Cixin Liu

Born in Beijing in 1963, the infant Liu was sent away by his parents to be raised in Henan due to concerns about the impact of the Cultural Revolution in the Chinese capital. Liu graduated from North China University of Water Conservancy and Electric Power in 1988 and became a computer engineer in Shanxi province. Inspired by the fiction of George Orwell and Arthur C. Clarke, Liu produced his debut novel China 2185 in 1989, promptly earning himself the title of China’s first cyberpunk author, following it up with The Supernova Era (2003) and Ball Lightning (2004). The Three-Body Problem – the first instalment of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy – brought Liu’s writing to Western attention upon its publication in 2006 and Ken Liu’s 2014 English translation scooped the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Novel the following year. The remaining two parts of the trilogy, The Dark Forest and Death’s End, were first published in 2008 and 2010 respectively, with English translations in 2015 and 2016. A hard sci-fi opus detailing Earth’s preparation for an alien invasion, the trilogy has been acclaimed as one of the defining works of twenty-first century speculative fiction and The Three-Body Problem was adapted for television by Netflix in 2024. In addition to his full-length novels, Liu has also penned numerous collections of short fiction such as The Wandering Earth and Hold Up the Sky.