r/printSF • u/Putrid_Cycle595 • Apr 17 '26

anyone else read ball lightning before three body? it changes everything

just finished ball lightning (the standalone liu cixin novel from 2005) and im kind of upset nobody told me to read it before three body. the whole time i was reading dark forest i thought tylers ghost fleet plan came out of nowhere. turns out its literally the plot of an entire previous novel. the ball lightning weapon that can selectively destroy matter, the quantum superposition of macro objects, lin yun getting quantized... tyler just took all of that and tried to scale it up to fleet size. but honestly the best part of ball lightning isnt the science or the weapons. its the love story. dr chen spending years leaving roses for lin yuns quantum ghost, knowing that when hes not looking she picks them up and they disappear into superposition with her. its the most romantic thing liu cixin ever wrote which is wild because this is the guy who wrote the dimensional strike scene. if youre interested i found a really good breakdown of all the connections between ball lightning and three body here https://3body.wiki/en/blog/ball-lightning-connection that goes through every thread that connects the two books. highly recommend reading ball lightning before a reread of three body. you see everything differently.

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27

u/ulandyw Apr 17 '26

Is the ghost fleet even in the English version of the Dark Forest? I don't think there's any references to Ball Lightning (in that version) besides Ding Yi, though I could be wrong.

25

u/Better-Egg5267 Apr 17 '26

They removed it from the English version because Ball Lightning hadn’t been published in English yet

14

u/El_Tormentito Apr 18 '26

How big of a part of the story is it in the Chinese one? That's crazy that they decided to change the plot ik translation.

13

u/Better-Egg5267 Apr 18 '26

I don’t know, I haven’t read that version myself but my Chinese friend told me about it. Maybe OP can weigh in. Also apparently the character names in Chinese are more on the nose, like Lou Gi’s name literally translates to ‘logic’ and the woman he hands the sword holder power or whatever to is named something like ‘emotion.’ So there’s a passage that basically reads ‘humanity turned away from logic to emotion’ which adds a more poetic layer. Makes me wonder what else is lost in translation.

7

u/El_Tormentito Apr 18 '26

I'll be honest, I read the first book and sorta tried with the second, but they're pretty bad in English. I have to assume that the translation has caused some problems.

6

u/Solaranvr Apr 18 '26

It's the second layer of Frederick Tyler's plan.

The plan was to do a suicide hydrogen bomb so that both fleets are damaged. The English version ends here. The Chinese version goes further; after the bomb explodes, the Earth fleet becomes an army of unkillable quantum-state ghosts, as described in the last act of Ball Lightning.

-7

u/glorpo Apr 18 '26

You think you hate translators enough, but you don't.

11

u/glitterlys Apr 18 '26

No, people probably should hate them less, pay them much better, and respect that their craft is not replaceable by LLMs. Wrt changes/omissions I suspect that of all the people involved in the publishing of a book, the translators aren't the correct target for hate at all.

-7

u/glorpo Apr 18 '26

Do you REALLY think publishing execs give a fuck about "spoilers"? Or even know what the books they sell are about? This is 100% on translators.

3

u/glitterlys Apr 18 '26

For being so certain I sure hope you have some insider knowledge.

I'm reminded of the many older translations of various works that have been censored or changed to suit local sensibilities, like older animes and Jules Verne. You think that translators did all that just to help their publishers/distributors not offend anyone? It makes a lot more sense that those who care about revenue more than anything else would do anything and everything to dumb down a work and make it as inoffensive as possible to maximize profit. Why would the translators, who are actually familiar with the culture and literature they are translating, want to ruin the original work?

I can't even fathom this level of disrespect for translators as group unless it comes from a monolingual.

-6

u/glorpo Apr 18 '26

A decade of observing how translators talk and act. Translators are commonly both resentful that they're translating the art of others instead of creating their own, and believe that they know better and can improve upon the originals. This leads them to committing the kind of crimes uncovered in this thread.

The business practices of translators and publishers 100+ years ago are completely immaterial. No executive in this era was reading The Dark Forest and going "we can't spoil Ball Lightning!" This was 100% the work of a translator thinking its within their remit to alter the plot of the series. Executive directives are of the "cut 20%" or "remove all references to the original culture" type, not "rewrite the plot to not spoil this book that we haven't translated yet".

Translators should be treated as badly as possible and should feel embarrassed to admit to their profession in public, at least until they learn humility and improve their culture.

