When one night on his birthday, Chen's parents are turned to ashes before his eyes by a spherical lightning bolt, he dedicates his entire life to uncovering the secrets of this bizarre natural phenomenon.
His quest will lead him to wild mountain peaks, a military laboratory for secret weapons, and an old Soviet research station in Siberia. The more he learns, the more he realizes that spherical lightning is just the beginning of an entirely new scientific field in particle physics that will completely change the way people perceive the universe.
Although Chen's search gives purpose to his life, this purpose brings him into conflict with military personnel and scientists: a beautiful colonel in the Chinese army obsessed with unconventional weapons and a physicist without any moral constraints in his own, one-sided pursuit of knowledge. And all this while the world edges toward the brink of a new global war.
Spherical Lightning is yet another impressive novel by the award-winning Chinese author Liu Cixin, now famous for his "Three-Body Problem" trilogy, which has been successfully adapted into a television series worldwide. Beyond being a great science fiction adventure, the book is a study on the uses of new scientific discoveries and the ethical limitations that must accompany them.
