Life and Leisure

Liu Cixin: Career milestones

By Chitralekha Basu (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-12-17 08:06

The Era of Supernova (1999):

A radiation caused by a suddenly glowing supernova is destined to kill everyone over 14 on Earth in a year's time.Only children, whose tissues might still heal, can survive. As each country tries to put together and train a band of select boys and girls who will rule the world, a big question mark looms for the future of a planet inhabited and governed by minors.

The Rural Teacher (2001):

A village schoolteacher engages his students to resist the threat of destruction looming large on Earth. The story begins with the vulnerable human being's urge to fight the mighty and mysterious against all odds, but eventually takes off to a different zone altogether - the deep and unknowable cosmos.

The Cloud of Poems/ Dream Sea (2003):

A ruthlessly single-minded artist, who believes in the supremacy and sustainability of art over life and all else, competes with his match from the alien world. They use the Earth and the sea as raw materials, covering the Earth's surface with a poem in the form of clouds.

Ball Lightning (2004):

As a pre-teen, the protagonist saw both his parents reduced to a heap of ashes, struck by a ball of lightning. It becomes his mission to demystify the bizarre natural phenomenon, leading him to people who are planning to utilize the same to annihilate enemies.

The Three Body Trilogy:

Earth Past (2007):

University student astrophysicist Ye Wenjie witnesses the persecution and death of her father at the hands of the Red Guards in 1967. She is sent to be re-educated in the countryside and subsequently charged with being a counter-revolutionary. She is about to be sent to a labor camp, when Ye is kidnapped by mysterious figures and taken to a secret base. She invents a method of sending out messages into space through a high-volume ejector. The messages alert the Three Body people (aliens inhabiting a three-star stellar system) who threaten to invade Earth.

Dark Forest (2008):

Earthlings are preparing for the final battle even as the aliens have arrested Earth's development in technology. The best brains of the world try to break out of the alien's block. The universe is now like a jungle and the only way to survive is by killing the next man, annihilating others. An alien spaceship destroys the frontline defenses and the Earth is as vulnerable as ever.

Dead End (2010):

Cheng Xin, a scientist who had cryogenically frozen herself, returns to save the Earth from the Three Body people after a time lapse. In an apocalyptic battle the entire solar system gets flattened to a two-dimensional one that Cheng must now revive even if it threatens her own existence.