kress was, "What do I do for an encore?" This confrontation with biogenetic engineering took the reader as deeply into dystopia as is inhumanly possible. Some of the characters actually evolved right out of the human race to become the Sleepless Masters who fortunately, it turned out, had an Achilles heel. The Sleepless saw themselves as gods to the unevolved human. When their plan went up in smoke not a tear was shed by the reader. Why not? Because here was a story of sex without joy, intelligence like dead AI, and spirituality without god. The trilogy spanned over a hundred years but where were the holidays, where was Easter and Christmas? It was bleak, bleaker and bleakest.

I don't know what my fellow reviewers are smoking --this is definitely the best of the Beggars trilogy. Not that you can really read it apart from the rest of them; you really need all three to see how far Kress got with developing the Beggar-world, which started (in Beggars In Spain) like all good science fiction does, with a simple question: What if people didn't need to sleep anymore? And went on from there, sort of answering that question directly in BIS and more dealing with the ramifications of it in Beggars and Choosers and becoming more of an attempt to tap into the quasi-mystic Answering Big Questions vein of science fiction in Beggar's Ride. Her solution as I understand it is basically sort of a tempered enthusiasm for modern science: look outward, but don't forget to look inward as well. That's the best I can describe it without giving too much away. And I love the way how from book to book Kress has no problem moving on to new characters. The scientific denouement is at the end of BR is not the wow-shocker that concluded BIS and B&C, but I only enjoyed BR more for it, and for Kress's guts in not feeling like she had to blow up the Death Star to get her point across (though that happens too). Within the trilogy we go from a world from where some people can't sleep to one where everyone has to look within themselves for answers, and it's just amazing how we went from good honest hard SF to wonderful philosophical SF within these three books. The changes, and the way things changed, are amazing. Good good stuff.