As merely a fascinated non-physicist, I was convinced. If this is where "superstring" and "probability theory" may be taking our leading scientific minds, it's a path I'm interested in pursuing as best I can.
To reveal how Capelo gets to the breakthrough that comes close to the climax of 'Probability Sun' would be to reveal a major spoiler about insights into alien intelligence. Let's just say that unknown to most people on board, the warship is carrying a dangerous passenger.

Very few of the people in this novel are likeable. Their gripes, their secret ambitions, their sometimes childish behaviour and their increasingly heated conflicts are irritating, amusing and important by turns. But they're all too human. While it's not the immediate next on my list, I certainly plan to read 'Probability Space' (2002; paperback out next January) and get to the root of the several mysteries still outstanding.

[Instead, the next title for review brings me back to earth for the first of another set of novels, this time by Jon Courtenay Grimwood. When I'm done, I'll let you know what I thought of 'Pashazade: The First Arabesk.'
I've been spoiled, several times in a row, by first-rate writing. Grimwood gets off to a good start with a man in a room with a corpse, and an original line in alternative history.
A man in a room with a corpse is exactly how the other book I'd next considered for review began. But 11 pages in, despite a gushing blurb about "knife-edge action" and a "powerful vision" of how we might all be plunged into the first environmental world war, I let it fall to the floor.
The writing was cliché-ridden and pedestrian beyond patience, however good the story may be. It would be uncharitable to identify title and author, to whom I can only wish better luck next time.
Just beware at the airport bookstall.]

There are dozens of pages about award-winning Nancy at SFF Net, along with a most relaxed picture of a formidable writer.