The Three-Body Problem Study Guide

The trauma of the Cultural Revolution, which serves as a backdrop for the events of The Three-Body Problem, was something Cixin Liu experienced firsthand. As a toddler, Liu’s father—who had fought on the communist side in the Chinese Civil War—was fired from his job for the mere fact that his brother was anti-communist. The family relocated to the city of Yangquan, where Liu lived in fear of the near-constant violence outside his door. In search of a more peaceful existence for their child, Liu’s parents sent him to live with his grandparents in Henan province. Once in Henan, Liu developed interests in space travel and weapons technology, crafting homemade gunpowder and reading up on complex astronomical theory. He started writing science fiction stories in high school, a practice he continued through college and his first job as a computer engineer at a power plant. After coming to prominence with his short story The Wandering Earth, Liu turned his attention to longer projects, including the serialized story that would later become The Three-Body Problem. Today, he is the most famous science fiction writer in China. He is also the first Asian writer to win the prestigious Hugo award, a feat he achieved in 2015 when the English translation of The Three-Body Problem was published.  

The Three-Body Problem, which spans the 1960s to the early 2000s, is in many ways shaped by the traumatic events of China’s Cultural Revolution. In 1966, China’s leader Mao Zedong launched the Revolution in a bid to retain his power in the country’s communist government. Mao and his allies urged legions of young fighters known as the Red Guards to violently shame and attack the “four olds”: old ideas, old habits, old customs, and old cultures. Because academics were seen as the keepers of many such “old” belief systems, they were among the Red Guards’ primary targets. As the violence escalated, China transformed into a quasi-military dictatorship, and up to two million lives were lost. Beginning in 1971, restrictions began to ease, though the Cultural Revolution only officially ended when Mao died in 1976. By the 1980s, China had effectively shed its communist past, embracing capitalism and economic expansion.

Though Liu’s introduction to the power of speculative fiction was Jules Verne’s classic Journey to the Center of the Earth, as an adult he cites writers George Orwell and Arthur C. Clarke as major influences. Orwell, whose most famous work is 1984, similarly explores the relationship between politics and technology; Clarke, who helped to pen the screenplay for Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, is another science fiction writer who focuses heavily on space exploration. Moreover, in addition to these largely Western influences, Liu’s work can be seen to continue a long tradition of Chinese science fiction. Like Liang Qichao, a prominent Chinese writer in the early 20th century, Liu’s work firmly centers China as the hub of scientific thought and invention.