In the Spring Festival of 2019, "The Wandering Earth" was released worldwide.
On the sixth day of its release, the box office of the film exceeded 2 billion, ranking among the top three box office in Chinese film history. Liu Cixin, the film producer and author of the original book, said excitedly:"The Wandering Earth" opened the door to Chinese sci-fi blockbusters. It's just that this door was closed by "Shanghai Fortress" just a few months later. Entering the 20s, the industry ushered in a cold winter. Capital divestment, scarcity of experienced talents, IP adaptation is far away, and the growth of long-form science fiction stories is sluggish. Many netizens voiced:"Liu Cixin can't save Chinese science fiction". 
Liu Cixin at the press conference of "The Wandering Earth".
Nowadays, writers have gradually faded out of the public eye, "The Three-Body Problem" is at its peak at the beginning, and science fiction has returned to the niche as a genre. This statement seems to be being confirmed. In the summer of 1963, Liu Cixin was born in Beijing, the capital.
When he was a child, his father was transferred to a local coal mine in Shanxi, so Liu Cixin grew up with his parents in Yangquan, Shanxi.
After graduating from university, Liu Cixin was assigned to the Niangziguan Power Plant as an engineer, responsible for maintaining the plant's computer systems. has become a serious "power man".
In more than 20 years, the thermal power plant has been built from a small local factory to a large state-owned factory that can accommodate more than 2,000 people, and Liu Cixin has also grown from an unknown "Xiao Liu" to a senior engineer with a full salary of level 12.
The power plant is far away from people, the work is leisurely, close to home, and there are all kinds of food, accommodation, medical care and entertainment. Liu Cixin was very satisfied with this.
In order to relieve the boredom, Liu Cixin and her co-workers often get together to play cards. But helplessly "poor card skills",After losing several times in a row, Liu Cixin decided to create**, hoping to make up for the loss with the manuscript fee.
At the end of the eighties, Liu Cixin officially entered science fiction ** and wrote the first edition of "Supernova Era". However, as he was still in the exploratory stage, Liu Cixin did not have confidence in his initial creations, and for nearly a decade, he was "incognito" and hardly published his works to the public.
In 1999, Liu Cixin selected five short stories from his previous works and sent them to the magazine Science Fiction World, hoping to choose one of them. After reading the manuscript, the editor immediately replied: "Decided to hire all of them".
Among these works are the well-known "Whale Song" and the rather allegorical "Bring Her Eyes". In the same year, "Bring Her Eyes" won the first prize of the Galaxy Award, the highest award in Chinese science fiction, and the writer began to show his edge.
Ten years of precipitation, overnight blooming.
After the millennium, electrician Liu Cixin opened his "science fiction era" with his grand and open imagination in front of an old desktop computer.
The barren and closed Taihang Mountain Pass is an excellent soil for imagination to grow freely. Since 2000, Liu Cixin has written successively"The Wandering Earth", "Earth Fire", "Country Teacher", "Full Band Blocking Interference".and many other short and medium-length masterpieces. In this way, the writer has won a number of domestic science fiction awards. In 2003, Liu Cixin published "Supernova Era" and "Ball Lightning" within a year. These two works have become the author's iconic novels in the early stage. 
Liu Cixin's early short and medium works are well-behaved in the system of life. Most of the time, Liu Cixin spends time in the factory, leaving work in the morning, picking up her daughter after work in the evening, working from 9 to 5, and helping her wife with housework on weekends. It looks like any other worker. After the publication of "Ball Lightning", the writer received more than 30,000 yuan in the first payment. However, due to a delivery error, the publisher sent the cash directly to the work unit, which once made the workers "misunderstand" and thought that Liu Cixin had taken a kickback. Many years later, in the face of the ** interview, the writer is still haunted by this matter. For the hobby of science fiction, Liu Cixin has been carefully maintaining, but because of the "leakage" of the "manuscript fee" incident, colleagues in the same studio suddenly woke up:It turns out that "Lao Liu", who has always been quiet and quiet, has been secretly writing (fishing) for many years. In 2006, "The Three-Body Problem" (Once Upon a Time on Earth) began to be in "Science Fiction World"** and lasted until the end of that year. **After the publication, it won the praise of Wang Jinkang, He Xi, Han Song and other bigwigs in the circle. In the following years, Liu Cixin won various awards at the China Science Fiction Awards with the "Three-Body Problem" series. In the 10s, "The Three-Body Problem" was gradually released in the English-speaking world. 