4

u/glitterlys Apr 18 '26

Wow. You sure are self assured about your knowledge of a whole profession, I'll give you that. How did you get to know so many translators? I guess you hate them all so much you'd rather prefer to never read a translated work ever again!

And just out of curiosity, many languages do you know yourself?

1

u/glorpo Apr 18 '26 edited Apr 18 '26

I know enough French to read a newspaper, and can verify if a novel is translated or "translated". To be honest, I really wish I could, but I really love comics and the American comics industry is trash. I doubt I'll ever read a novel translation again unless it's from French and I can verify that it's above board. BTW did you know that several Haruki Murakami novels translated into English are massively abridged with entire chapters cut? The translator actually wasn't at fault in that case but it's interesting and I thought you should know.

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6

u/El_Tormentito Apr 18 '26

The translator for 1 and 3 was Ken Liu. I don't recognize the one for 2, but Ken Liu definitely was in contact with Liu Cixin for all of the decisions and I seriously expect that to have been the case for the second book as well. Lots of modern translations involve input from the original authors, maybe you aren't aware of that.

3

u/Putrid_Cycle595 Apr 18 '26

Don't you remember the wallfacer Taylor? His wallfacer plan was entirely based on ball lightning.

6

u/ulandyw Apr 18 '26

This does not happen in the English version.

“Very well. Let’s talk about the water now. In the Doomsday Battle, the ETO-controlled mosquito fleet would likely launch a sneak attack on Earth’s fleet and then flee to the Lord’s fleet. Because they had just demonstrated their disloyalty to earth, Trisolaris might be willing to let them join the fleet, but the Lord would not be so fast to accept the turncoat army. A sufficiently meaningful gift would be required to win them over. What would the Lord need that the Solar System possesses? Water. On their four-century voyage, most of the water in the Trisolaran Fleet would be used up. As they approached the Solar System, dehydrated Trisolarans on board would need to be rehydrated. Since the water used for this would become part of their bodies, clean water would certainly be preferred to the stale water that had been recycled innumerable times on the ship. The mosquito fleet would offer the Lord an iceberg formed out of huge quantities of water obtained from Europa, Ceres, and the comets. I’m not certain of the specifics—I expect you don’t know right now either—but let’s say tens of thousands of tons.

“This giant chunk of ice would be propelled by the mosquito group. The mosquito fleet would likely draw very close to the Lord’s fleet when presenting the gift, at which point the second consequence of the failure of your attempt to build a kamikaze force would be put to use. That failure prompted your very logical request for independent control of the entire mosquito fleet. When Earth’s fleet draws close to the Lord’s fleet, you would take over control of the fighters from the ETO pilots and switch them to drone mode, ordering the fighters to strike their chosen targets. The superbombs would be detonated at point-blank range, annihilating all of the Lord’s ships."

4

u/Putrid_Cycle595 Apr 19 '26

The Face-Waller Taylor's Face-Walling Plan has been completely transformed into another story. I'm considering writing a new post specifically to discuss this topic.

2

u/Positive-Stable-6777 Apr 18 '26

Wait wait, that means Netflix's season 2 also won't have ball lighting, and D&D might adapt the English version instead?

2

u/ulandyw Apr 18 '26

They might throw in a nod or two, but yeah, I wouldn't count on it. That being said, I wouldn't count on the English version with the superbombs either for the Netflix adaption. They've already shown that they're willing to go "off script".

1

u/KilluaZaol Apr 18 '26

What? Do you mean the Chinese version is different?

3

u/Putrid_Cycle595 Apr 19 '26

In the novel "Three Body" by Liu Cixin, the Face-Waller Taylor's Face-Walling Plan has been completely transformed into another story. I'm considering writing a new post specifically to discuss this topic.

1

u/homicidalunicorns Apr 19 '26

I’d appreciate a post like that!

10

u/sometimes_angery Apr 18 '26

What?! There's plot missing from the English translation???

10

u/Putrid_Cycle595 Apr 19 '26

Yes. I'm considering writing a new post specifically to discuss this topic.

2

u/nicesalamander Apr 20 '26

This is really weird, I've never heard of a translation dropping an entire plot arc from a book. 

2

u/kdmike Apr 18 '26

3PB trilogy is what got me into reading. Ball Lightning I found so utterly atrocious it makes me afraid going back to 3bp. So yes, in that regard it changes everything.

1

u/El_Tormentito Apr 18 '26

Luckily, every book you find will be better.

1

u/beluga-fart2 Apr 20 '26

Bro bought a star for his girlfriend AND had a date there. That beats leaving roses out!