Why You Should Read China’s Favorite Sci-Fi Epic

There was a moment recently when the internet, parsing a report from scientists at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, thought we might have received our first interstellar transmission. The hyperventilating headlines gave way a few hours later to cold-water explainers about why it probably wasn’t the work of aliens—or a wrong number. But let’s say it was a real message from 94 light-years away: Should we call back? Anyone who’s read China’s most popular science fiction series, The Three-Body Trilogy, in which author Cixin Liu follows into the far future the consequences of a Chinese scientist who replied to such a signal, would keep silent forever.

The first translated volume, The Three-Body Problem, reached the U.S. in 2014 and wound up on the reading lists of President Obama and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg—two people who’ve spent a bit of time contemplating what’s to come. The final volume, Death’s End, arrives in the U.S. on Sept. 20 ($26.99; Tor Books), but you should read the roughly 900 pages of the first two books first so it makes sense. Why, you might ask, should you bother to read that many pages of Chinese sci-fi? Especially when you probably haven’t perused much of the Western variety lately? Given how many times we’ve seen the American imagination destroy humanity—Independence Day, War of the Worlds—isn’t it time we let somebody else take a crack? The payoff is a grand—and grim—speculation about the limits of scientific progress.