Ball Lightning

Written by Cixin Liu

Narrated by Bruno Roubicek

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. The more he learns, the more he comes to realize that ball lightning is just the tip of an entirely new frontier in particle physics. Although Chen's quest provides a purpose for his lonely life, his reasons for chasing this elusive quarry come into conflict with soldiers and scientists who have motives of their own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: W. F. Howes Ltd
• Release date: Aug 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781510092037

Cixin Liu

CIXIN LIU is the most prolific and popular science fiction writer in the People’s Republic of China. Liu is a winner of the Hugo Award, 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.

Reviews for Ball Lightning

[Gaurav Gupta · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Cixin Liu had rapidly become one of my favorite Sci fi writers, underscore only enhances reputation in my eyes. To take a relatively simple natural phenomena and make an eminently readable hard Sci fi novel or if it, set in a parallel present day universe is mind blowing. The story appears a little contrived and hurried at a few places, but I was always guessing where we were going next, and it was always a surprise.

[Evan and Caris · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Absolutely superb. The pace was restrained but not slow, a wonderfully told, fascinating story. Riveting.

[Karen Del Monte · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Weapons research, quantum effects, obsession and war..a powerful, thought-provoking tale.

[mirekluza · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting story but a bit of a dissapointment when compared to "The three body problem".
There are several reasons -the far smaller complexity of the story and less beliavable discoveries and also because of support characters (I mean especially all Chinese military people - with one exception they seemed like machines - as if they were robots showing neither good nor bad emotions - just performing duties).
On the other hand there are still fresh ideas including an attempt to imagine how the quantum effects would look like if they happened on the macro scale.