Essay by Spencer A. Klavan

The terrifying universe of The Three-Body Problem.

Discussed in this essay:

The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu.

Tor Books, 400 pages, $29.99 (cloth), $18.99 (paper)

The Dark Forest, by Cixin Liu, translated by Joel Martinsen.

Tor Books, 512 pages, $31.99 (cloth), $19.99 (paper)

Death’s End, by Cixin Liu,

translated by Ken Liu.

Tor Books, 608 pages,

$31.99 (cloth), $19.99 (paper)

3 Body Problem,

created by David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo. Netflix

The internationally bestselling sci-fi trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past is a galactic war epic that sprawls across 18 million years and 1,500 pages. But its most important scene is narrated from the point of view of a bug. Book two in the series, The Dark Forest (2008), opens with the thoughts of an ant creeping its way along what we slowly realize is the inscription on a tombstone. The numbers and letters underfoot feel to the ant like valleys in an otherwise flat terrain that has to be mapped out little by little. A primitive insectoid brain can only