#149 in Science fiction
The Three-Body Problem
- 417
- Pages
- about 8 h
- Reading time
- Series 2024 +3
- On screen
- NYT bestseller · 2 weeks on the list, peaked at #5
- Hugo Award for Best Novel
- Ignotus Award for Best Foreign Novel
- Galaxy Award
- Kurd Lasswitz Award for Best Foreign Work
- Seiun Award for Best Translated Long Work
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Our view
“The Three-Body Problem” is hard science fiction in the full sense: the ideas are the attraction. Some readers admit to feeling out of their depth and looking things up as they go. Its grounding in Chinese history gives it a texture rare in the genre. Some find the build long and slow and the protagonist rarely engaging, yet even they single out the final part, where the scale of the story opens up.
Worth knowing It ran as a serial in the magazine Science Fiction World in 2006 before appearing as a book in 2008. Ken Liu’s English translation (2014) moved the Cultural Revolution chapters to the front, where Liu Cixin had first wanted them, and in 2015 it became the first translated novel to win the Hugo for best novel. The story widens enormously in The Dark Forest and Death’s End. Netflix’s 3 Body Problem (2024) moves much of it to Britain.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Three-Body Problem is a 2008 novel by the Chinese hard science fiction author Liu Cixin. It is the first novel in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. The series portrays a fictional past, present, and future wherein Earth encounters an alien civilization from a nearby system of three Sun-like stars orbiting one another, a representative example of the three-body problem in orbital mechanics.
Reading order · Remembrance of Earth's Past
Full order & progress →- The Three-Body ProblemThis book
8.18.1 / 10 - The Dark Forest
–Not ranked yet - Death's End
–Not ranked yet
On screen
This book has been adapted for the screen 4 times — from 2023 to 2024.
- Series3 Body ProblemIMDb
- SeriesThree-BodyIMDb
- SeriesThe Three-Body Problem in MinecraftIMDb
- SeriesThe Three-Body ProblemIMDb
Adaptation data: Wikidata · On screen →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.0 across 3,977 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 96% of the weight and the score stays at 8.1 — the Science fiction average of 7.8 barely moves it. A further +0.10 comes from the small bonus for major awards.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.9 | 216 | 5% |
| Hardcover | 8.0 | 3.8K | 95% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Three-Body Problem?
It has 417 pages — shorter than 56% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Science fiction — and a score of 8.1, the closest to this book.
