'Any civilian technology can be put to military use. Liu's own boundless creativity finds its footing. And though that three-book fever dream left your humble reviewer reeling, this time around I found myself fearing Gemow's words had a ring of prophecy. Despite its longer wait for a translation - in this case by Joel Martinsen, who has worked with Liu before - Ball Lightning was actually published in China a decade and a half ago, before the publication of that landmark sci-fi series.

The line arrives maybe a third of the way into Cixin Liu's Ball Lightning, the Chinese writer's first novel to reach an English-speaking audience since his ' Remembrance of Earth's Past' trilogy. Sometimes you fly all the way only to discover it would have been better to have fallen halfway.' 'In Siberia,' comes his less than inspiring reply, 'a one hundred percent guarantee isn't necessarily a good thing. It's just sputtered to a halt on a snowbeaten tarmac - and while their drunk pilot has jogged it back to life, Gemow's fellow passengers understandably wonder what would happen if the ancient aircraft should die again, you know, after it takes off. Alexander Gemow has been asked about the aircraft's fitness for flight. Wedged into the cabin of a geriatric biplane, flanked by a pair of nervous new acquaintances, Dr. Somewhere deep in Siberia, a strungout Russian scientist has a little wisdom to offer. Your purchase helps support NPR programming.

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