The Three Body Problem: Cixin Liu in conversation with Jim Al-Khalili

This event took place on 6 April 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.

For this exclusive online event, Cixin Liu talks to British physicist, author, broadcaster and science communicator Jim Al-Khalili, host of the BBC Radio 4 programme, The Life Scientific.

Cixin Liu is China's best-known author of science fiction: the first Asian writer to receive a Hugo Award. His monumental Three-Body Trilogy – first published between 2006 and 2010, and translated into English by Ken Liu, is Chinese science fiction’s most acclaimed work, and will soon be appearing as a major Netflix series.

The trilogy concerns the catastrophic consequences of humanity’s attempt to make contact with extraterrestrials. It is one of the most ambitious works of science fiction ever written: the story begins during the Cultural Revolution and ends 18,906,416 years into the future. There is a scene in ancient Byzantium, and a scene told from the perspective of an ant. The first book is set on Earth, though several of its scenes take place in virtual reality representations of Qin dynasty China and ancient Egypt; by the end of the third book, the stage has expanded to encompass an inter-civilisational war that spans not only the three-dimensional universe but other dimensions too.

Jim Al-Khalili is a theoretical physicist at the University of Surrey where he holds a Distinguished Chair in physics as well as a university chair in the public engagement in science. He received his PhD in nuclear reaction theory in 1989 and has published widely in the field. His current interest is in open quantum systems and the application of quantum mechanics in biology. He is a prominent author and broadcaster who has written 14 books on popular science and the history of science, between them translated into 26 languages. His latest book, The World According to Physics, was shortlisted for the Royal Society Book Prize. He is a regular presenter of TV science documentaries, such as the Bafta nominated Chemistry: a volatile history, and he hosts the long-running weekly BBC Radio 4 programme, The Life Scientific. Jim is a past president of the British Science Association and a recipient of the Royal Society Michael Faraday medal and the Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal, the Institute of Physics Kelvin Medal and the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication. He received an OBE in 2007 and a CBE in 2021 for ‘services to science’.

Liu Cixin was born in Beijing in 1963. He was an engineer before writing science fiction. In 1989 he wrote Supernova Era and China 2185 and his first published short story, Whalesong, appeared in Science Fiction World in 1999. In the same year his novel With Her Eyes won the Chinese Science Galaxy Award. In 2000 he wrote The Wandering Earth and received the Galaxy Award again. The first volume of The Three-Body Problem was originally serialised in Science Fiction World in 2006 and published as a standalone book in 2008, becoming one of the most successful Chinese science fiction novels of all time. Two other two famous novels are Supernova Era and Ball Lightning.

This event accompanies the British Library’s exhibition Chinese and British.

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