Ball Lightning

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

A new standalone military science fiction adventure from the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the Three-Body Trilogy.

When Chen’s parents are incinerated before his eyes by a blast of ball lightning, he devotes his life to cracking the secret of 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 in particle physics. Although Chen’s quest provides a purpose for his lonely life, his reasons for chasing his elusive quarry come into conflict with soldiers and scientists who have 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.

Ball Lightning, by award-winning Chinese science fiction author Cixin Liu, is a fast-paced story of what happens when the beauty of scientific inquiry runs up against a push to harness new discoveries with no consideration of their possible consequences.

Tor books by Cixin Liu

The Remembrance of Earth's Past
The Three-Body Problem
The Dark Forest
Death's End

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.