In prison, Ye is recruited by Yang Weining and Lei Zhicheng, two military physicists working under Red Coast, a secret Chinese initiative to use high-powered radio waves to damage spy satellites.Īfter working with them for some time, she learns that the stated purpose is a front for Red Coast's true intention: the search for extraterrestrial life. However, the journalist betrays Ye, who is sentenced to prison after the letter is viewed as seditious by the government.
The letter details policy suggestions based on the book Silent Spring, which Ye read. Ye is officially branded a traitor and is forced to join a labor brigade in Inner Mongolia, where she befriends a government journalist who enlists Ye's help in transcribing a letter to the government. Below is a chronological plotline.ĭuring the Cultural Revolution, Ye Wenjie, an astrophysics graduate from Tsinghua University, witnesses her father get beaten to death during a struggle session by Red Guards from Tsinghua High School, who were supported by Ye's mother and younger sister. The story takes place in flash-forwards, flashbacks, and the present time. According to the author, these chapters had originally been intended as the opening, but were moved by his publishers to avoid attracting the attention of government censors. In the translated version chapters which take place during the Cultural Revolution appear at the beginning of the novel, rather than in middle, as they were serialized in 2006 and also as they appeared in the standalone version of the novel published in 2008. There are also some changes in the order of the chapters for the first volume. Liu and Martinsen's translation of the novels contains footnotes explaining references to Chinese history that may be unfamiliar to international audiences.
In 2013, it was announced that the series would be published by Tor in the United States, and by Head of Zeus in the United Kingdom. In 2012, Chinese-American science-fiction author Ken Liu and translator Joel Martinsen were commissioned by the China Educational Publications Import and Export Corporation (CEPIEC) to produce an English translation of The Three-Body Problem, with Liu translating the first and last volumes, and Martinsen translating the second volume. It received good responses from readers, leading to the publication of a book version. The first "Three-body" was first serialized in Science Fiction World, with published texts from May to December 2006. When he was not busy, he wrote three to five thousand words a day, and each of his books took about one year to complete. Therefore, he decided to concentrate on novel-length texts rather than on short stories. When the short story "Mountain" appeared in January 2006, many readers wrote that they hoped that he would write a novel. Liu's first published short story, "Whalesong", was published in Science Fiction World in June 1999. Within the system, its single Earth-like planet is being unhappily passed among them and suffers from extremes of heat and cold, as well as the repeated destruction of its intelligent civilizations.
The series portrays a future where, in the first book, Earth is awaiting an invasion from the closest star system, which, in this universe, consists of three solar-type stars orbiting each other in an unstable three-body system. Thereafter, it became the first Asian novel ever to win a Hugo Award for Best Novel, and was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel. The English translation by Ken Liu was published by Tor Books in 2014. By 2015, a Chinese film adaptation of the same name was in production. The novel received the Chinese Science Fiction Yinhe (" Galaxy") Award in 2006 along with many more over the years. It was published as a standalone book in 2008, becoming one of the most successful Chinese science fiction novels of the last two decades. The first volume of The Three-Body Problem was first serialized in Science Fiction World between May and December 2006. The trilogy's second and third novels are The Dark Forest and Death's End respectively. It is the first novel of the Remembrance of Earth's Past ( Chinese: 地球往事) trilogy, but the whole series is normally referred to as The Three-Body Problem. The title refers to the three-body problem in orbital mechanics. 'Three-Body' pinyin: sān tǐ) is a science fiction novel written by the Chinese writer Liu Cixin. The Three-Body Problem ( Chinese: 三体 lit. Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis for Best Foreign Work (2017)