A team of human scientists arrive on a planet ostensibly to study the society of its pre-industrial people who have an interesting concept of "shared reality" that keeps them pretty peaceful... or controlled? Also, one of their "moons" is actually a remnant of the same technology as the star gates that humanity is using for their interplanetary travel. This orb may be important because humanity is engaged in a genocidal war with another species, and they're currently losing.
The team must manage both the primary objective of scientific and anthropological study (along with the common non-interference principle) while also investigating the nature of the orb and maybe whether it's causing this "shared reality" thing?

It's been about a year and a half since I read this book (I'm really behind on my book reviews, sigh) and I didn't remember much about this one after reading the description. I opened it back up and a lot more came back to me. While the story was entertaining, and I seem to remember I sped through the trilogy in a week, I'm not finding much memorable about it. ( )

You know what I hate? When I bring a book with me, and only realize when I start reading it that it's the middle volume of a trilogy. It's really only fair that publishers but that info in a reasonably prominent place (or at least somewhere) on the cover.
Read it anyway, cause I didn't have anything else with me...
The book was ok for light entertainment, but not exceptional. A group of humans go to a planet inhabited by peaceful, pre-industrial natives. On this planet is a mysterious alien artifact which could be used as a powerful weapon in the war Earth is currently involved in. The complication is that the native culture depends on some kind of emanations from the artifact which give them a mild kind of telepathy that they refer to as "shared reality," which results in anti-social behavior giving them terrible headaches, meaning that everyone is cooperative and non-violent.
Of course, the military wants to take the artifact, regardless of its meaning to the natives.
Problems I had with it: all the characters were very "stock" - I didn't get a real sense of individuality from any of them. There were typical 'military types,' typical 'research scientist' types, and typical 'peaceful natives,' generic children, etc.
The physicist character was unconvincing as a brilliant scientist. He kept acting closed-minded to theories, and never came off as very smart. Too much of the "scientists are eccentric crazies" stereotype.
The artifact worked in such a simplistic way (pushing a series of buttons to activate a sensible series of settings) that it seemed ridiculous to have to have a physicist figure it out. From the observed behavior of the artifact, and even the clues provided by a prisoner-of-war, I wasn't convinced that a scientific breakthrough could have been made.
I saw no logical connection between the functions of the artifact and the effect that it had on the native population.
I didn't like the whole implied theory that punishment is the impetus for cooperative behavior, and that without the constant threat of punishment, individuals will commit whatever crimes they can think of, even in a society that has been peaceful for 50,000 years. In the scenario Kress proposes, I believe the confusion, fear, and chaos - but not the sudden shift toward violent crime. I believe that generally, people refrain from committing violent crimes simply because they aren't psychopaths, and don't have a strong urge to murder others randomly. ( )

The first few chapters of this were terribly infodumpy. I didn't find the children very convincing either, although they did improve as the book went on. I hadn't realised at first that this was a sequel, but I didn't have any trouble getting into the story and following what was happening. It was an easy read, though not exceptionally original in terms of characterisation and story structure. I did enjoy the invented culture, perhaps a little too much to be really comfortable with the ending. ( )

Too much infodump and unlikeable asshole to get through before it really got going. Nevermind.

Probability Sun is the second of the "probability trilogy" by Nancy Kress, taking place about three years after the events chronicled in Probability Moon. At the end of that book, humans had gone from World with the belief that they had been deemed "unreal" by the natives, but as it happens, the natives' "shared reality" has decided that humans are, indeed, real. Another mission is sent to the planet, this time to dig up, test and possibly remove the buried alien artifact that had been found by the previous team of scientists, an artifact that might have great use in the ongoing interstellar war in which humans are engaged. But what might that action do to the people of World, and do the humans even care?.... Often the middle book in a trilogy serves more as a place-holder, moving some of the action forward but generally not resolving anything, but in this trilogy, Kress has managed to construct the novels such that one can read each novel independently; that is, one does not have to have read Probability Moon to understand the events in Probability Sun, although of course it's a richer experience if one has read the earlier book. Here we again meet some characters we have already come to know, and some new characters are introduced. There are occasional info-dumps that exactly duplicate passages from the earlier book, but with that quibble aside, overall this is a very satisfying read; recommended! ( )