This landmark adult science fiction trilogy begins with a scientist in 1960s China who sends a message into space and unknowingly sets in motion a chain of events that will play out over millions of years — revealing a universe far more dangerous and indifferent than humanity had imagined. The trilogy is celebrated as one of the most ambitious works of hard science fiction ever written, taking humanity from first contact to the ultimate fate of the universe in a story of staggering scope.
Beginning during China's Cultural Revolution, when a scientist secretly contacts an alien civilization and triggers a countdown to their invasion, the novel leaps to the present day where physicist Wang Miao encounters a mysterious virtual reality game and a secret organization preparing for first contact. Liu Cixin's award-winning novel blends hard science, political history, and cosmic horror in a scope unlike most Western science fiction. A landmark work of Chinese science fiction.
With the Trisolaran invasion fleet four centuries away, humanity deploys the Wallfacer Project four individuals given unlimited resources to develop secret deterrence strategies entirely within their own minds while the Sophons monitor all human communication. One of the Wallfacers, sociologist Luo Ji, must discover why he was chosen and what the Dark Forest theory of the universe truly means. A philosophically massive novel about civilization, survival, and cosmic indifference.
Following aerospace engineer Cheng Xin across centuries of hibernation as humanity's relationship with the Trisolarans shifts from terror to détente to catastrophe, the final volume of the trilogy takes its scope to literally cosmic dimensions, exploring the true nature of the universe's reduction from ten dimensions to three, and the last survivors of a dead Earth. Vast, melancholy, and astonishing in its ambition, it is the most emotionally devastating installment of the trilogy.