Liu Cixin

Our reality is narrow, confined, and fleeting. Whatever we think is important right now, in our mundane lives, will no longer be important against a grander sense of time and space.

The three-body problem is a term borrowed from physics. It is a phenomenon that can basically be explained like this: Two objects in space can interact in a predictable fashion rotating around each other due to their gravitational pull. But if a third object is introduced, it makes their interaction more complicated.

Science fiction is not a genre that has much respect in China. Critics have long been discouraged from paying attention to the category, dismissed as a branch of juvenile literature.

I'm absolutely positive about human survival. We will continue to develop our civilisation and expand not just on Earth, but also across the solar system, the galaxy, even the entire universe.

I do think that science fiction ideas are best expressed through visual media like film and TV. Realist literature depicts things that we have seen in life, but science fiction is different: what it depicts exists only in the author's imagination. When it comes to science fiction, the written word is inadequate.

Humans are selfish, and because of our innate selfishness, I'm very confident that we can overcome any amount of environmental destruction.