Qiuzhuang Shandian

球状闪电 (lit. "Ball Lightning")

By Liu Cixin, published by Sichuan Science and Technology Press in July, 2004.

When Chen’s parents are incinerated before his eyes by a blast of ball lightning, he devotes his life to discovering 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 only the beginning of an entirely new frontier in particle physics.

Ball Lightning, by award-winning Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin, 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 the possible consequences.

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