Hold Universe in the Palm of Our Hand, and Humanity in An Hour
The 3-Body Problem and the power of imagination
Reading all three weighty tomes of the acclaimed Three-Body Problem trilogy had taken me well over a decade. It has taken major streaming platforms — Tencent in China, Netflix in the US — an equally long time to release their respective TV adaptations of this science fiction saga by Liu Cixin, the first Asian author to have won the prestigious Hugo Award.
I could have claimed a spot among the trilogy’s earliest fans, for a friend in Beijing had gifted me the first Chinese edition as soon as the books were published. Despite their page-turning quality, I somehow never found the time, nor the right mood, to read more than a few chapters at a time.
Life got in the way. Earthly obligations kept me grounded in the planetary present. Yet the philosophies Liu broaches, his big-picture wondering, were never far from my consciousness. I kept returning to the pages, and eventually established my own version of that imagined universe before viewing others’ on-screen interpretations.
The Three-Body saga created quite a sensation in China and prompted Western critics to compare Liu’s writing to the Golden Age of Western sci-fi. English translations of Liu’s novels have sold more than 3 million…
