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The Three-Body Problem
by Liu Cixin · 2015
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Soon to be a Netflix Original Series! “The War of the Worlds for the 21st century… packed with a sense of wonder.” – Wall Street Journal The New York Times bestselling conclusion to a tour de force near-future adventure trilogy from China's bestselling and beloved science fiction writer. With The Three-Body Problem, English-speaking readers got their first chance to read China's most beloved science fiction author, Cixin Liu. The Three-Body Problem was released to great acclaim including coverage in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and reading list picks by Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg. It was also won the Hugo and Nebula Awards, making it the first translated novel to win a major SF award. Now this epic trilogy concludes with Death's End.…
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"I actually I think The Three-Body Problem was awesome, but I actually liked his short stories even more."
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"This sci-fi epic, exploring humanity's first contact with an alien civilization, fits Mark Zuckerberg's interest in big ideas and the future of technology and society. It's an expected read for someone exploring complex systems and potential existential challenges."
"This book was actually written in 2006, but not translated into English until 2014. We now have the complete trilogy in English, as well as a Netflix adaptation, and it’s a big name among sci fi fans. Much of the book is spent guessing at the bigger-picture plot, so I don’t want to give too much of that away… The guessing happens in the company of nanotechnologist Wang Miao and detective Shi Qiang, who are investigating the multiple suicides of prominent scientists. In the course of their investigations, they play a VR game called Three Body. The challenge of the game is to help a planet whose climate is unpredictably destabilised by the presence of three stars in its sky; this produces cataclysmic changes which keep wiping out civilisations. Hence the title, The Three-Body Problem – the problem is a real unsolved problem in physics, how to predict the trajectories of three bodies that orbit each other if you have their initial positions and velocity. As this suggests, this novel is not one to read with half a mind elsewhere. You’ll have to concentrate. But you’ll be rewarded, both with the high stakes plot the game reveals, and with the satisfaction of the meditative read along the way. Yes! Very little of the enormous Chinese sci fi scene is translated into English, so it’s a pleasure to see this book so widely loved."
"Science fiction is big in China, occupying a “rather unique place in the culture and literature,” according to scholar Xia Jia. Despite this, we in the Western world don’t get to see much Chinese sci fi because of the language barrier. Luckily for us, this new translation of The Three-Body Problem opens up the worlds imagined by one of China’s most popular writers. Cixin Liu makes well-worn genre concepts fresh and exciting again and explores technology, human interaction and metaphysics from a distinctly different perspective. If you love hard science fiction with a bit of thriller thrown in, you need this book."
""The Three-Body Problem," by Liu Cixin — a mind-bending masterful sci-fi epic."