The Three-Body Problem
SynopsisPlot
Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.
Story
About this book
The Three-Body Problem begins during China's Cultural Revolution, when a secret military project transmits signals into space hoping to reach extraterrestrial life. The project succeeds. A distant alien civilization, facing its own existential crisis, detects the signal and begins preparing to reach Earth. The story moves between decades, connecting political upheaval on Earth with a slow-building interstellar threat.
On Earth, knowledge of the alien contact fractures into opposing groups. Some see the approaching civilization as a force that could correct humanity's failures and welcome its arrival. Others recognize the contact as a danger to the entire planet and work to resist it. These divisions play out through scientists, officials, and ordinary people caught between hope, despair, and calculation. A mysterious online game built around an unsolvable physics problem, the three-body problem of celestial mechanics, serves as one of the novel's central devices, connecting players to the alien world's chaotic conditions.
Liu Cixin originally published the novel in Chinese in 2008. The English translation by Ken Liu appeared in 2014. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2015, making it the first translated novel to receive that prize. The book is the opening volume of a trilogy known as Remembrance of Earth's Past.
