The Three-body Problem

Author: Cixin Liu

Science fiction is bigger in China than anywhere else in the world, and yet here in the West we have barely had a chance to see any Chinese science fiction. This book was a major bestseller in China when it was published there in 2006, now at last we have the chance to read it thanks to this marvellous translation by Ken Liu. Wang Miao, a researcher in nanomaterials, is surprised to be called in to a high-level government meeting that doesn't just include police and army, but also western military observers. It seems that leading scientists have been committing suicide, and Wang has to infiltrate the organisation to which they all belonged. He finds they have all been playing a strange computer game called The Three-Body Problem, set in a world where there are three suns and their behaviour is deadly and unpredictable. He gradually comes to understand that this isn't a game but a glimpse of a genuine planetary system, and the aliens have left their world and are on their way to invade Earth.Why it's on the list: The translation is superb, but the novel still reads unlike anything we would expect to encounter in the West; things left unexplained that we would spell out, and things spelled out that we would leave unexplained. Yet despite, or perhaps because of this strangeness, the novel is unfailingly engaging and intriguing, and helps us to see science fiction afresh.