Ball Lightning

Ball Lightning is a rarely seen, not very well understood form of lightning-look power. In the book, Cixin Liu creates his own explanation of it. The novel starts with the protagonist's parents getting vaporized before his eyes. This drives him to explore ball lightning. He meets up with others that have interest in the subject. One woman is keen an using in as a weapon. A scientist has an understanding of the phenomenon as in the quantum realm. Those incinerated by ball lightning live in a state of being neither dead nor alive. The whole concept is not understood with our current understanding of physics. The ball lightning effects can be used to wipe out electronics, vaporize specific things or control tornados. Various parts of the research are used as both offense and defense in a war that breaks out. In the end some research foreshadows "others" watching the earth (in the three body problem.) The author has a nice afterward where he explains how he was influenced by other science fiction writers to create this novel. The novel has a fairly "young" feel to it - at times it feels almost like a young adult sci-fi novel. Then it bounces to more detailed scientific explanation. There is warfare and destruction, but it feels like it is more at a distance. It is interesting that there is a progression from the child-focused Supernova Era to the young adult Ball Lightning and then the more dark adult Three Body Problem. 

Supernova Era

A distant store has gone supernova. This has sent particles to earth that cause chromosome damage. All adults will die within a year. However, children are able to repair their chromosomes and will continue to live. The earth needs to plan for children quickly taking over.

The adults detonate all the nuclear warheads and plan for themselves to drive out to caves and remote areas to end their lives and launch the children-led era of utopia.

The utopia is short lived. Immediately after the adults leave, many of the little children start freaking out. The leadership command center is inundated with calls. They eventually get things under control. The climate also causes issues. Sea levels rise, flooding some land.

The US leadership decides the world needs to play a "real" wargame. The other countries think this is a bad idea, but they play along. The games will take place in Antarctica. This begins the "Lord of Flies" phase of the book. (It even acknowledges "Lord of the Flies".) Eventually, the USA keeps upping the ante, settling on nuclear warheads. They seem to have a small stash that were not destroyed. Nobody comes to China's aid. However, it turns out some special observers had codes for the Chinese nuclear missile. The games finally end as the missile is launched. A large number of children do still remain on Antarctica, however, they need to vacate once the earth rapidly cools back to a more "normal" temperature.

As a final action, the USA and China agree to switch land. The book then ends with an epilogue.

It is an interesting story, though it feels somewhat underdeveloped. It is an interesting concept of the children being fully in control that would have a lot of ways to explore. The implication is that they managed to continue a society, but we just see a few small glimpses of what happened. 

The Dark Forest

The population of earth now knows that the Tri-Solarans are approaching and will arrive within a few centuries. Some people initially plan on fleeing. However, that plan is quashed. The earth instead is focussing on plans to battle the invaders. Many of these plans rely on the people of earth taking advantage of not-yet-invented technology. The Tri-Solarans have sophons on earth that allow instant access to all human communications. However, their society doesn't have a difference between "thinking" and "saying". Can this help the humans?

Part of the plan is to have "wallfacers" who are given the power to do whatever they want. The hope is that they can create some plans to defeat the aliens without communicating it out loud. The Tri-solaran allies have "wall-breakers" that attempt to find the wallfacer plan. The wallfacers come up with some interesting plans - sometimes based on their particular interests.

The novel focusses primarily on a few periods of time. One is shortly after the earth knew about the impending invasion. Many of the main characters then enter hibernation and come back over a hundred years later. The earth has gone through a great catastrophe. However, now everyone is much more optimistic about the prospects of humankind. There is a large space fleet that humanity thinks will easily dispose of the invading force. Alas, things do not go according to plan and humanity becomes pessimistic. (We also wonder the role of a wallfacer innovation that can "imprint" beliefs on people - even something like "water is bad" can become a deeply held belief.)

In the end, it is social science that becomes the deciding factor. One planet is "cursed" and then later found to be destroyed. While this appeared to be magical, it just took advantage of interplanetary sociology. Social relationships also contribute to the fall of the Earth space fleet and the eventual fate of the earth. The vast amount of technology have their role, but without the understanding of how beings work together, they are of minimal use.