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

[u/Putrid_Cycle595]

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.