Ball Lightning

Cixin Liu

Aug 2018 · Sold by Tor Books

About this ebook

From the New York Times bestselling author of the Three-Body Trilogy, Cixin Liu's Ball Lightning is the story of what happens when the beauty of scientific inquiry runs up against the drive to harness new discoveries with no consideration of their possible consequences.

When Chen’s parents are incinerated before his eyes by a blast of ball lightning, he devotes his life to cracking the secret of this mysterious natural phenomenon. His search takes him to stormy mountaintops, an experimental military weapons lab, and an old Soviet science station.

The more he learns, the more he comes to realize that ball lightning is just the tip of an entirely new frontier. While Chen’s quest for answers gives purpose to his lonely life, it also pits him against soldiers and scientists with motives of their own: a beautiful army major with an obsession with dangerous weaponry, and a physicist who has no place for ethical considerations in his single-minded pursuit of knowledge.

"Wildly imaginative."—Barack Obama on The Three-Body Problem trilogy

Tor books by Cixin Liu

The Three-Body Problem Series
#1 The Three-Body Problem
#2 The Dark Forest
#3 Death's End

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Ratings and reviews

After reading The Three Body Problem, I was so excited to read this. I don't know if was a translation issue or just a bad book, but my God was it terrible. Probably the worst sci-fi book I've ever read. And TBP was my favorite trilogy outside of the Void trilogy

I wanted to read this after starting The Three Body Problem. It definitely feels more mystical, but has a lot of similar elements. An interesting book, but not as much fun as his others.

I agree that the act of translating from Chinese is probably the cause of the sometimes awkward telling of the story. Given the amazingly vast differences in our cultures and languages, how could it possibly be any other way? But, my world would be regrettably less interesting if I wasn't able to read the epic thoughts and stories of Cixin Liu.

About the author

CIXIN LIU is a prolific and popular science fiction writer in the People's Republic of China. Liu is a winner of the Hugo Award and a multiple winner of the Galaxy Award (the Chinese Hugo) and the Xing Yun Award (the Chinese Nebula). He lives with his family in Yangquan, Shanxi.

JOEL MARTINSEN (translator) is research director for a media intelligence company. His translations have appeared in Words Without Borders and Pathlight. He lives in Edinburgh.