It is said that after reading the first "Three-Body Problem", Obama was attracted by the characters and the grand narrative in the book, so he telegraphed to the American publisher, urging the other party to release the remaining works as soon as possible, and sent ** to ** home as soon as the translation was completed. For more than ten years, in the computer office of the Niangziguan Power Plant, Liu Cixin used his work breaks to write a series of works that would later make him famousThere are more than 10 books before and after, with more than 2.5 million words. 
Some netizens ridiculed that Liu Cixin was "touching the fish.""The role model, "all the way to the Hugo Award".In August 2015, American astronaut Kjell Lindgren announced in real time in a capsule 350 kilometers away from Earth that he was the winner of this year's Hugo Award for Best Feature"The Three-Body Problem", Liu Cixin. ”The news reached the land of China, and the whole country rejoiced. Liu Cixin went to the world from Yangquan. But unfortunately, the writer himself did not come to the scene to accept the award. A few months ago, "Three-Body Problem 1" was shortlisted for the World Science Fiction Awards "Nebula Award", and Liu Cixin went to the United States to attend the award ceremony with great interest, but won nothing. After that, "The Three-Body Problem" was nominated for the Hugo Award again, but Liu Cixin thought that there was little chance of winning the award, so he simply did not go. Because in the nearly half-century history of the awards, no Asian writer has made the name of the winner. 
In August 2015, Liu Yukun, the translator of the English version of "The Three-Body Problem", accepted the award on behalf of Liu Cixin.
There is no doubt that Liu Cixin, who lives in a remote corner, has created "a new historical moment". On the day of the award, the sales of the "Three-Body Problem" series skyrocketed, and the sales ranking rushed from more than 40 to the top of the major platforms. Three-Body Fans cheered and left messages of congratulations on Weibo, while other strange viewers who didn't know the truth ran to Tieba to ask: "Who is Liu Cixin?" Among the many messages, a netizen named "shipship" replied excitedly in the post bar:"It is the astronaut of the International Space Station who awarded the award from space, very high! ”
This person is Liu Cixin. Han Song, who is also a science fiction writer, commented: "His imagination is very peculiar, unbridled, rambling, like Zhuangzi." Han Song believes that Liu Cixin has pushed Chinese science fiction a big step forward, "He has established his own discourse system and has a unique technical performance." Long before his work won the award, Lei Jun highly recommended it to employees and peers, praising the Three-Body Problem as "not only the best science fiction story", but also a rare "book of philosophy". After reading "The Three-Body Problem", Zuckerberg exclaimed: "It does not belong to human beings at all", and did not believe that the stories in the book were written by human beings. 
Pan Shiyi at the event.
Pan Shiyi, a veteran book lover, said excitedly to the author during a meeting: "I have watched the three parts of "The Three-Body Problem" three times! Unexpectedly, Liu Cixin immediately advised: "It's this science fiction**, just look at it, there's no need to turn it over so many times." "In 2009, the World Climate Conference was held in Copenhagen, and China committed to the world the goal of the century of energy conservation and emission reduction. A large number of coal-fired power plants that pollute the atmosphere have collapsed in pieces, and the Niangziguan power station, which uses coal as a raw material for power generation, has not been spared.
The collapse of the power plant left a shadow on the writer's life, and the workers who had worked together for many years were scattered for a while, which also smeared a layer of cold pessimism on the author's creation.
After the end of "The Three-Body Problem", Liu Cixin wanted to put pen to paper, so he simply wrote Luo Ji and Zhang Beihai to death.
Speaking of the reason, the writer later explained: "The sales of the first part were not considerable, and I didn't plan to write the third part at that time, if I knew that I was going to write "The Three-Body Problem", it would never be possible to let the protagonist die." ”
Concept map of the three-body world, source NetEase.
So in the third work, Liu Cixin set doctoral student Cheng Xin as the protagonist of the story, as a survivor of human civilization. After the completion of "The Three-Body Problem",Chain of Suspicion, Technology**, Project Facer, Sociology of the UniverseA series of settings surprised the editors; The industry believes thatThis is a long-form masterpiece that is very different from other science fiction works, combining story and literature, and it is magnificent and magnificent.
