Ball Lightning

by

Hardcover, 384 pages

English language

Published Oct. 22, 2018 by Tor.

ISBN:
978-0-7653-9407-1
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OCLC Number:
959038790

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3 stars (1 review)

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.

3 editions

reviewed Ball Lightning by Cixin Liu

A fun read but perhaps a little too unbelievable

3 stars

Although this is a prequel to "The Three-Body Problem" trilogy it is written in a different style - putting it more in a traditional Chinese military sci-fi genre. I enjoyed the story but military sci-fi is not really my taste, and I found my suspension of disbelief breaking down on some of the quantum aspects of the plot... but given real quantum effects are hard to believe anyway perhaps that shouldn't be a criticism.

Subjects

  • Fiction
  • Physicists
  • Military weapons
  • Ball lightning