My copy of Probability Moon is a First Edition July 2000 stamped WITHDRAWN from the Palmyra Town Library. I picked it up in a used book store in Palmyra in the summer of 2005.
Why did Probability Moon get such a short shelf life?
The answer was clear in the first few chapters of the book: the beginning of Probability Moon stinks. As it happens, Kress's Beggars in Spain is on my top ten favorite science fiction books of all time. So, I slogged through the awkward space-tech info dump, the stock characters on the space ship bridge, the introduction to an alien world where the entire society seemed trivial and immature.
Recently (see Stardust in our eyes) I cited a bad opening as the reason I can't seem to read Neil Gaiman's Stardust. So why did I not only read all of Probability Moon, but enjoy it? I was hooked the moment that Syree, the stock military smart chick, expressed her first weakness.
See, Syree lost a leg in battle. They army grew her a new leg, cloned on the "skinless back of a permanently immobilized dog without an immune system. The dog was the problem. Syree could not get the dog out of her mind. She found she could not- could not- put her full weight on her left leg." Syree's limp ended her army career, and began my fascination with Probability Moon.
Probability Moon got better and better as it neared its exciting conclusion, and all that info dump at the beginning paid off in a satisfying ending that successfully married science with story. However, Kress's info dump habit never got any better. Up until the last, I felt like there were jolting moments of "As you know Bob" and similar Turkey City Lexicon violations.
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