Cixin Liu

Liu Cixin is the most widely read science fiction author in the history of Chinese literature and, following the global success of The Three-Body Problem and its sequels, one of the most influential SF writers in the world. Born in 1963 in Beijing and raised in the mining towns of Shanxi Province, he worked as an engineer at a power plant for two decades while publishing fiction on the side — stories that were already remaking the landscape of Chinese SF.

The Three-Body Problem (2008) — the first volume of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy — won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2015 in Ken Liu's English translation, making it the first Asian novel to receive science fiction's highest honour. The trilogy, which spans cosmic time and poses some of the most audacious ideas in contemporary SF, has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide and inspired a Netflix adaptation. Liu's fiction works at the grandest possible scale, treating human civilisation as a single character in a drama that unfolds across millennia and light-years, and his influence on a new generation of Chinese SF writers has been enormous.