The Three-Body Problem

The best kind of science fiction

Kim Stanley Robinson

Liu Cixin's impressive The Three Body Problem won the 2015 Hugo award for best novel, the first time a Chinese writer has taken that prize

Guardian (2015 Books of the Year)

It's a stunning, high-concept, rollercoaster of a novel which offers an intriguing Eastern perspective... this is a trilogy which, like Asimov's Foundation epic, looks set to quickly become an essential science fiction classic'

Starburst Magazine (rating: 9/10)

China has a lively SF scene inaccessible to western audiences until recently, so it's a great pleasure to read this book by Cixin Liu – the country's most popular SF writer – in English. Handled expertly on the terms of the genre, it is seeing this tale played out through a different cultural lens that makes the book fascinating. The translation is exemplary. The book is top-flight SF; smart, informative and engaging

SFX

Hard science fiction at its finest, and fans will appreciate the superb attention to detail that drives this constantly evolving and impressive series

SciFiNow

The writing is superb... The ideas are astounding, real eye-openers that expand the mind and really get the old grey matter going... A stand-out, award-worthy novel and one that deserves a place amongst the science fiction classics'

SF Book Reviews

For a book that makes you think, and holds true to some of the traditional values of SF, this one can't be beat

SFF World Magazine

[The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest are] the works of fiction I am most enthusiastic about

Bloomberg

A celebration of science as saviour

The Hindu

This book lives and dies by the quality of its ideas. Fortunately, the many, many different questions posed are fascinating and imaginative and I barreled through this novel right up to its gripping conclusion

Bending Over Bookwards

A book rich in ideas, puzzles and theories but each of them is explained in a way that isn't only accessible but is also absolutely engrossing... The ideas are vast but they are beautifully expressed and, for this, credit must also go to Ken Liu who has done a fantastic job of translating this masterpiece. I loved where The Three Body-Problem took me – it is tense, wondrous and fascinating and I am so ready to read its successor, The Dark Forest, the next in this exciting, original and gobsmacking trilogy'

For Winter Nights

A really fascinating book and I'm delighted that there are two more to come in the series... I'd recommend to readers who want to enjoy the science as much as the story'

SF Crowsnest

A book that you must have read, whether you are a Science Fiction fan or not. Cixin Liu tackles so many different topics from action, thriller and a strong emotional backdrop... I cannot imagine what effort it must have cost to translate such an epic story to English but it paid off really well. A great performance'

The Book Plank

Even what doesn't happen is epic

London Review of Books

Cixin Liu began his massively ambitious trilogy with this dazzling work of SF... Hard to sum up in a few short lines, but one you read it you'll be doing your best to tell everyone else to follow suit'

SciFiNow

Might be the biggest TV series to hit Earth this year… an adaptation of one of the 21st century’s most celebrated books

Time

One of the first Chinese novels to truly make an impact with Western audiences, [Liu]’s mind-boggling epic has found fans in everyone from George R.R. Martin to Barack Obama

Evening Standard

Formidable… The Three-Body Problem, written by the Chinese science-fiction godfather Cixin Liu, imagines a tantalising scenario

Daily Telegraph

Even by sci-fi standards, the story is staggering in its scope – some portions are set 18m years into the future, in galaxies far, far away

The Guardian

The series has outgrown its genre, both in China… and around the world, introducing casual readers to hard sci-fi in the same way Thrones once did for high fantasy

GQ

A masterful elaboration on the extraterrestrial “what-if”, it is gratifying that a novel so steeped in Chinese thought and history is encountering such a wide audience

The Conversation

Briskly told space-action thrillers, packed with mind-blowing and wondrous sci-fi invention and ideas

The Times

[A] gripping and haunting sci-fi mystery

Cosmopolitan

Incredible success… Liu is lauded as the man who put Chinese science fiction on the map

BBC Culture

A dazzlingly complex narrative full of unpredictable shifts of pace and tone, with the reader pushed and pulled between heavyweight issues: tricky physics, philosophy, Chinese history, and planetary annihilation

Daily Mail