Liu Cixin’s sci-fi epic coming to Netflix

Liu Cixin’s “The Three-Body Problem” – the first of a popular trilogy titled “Remembrance of Earth’s Past” – has entertained and challenged readers since first appearing in Chinese in 2006.

The 2014 English translation, by acclaimed American science-fiction author Ken Liu, became the first work by an Asian author to win the Hugo Award for best sci-fi novel.

The book is among the most widely-read works of modern Chinese fiction in English, and Liu’s critical reputation and fan base (which includes Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg) continues to grow. A 30-episode Chinese adaptation of The Three-Body Problem aired in 2023; Netflix will release a condensed, eight-episode version later in March.

A key element of the book’s English-language success may be Ken Liu’s interventionist translation. With the author’s blessing, Liu rearranged the chapter order, reversing an earlier precaution taken by Liu Cixin to limit Chinese censors’ interest in the original.

Thus, in English, the novel begins with the chaos and trials of the Cultural Revolution.

That upheaval, which tore families apart, traumatizing a generation, also marked Liu Cixin’s early childhood. His father, a member of a mining institute cadre, was sent from Beijing to work in the mines of Shanxi province.

Some of his earliest memories are of gunfire and the armbands worn by the Red Guards. As the city where they lived became a flashpoint, young Liu was sent to live with his grandparents in the countryside for several years.

The plot

The protagonist in the novel’s first section is Ye Wenjie, a student who witnesses her father, a physics professor, being denounced and humiliated by Red Guards. They claim his teaching of theoretical physics is treasonous because it relies