The Three-Body Problem

The Three-Body Problem is a hard science fiction novel by the Chinese writer Liu Cixin, published in Chinese in 2008 under the title San Ti by Chongqing Press, the first installment in his Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. The novel depicts humanity's discovery of and looming first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization from a nearby three-star system, whose orbital instability, governed by the mathematical three-body problem, has made their home world unlivable and driven them to seek Earth as a new one. Ken Liu's 2014 English translation, published by Tor Books in the United States and Head of Zeus in the United Kingdom, became the first novel by an Asian writer to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, in 2015, and the book's international success established Liu Cixin as one of contemporary science fiction's most significant voices.