The Three-Body Problem

Cixin Liu

Nov 2014 · Remembrance of Earth's Past Book 1 · Sold by Tor Books

About this eBook

The inspiration for the Netflix series 3 Body Problem!

WINNER OF THE HUGO AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL

Over 1 million copies sold in North America

“A mind-bending epic.”—The New York Times • “War of the Worlds for the 21st century.”—The Wall Street Journal • “Fascinating.”—TIME • “Extraordinary.”—The New Yorker • “Wildly imaginative.”—Barack Obama • “Provocative.”—Slate • “A breakthrough book.”—George R. R. Martin • “Impossible to put down.”—GQ • “Absolutely mind-unfolding.”—NPR • “You should be reading Liu Cixin.”—The Washington Post

The Three-Body Problem is the first novel in the groundbreaking, Hugo Award-winning series from China's most beloved science fiction author, Cixin Liu.

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.

The Three-Body Problem Series
The Three-Body Problem
The Dark Forest
Death's End

Other Books by Cixin Liu
Ball Lightning
Supernova Era
To Hold Up the Sky
The Wandering Earth
A View from the Stars

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Ratings and reviews

I just don't get all the praise and awards for this book. I guess a lot was lost in translation...but the English version won awards also, so not sure. To me it felt like someone challenged the author to write a novel and use every single word from the glossary of a physics textbook. I kept waiting for the book to get to the good part, because surely with all the praise, it would get better. I would describe the book like this. Take a simple scene of a child throwing their red ball toy accross a room, and watching it bounce with wonder. This book would describe it like this: Child throws ball with speed of 3 meters per second. First bounce is 30cm high, 2nd bounce is 15cm high, 3rd bounce hits carpet, and rolls to a stop due to friction. End scene.

I know this won a reputable award, and I actually liked the unique style of writing (I'd describe it as 1st person reflective, my words, I have no literary background), but characters too near the end to develop, and oddball events appeared from nowhere with no context although story line was dramatically affected. The ideas were neat, original, but I don't think I will read the next one in this series. Still, I think that this author has a promising future, it's just that I don't have the time to stay with this series.

While reading the book, I kept going back and forth on whether or not I liked it. There are certainly some cool ideas and there are creative and well written parts. However, much of it is undone by being completely absurd, ridiculous to the extreme, and downright ludicrously implausible. For instance, the civilization described is a cool idea but simply absurdly impossible to exist, especially where it exists in the story. I understand there is significant inherent difficulty in writing characters who are more intelligent than the author. But these supposedly intelligent people are more like blithering idiots. Like many unfortunate sci-fi writers, the author seems to have grasped the tip of scientific principles, completely misunderstood them, then carried these misconceptions to absurd consequences. I suppose a good microcosmic example for most of my issues with this book can be summed up by the fact that it would seem the author doesn't realize that his book actually deals exclusively with the four body problem.

About the author

CIXIN LIU is the most prolific and popular science fiction writer in the People's Republic of China. Liu is a winner of the Hugo Award, an eight-time winner of the Galaxy Award (the Chinese Hugo), and a winner of the Chinese Nebula Award.

KEN LIU (translator) is a writer, lawyer, and computer programmer. His short story "The Paper Menagerie" was the first work of fiction ever to sweep the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards. He has written two novels (The Grace of Kings and The Wall of Storms) and edited and translated the Chinese science fiction anthology Invisible Planets.