Ball Lightning

by Cixin Liu

A couple of years ago, I listened to the audiobook The Three-Body Problem by this same author. I enjoyed it for a while, but at some point I lost the plot, and I never really understood the ending. It would have been better to read it in print.

As I read Ball Lightning in print, I noticed the point where I bet the same thing would have happened. An important plot point takes less than a page to relate, and it’s somewhat understated. I could easily have been confused for the rest of the story. It makes me want to retry TBP in print.

The book opens with Chen’s parents dying right before his eyes on his 14th birthday, hit by ball lightning. He devotes himself to studying the phenomenon, which ultimately leads to some thorny ethical issues. I was hoping for a little more discussion of these – how, in scientific study, to decide when to stop pursuing something that you can do but shouldn’t.

I enjoyed the writing style – simple, sometimes philosophical, without gratuitous description.

Zhao Yu was a smart man, and if he put in the work, he could accomplish many things. Looking at him, I realized that sometimes a philosophy of life might be set in stone, unchanging throughout one's life, but at other times it could be incredibly weak. The direction of a man or woman's life might be determined by the era they found themselves in. It's impossible for someone to distance themselves very far from the times they live in. (p. 140)

    
        I knew she was right.  Sometimes what we find hardest to tolerate in others is our own reflection... We [Chen and Lin Yun] were people untethered to our time, and untethered to each other, and we would never have a way to merge. (p. 166)