collected
Fiction · Novel · Science Fiction · Mystery & Thriller
About 8 h 15 min · at 30 minutes a day, about 17 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
In contemporary China, nanomaterials researcher Wang Miao helps policeman Shi Qiang investigate scientists' deaths as experimental results appear to undermine the laws of physics. His inquiries lead into a virtual-reality game whose civilizations struggle to survive beneath three unpredictably moving suns. Interwoven with his investigation is the earlier life of Ye Wenjie, a scientist persecuted during the Cultural Revolution who joins a secret military project seeking contact beyond Earth.
The mystery repeatedly pauses for scientific explanations and philosophical arguments, so the pace is deliberate and the ideas require attention. It opens an adult science fiction trilogy. The historical sections are particularly harsh, depicting political persecution, abuse, and graphic violence.
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
Highly regarded
Somewhat. The prose is direct but technical, and the mystery repeatedly pauses for scientific explanations and philosophical arguments. Multiple timelines add complexity, so the ideas and shifts between Wang Miao’s investigation and Ye Wenjie’s earlier life require attention.
No. This is the first volume of Remembrance of Earth's Past, an adult science fiction trilogy, so there are no earlier entries to read first.
Not really. Scientists’ deaths and experimental results that seem to undermine physics create suspense, but scientific explanations and philosophical arguments repeatedly interrupt the investigation. The pace is deliberate and variable.
Strong, graphic violence and abuse are particularly harsh in the historical sections, where Ye Wenjie faces political persecution during the Cultural Revolution. Those passages make the history a substantial source of intensity alongside the unsettling scientific mystery.
About 416 pages in the Tor Books 2016 edition. The mystery repeatedly pauses for scientific explanations and philosophical arguments, giving it a deliberate pace.
Tor Books · 2016 · Paperback. ISBN 9780765382030.
About 8 hours 15 minutes at 50 pages an hour, based on the 416-page Tor Books edition. Dense books can take longer.
Liu Cixin is a Chinese computer engineer and science fiction writer. He worked at a power plant in Shanxi and completed his first two novels, China 2185 and Supernova-Era, while employed as an engineer. His fiction combines direct, descriptive, often technical prose with speculative ideas that expand from individual decisions into questions of social order and civilizational survival. Across China 2185 and the Three-Body trilogy, he addresses posthumanism and political criticism while returning to secrecy, deterrence, technological limits, and the difficulty of cooperation. The Three-Body Problem roots humanity’s encounter with an alien civilization in the Cultural Revolution; the later novels carry that conflict across centuries, examining strategy, compassion, and humanity’s place in an indifferent universe.
