Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for Ball Lightning by Cixin Liu - Available

Ball Lightning

by Cixin Liu
Bruno Roubicek
Audiobook
60 of 60 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
60 of 60 copies available
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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 1, 2018

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781510089150
      • File size: 370155 KB
      • Duration: 12:51:09

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Using a half dozen accents, narrator Feodor Chin brings his video and computer game voice-over experience to the fore. Hugo Award-winning novelist Cixin Liu's military science fiction explores what might happen if the rare natural phenomenon of ball lightning were harnessed. Could it be used as a potent energy source or possibly as an unstoppable superweapon? The novel is part magical realism, part rumination on particle physics. Chin keeps the characters sounding vulnerable as two Chinese scientists grapple with their pasts and their ethics while madly working to create a new bomb that could destroy the world. This solid speculative fiction makes for good listening. B.P. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 11, 2018
      In Chinese folklore, ball lightning is known as “ghost lanterns,” and ghosts of a quantum kind haunt this thoughtful technothriller about the science of the next war. Chen, traumatized when ball lightning invades his birthday party and kills his parents, resolves to understand the elusive phenomenon, despite discouragement from his similarly hurt advisor. Encountering evidence that others have been struck by ball lightning but survived, he teams up with Lin Yun, a young major in the Chinese army with her own obsession: “new concept” weapons. Together, they track down a lost Russian research base and an eccentric Chinese genius, bringing together the clues that reveal ball lightning’s secrets in time for it to be weaponized for a conflict with America. Liu (the Three-Body Problem trilogy) pits the quest for theoretical knowledge against the push for practical, if deadly, applications. Without tilting the debate, he moves his characters through both their fears and their desires, showing how neither purity nor repudiation will bring more than a measure of personal relief. Readers intrigued by cutting-edge and slightly speculative science, and the philosophy of scientific ethics, will want to pick up this fine novel.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading
ESCC accessibility