The term refers to reports of luminescent, spherical objects – lightning in specific forms – that vary from pea-sized to several meters in diameter. Ball lightning is an unexplained and potentially dangerous atmospheric electrical phenomenon. The premise is fictitious since, even up to today, this has not been possible.

Chen”, when they are hit by ball lightning, and the story continues about the years that he spends on research projects, working with similarly obsessed scientists and military personnel to find, trap, and use the power of ball lightning. In this novel though, the characters are less “discomforting” and the reader can empathize with them more easily, though the topic, scientific research into the strange phenomenon of ball lightning, is still the main feature of the novel.īall Lightning, set in China, starts off with the death of the parents of the main character, “Dr. The characters’ dialogues are often formal, lengthy and declamatory – through no fault of the translators I’m sure. Liu writes SF in Mandarin, with an emphasis on the Science part of SF rather than the Fiction part, and his novels have a strange (at least strange to a Western reader) manner of characterization. I reviewed the third in this series, Death’s End, and this proved to be really difficult. LIU Cixin, or Cixin Liu as he is known in English, is the author of the famous Science Fiction trilogy The Three Body Problem, originally known as Remembrance of Things Past, which starts with the novel of the same name as the series. Ball Lightning, by Cixin Liu (Translated by Joel Martinsen, publisher: Tor Books First Edition Aughardcover, 384 pages)

Ball lightning novel