In fact, given that objections are regularly raised about the ethics of the militarization of science but dismissed moments later by the same characters, all because war with “the enemy” is looming (and later breaks out), it seems that the one clear philosophical position of Liu’s novel is that readers living in these neoliberal times not take the paths of Chen and Yun.
Liu also critiques the culture of work and labor that would have people ignore the pleasure of life in favor of single-mindedly pursuing money, knowledge, fame, or glory. Mentors regularly chide Chen and Yun that simplicity, not complexity, is the way to understand the world. The problem, as Liu writes it, is that scientific research is too rigid, too stuck in its own self-made laws, or bent, say, by political concerns of the state, to discover what should be rather obvious. Liu also writes with concern about the ways in which political ideology shapes how scientific research is carried out. There is a tension throughout the novel regarding funding for scientific research being proportional to its use in business and war. Still, her story is relayed second- and third-hand by Chen and other men, who are both fascinated by and afraid of her emotional, trauma-driven pursuit of a weapon capable of destroying all electronics in the world or, worse, all human life.īall Lightning cuts into tough questions about the ethics of science and its application to weapons.
While Yun becomes a key character early on, it is not until toward the end, when Chen decides to leave the macro-electron project after it proves destructively weaponizable, that she occupies equal characterological footing with Chen. This discovery leads to another: macro-nuclei of macro-atoms, which can produce enormous cold fusion explosions. The novel is written in Chen’s first person and tracks in close detail his developing theory of ball lightning, his collaboration with Yun on its military application, and eventually their discovery that ball lightning is in fact macro-electrons forming the building blocks of a macro-universe. Lin Yun researches “new-concept weapons” for the Chinese military, a response to her mother’s death by genetically engineered attack bees during the 1980s border war with Vietnam. Chen wants to understand ball lightning, a real-world phenomenon that as yet has no scientific explanation, after his parents are killed by an instance of it on his fourteenth birthday. Ball Lightning, then, has a lot of hype behind it, and while it may not be as sweeping a study of (inter)national politics, humanity, and the alien as the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, it is an important-and timely-meditation on science, weapons development, and the ways in which people confront trauma.īall Lightning tells the story of two Chinese nationals driven to science by loss. In addition to its Chinese awards, The Three-Body Problem nabbed the Hugo Award for Best Novel and nominations for nearly every major genre award, not to mention a plug by then-President Obama in the New York Times (see WLT, Sept. Ball Lightning is Liu’s fourth book in English, the first three having comprised a hard science-fiction trilogy about alien contact and human political struggles among themselves and with the aliens. Because of the 2014 English translation of his novel The Three-Body Problem, Chinese science fiction has been in high demand in the American market.
Multiple-award-winning Chinese science-fiction author Cixin Liu is having a moment in the anglophone world.
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