Liu Cixin’s brilliant science-fiction novel “The Three-Body Problem,” by far the most popular Chinese writer, became the first translated book nominated for the most prestigious science-fiction literary awards: the “Hugo,” “Nebula,” “Locus,” “Prometheus,” and others.
At a time when China was living through the aftermath of the brutal “Cultural Revolution,” signals were sent into space as part of a secret military project to establish contact with an alien intelligence. One of the signals was picked up by a civilization at the brink of extinction, and now the aliens are preparing to invade Earth. When people learned about this, they split into those ready to hand over our corrupt world to a higher intelligence—and those who would fight to the last against this invasion.