Liu Cixin

Liu Cixin (Chinese: 刘慈欣; pinyin: Liú Cíxīn, pronounced [ljǒʊ tsʰɹ̩̌.ɕín]; born 23 June 1963) is a Chinese computer engineer and science fiction writer. In English translations of his works, his name is given as Cixin Liu. He is sometimes called "Da Liu" ("Big Liu") by his fellow science fiction writers in China.

He is a nine-time winner of China's Galaxy Award, and has also received the 2015 Hugo Award for his novel The Three-Body Problem, as well as the 2017 Locus Award for Death's End. He is also a winner of the Chinese Nebula Award. He is a member of the China Science Writers Association and the vice president of the Shanxi Writers Association.

Liu was born on 23 June 1963 in Beijing. He grew up in Yangquan, Shanxi, where his parents had been sent to work in the mines. Due to the violence of the Cultural Revolution he was sent to live in his ancestral home in Luoshan County, Henan. Liu graduated from the North China University of Water Conservancy and Electric Power in 1988. He then worked as a computer engineer at a power plant in Shanxi province.

A 1990s computer program called "Electronic Poet" (电子诗人) can be found online. It appears to be a language model, capable of generating works in the style of 1980s Misty poems.

Liu was labeled the first cyberpunk Chinese author after his novel China 2185 was released in 1989. This novel chronicles M102, a computer engineer, who recreates a simulation of Mao’s brain and the consequences that follow that action. Liu's most famous work, The Three-Body Problem, was first published in 2006. It is the first book in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, and it chronicles the events that unfold after Ye Wenjie intercepts an intergalactic signal and encourages an alien species known as the Trisolarans to visit, an action that ultimately leads to the destruction of the Earth. American author Ken Liu's 2014 translation (published by Tor Books) won the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and the book sold 1,200,000 copies in China before it won. Liu Cixin thus became the first author from Asia to win Best Novel. The German translation (which included some portions of the original text not included in the English translation) followed in 2016. Ken Liu also translated the third volume of The Three-Body Problem series, Death's End, in 2016. Death's End was a 2017 Hugo Award for Best Novel finalist and won a 2017 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

As pieces of Chinese science fiction literature, Liu's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy was a success within both the Chinese territories and internationally. In 2012, the winner of the Nobel Prize of Literature, Mo Yan, acclaimed the remarkable originality of Liu Cixin. Liu's fiction focuses primarily on problems such as social inequality, scientific development and ecological limitations that impact humanity. Liu cites English authors George Orwell and Arthur C. Clarke as important literary influences. The books of Jules Verne were also literary works that Liu frequented growing up.

To Liu, literature can appear as a self-absorbed art form, mentioning that, despite the species’ brief existence in the overall span of the universe, humanity uses literature to mostly write about their own experiences. Due to this idea, and because of his belief in hard science fiction, Liu tries to place importance on science and technology instead of humanity in his own writing. However, he still acknowledges that, compared to science, literature expresses its qualities in a way that is not barred behind prerequisite knowledge.

Liu tries to express the majesty of science through literature, using the genre of science fiction to create an accessible pathway between the two. Because not everyone can dedicate the amount of time needed to become an expert on the subject, Liu wanted to use his work as a means of doing away with science’s barriers of entry in order to share its “beauty” with the world.