Ball Lightning

Cixin Liu

Tom Doherty Associates, Aug 14, 2018 - Fiction - 384 pages

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

Contents

• Section 1: 9
• Section 2: 19
• Section 3: 23
• Section 4: 28
• Section 5: 42
• Section 6: 53
• Section 7: 65
• Section 8: 68
• Section 9: 95
• Section 10: 105
• Section 11: 131
• Section 12: 139
• Section 13: 148
• Section 14: 152
• Section 15: 168
• Section 16: 172
• Section 17: 177
• Section 18: 185
• Section 19: 204
• Section 20: 210
• Section 21: 224
• Section 22: 231
• Section 23: 238
• Section 24: 241
• Section 25: 257
• Section 26: 267
• Section 27: 274
• Section 28: 282
• Section 29: 288
• Section 30: 313
• Section 31: 327
• Section 32: 338
• Section 33: 348
• Section 34: 367
• Section 35: 372
• Section 36: 381

About the author

CIXIN LIU is the most prolific and popular science fiction writer in the People’s Republic of China. Liu is an eight-time winner of the Galaxy Award (the Chinese Hugo) and a winner of the Chinese Nebula Award. Prior to becoming a writer, he worked as an engineer in a power plant. His novels include The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death's End. Joel Martinsen is research director for a media intelligence company. His translations have appeared in Words Without Borders, Chutzpah!, and Pathlight. He lives in Beijing.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Ball Lightning
• Author: Cixin Liu
• Translated by: Joel Martinsen
• Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates, 2018
• ISBN: 0765394073, 9780765394071
• Length: 384 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Science Fiction / General; Fiction / Science Fiction / Hard Science Fiction; Fiction / Science Fiction / Military; Fiction / World Literature / China / 21st Century