After the "Three-Body Problem" was submitted, it still surprised Yao Haijun, deputy editor-in-chief of Science Fiction World:
The presentation of the work far exceeded my expectations, I didn't expect him (Liu Cixin) to explode like this, and he did the ultimate in ideas! ”
The settings that have aroused the discussion of book fans, such as water droplets, Tomoko, two-way foil, dead line, and curvature spaceship, are undoubtedly the most imaginative "ideas" in the writer's pen.
Three-body CAD, source NetEase.
In the autumn of 2010, "The Three-Body Problem: Death Eternal" was officially released, opening a new era in the history of Chinese science fiction.
After the publication of the "Three-Body Problem" series, it has attracted wide attention from the science fiction and literary circles, including a series of awards such as the "Nebula Award", "Galaxy Award", "Trajectory Award", and the Genre Literature Biennial Award. After the work came out of the circle, it quickly attracted the attention of the American science fiction community.
In 2014, the famous American science fiction publishing house Thor Books officially introduced the "Three-Body Problem" series and paid $1.25 million in copyright fees in advance for this; In October of that year, the English version of "Three-Body Problem 1: Once Upon a Time on Earth" was released. The following year, Liu Cixin won the Hugo Award for the "pearl" of science fiction.
In the past ten years, the global sales of the "Three-Body Problem" series have exceeded 10 million copies, becoming a major milestone in the field of Chinese science fiction.
In 2018, Liu Cixin was awarded the Arthur C. Clarke Award.
After reading the work, Han Song sighed: "The things we wrote before, at least the vast majority, are simply not worth mentioning in front of the 'three-body problem'!" ”
He said that the most fundamental ** of "The Three-Body Problem" is the fear he feels when looking up at the starry sky. "Liu Cixin is always compassionate, like the Buddha, and his works have a religious meaning, great compassion. ”
This awe of the vastness of the universe and compassion for the fragility of human beings constitute the hidden background color of Liu Cixin's series of works.
Critic Yan Feng did not hesitate to praise:
"He single-handedly raised Chinese science fiction to the world level. ”
StillFor a work, since there are praises that overflow the screen, there are also unexpected criticisms.
The scene of the three-body problem signing in the United States.
Some netizens believe that Liu Cixin grew up in the "Cultural Revolution" era, and his works inevitably bear the mark of "scar literature". Stripped of the cloak of science fiction, what is written in the work is nothing more than another version of "Live Look".
Some readers also found fault with Liu Cixin's works, believing that there are many "hard wounds" in Liu Cixin's works, and the artistic value of his works is not as good as the story itself.
And Da Liu himself admits that the dense storytelling of "The Three-Body Problem" is actually at the expense of literature, but this does not prevent it from surviving as an excellent science fiction masterpiece.
After the publication of "The Three-Body Problem", Liu Cixin participated in a drinking party. At the dinner table, Liu Cixin met director Zhang Fanfan. Zhang Fanfan and his wife wanted to buy the film and television copyright of "The Three-Body Problem" in one bite, so they symbolically **, 100,000 yuan.
Liu Cixin didn't think much about it, and agreed to the deal on the spot. Six years later, Zhang Fanfan and his wife sold the copyright to Youzu Network for a price of 1200 million, turn around and leave.
To this day, there have been many news of the filming of "The Three-Body Problem", but the results are still unbelievable.
The company's infighting and endless attacks among peers have led to several changes of IP copyrights, coupled with the immaturity of the existing conditions, and the worrying completion of the plot, which has made fans unable to hide their disappointment.
The screen masterpieces and epic blockbusters advocated in the past sound more like a capital game of drumming and passing flowers. Many netizens sighed——"Liu Cixin can't save Chinese science fiction".
The writer himself can't, and neither can the vast galactic story.
Three-body concept map, source network.
Some readers even believe that after "The Three-Body Problem", Da Liu has no longer a long-form masterpiece, and his peak career has long ended.
Two years ago, Liu Cixin participated in the event, and the host of the scene suddenly made a difficulty:
In recent years, you have not had any new works published, and many people say that you have exhausted your talents, what do you think?
Liu Cixin replied slowly: I have already answered this question in "The Three-Body Problem"."The gravitational pull of reality is too heavy! ”
"In China, any detached and high-flying thought will fall to the ground. ”
I need to fight for my livelihood, money, and fame, which I can't choose on my own. Writers are not exempt from vulgarity.
In the story, the author replied through the mouth of Thomas Vader: Lose humanity, lose a lot; Lose your bestiality, lose everything.
For small and fragile human beings, survival is the essence of eternity.
Liu Cixin is no exception.