If you're expecting Independence Day in China, however, you will have to wait until the next book the aliens may be coming, but this is hard SF so they are constrained by the speed of light. The Three-Body Problem is mostly conspiracy thriller, with the secret of the 'Three-Body' virtual world being the clue to the aliens who are lurking in the background.

Trying to find out what's going on, he is drawn into a shadowy conspiracy involving a secret scientific cabal, a secret multinational task force investigating the cabal, and an online game called 'Three-Body.' This turns out to be a less than stellar idea.ĭecades later, a Chinese scientist learns that other scientists are inexplicably committing suicide. So they have begin a SETI program, hoping to broadcast the People's message to the stars. It turns out that the Central Committee, having taken seriously the possibility that aliens might exist, is worried that a hypothetical alien civilization's first contact with humans might be with capitalist imperialist Westerners, thus giving the aliens a 'one-sided' view of Earth. After this, she is sent into political exile, but because of her own scientific expertise, she is brought to a top secret installation called Red Coast Base. Ye Wenjie witnesses her father, a physics professor, being beaten to death by student revolutionaries for advocating the 'reactionary' theory of General Relativity. It begins in the 60s, during Mao's Cultural Revolution. Liu is an engineer, and it shows: The Three-Body Problem is hard science fiction with a mix of cultural history, conspiracy theory, and theoretical physics. Nominated for a Hugo (after some reshuffling of the ballot - I should really do a Saturday Book Discussion post about that :P), The Three-Body Problem is the first book in a trilogy by Cixin Liu so far, this is the only one that has been translated into English, but the others are forthcoming. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision. 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. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. With the scope of Dune and the commercial action of Independence Day, Three-Body Problem is the first chance for English-speaking readers to experience this multiple-award-winning phenomenon from China's most beloved science fiction author, Liu Cixin.

The 3 body problem book