It Came From China!

Why you ought to make time for a 1,500-page sci-fi trilogy.

- Aaron Rutkoff

There was a moment recently when the internet, parsing a report from scientists at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, thought we might have received our first interstellar transmission. The hyperventilating headlines gave way a few hours later to cold-water explainers about why it probably wasn’t the work of aliens—or a wrong number. But let’s say it was a real message from 94 light-years away: Should we call back? Anyone who’s read China’s most popular science fiction series, The Three-Body Trilogy, in which author Cixin Liu follows into the far future the consequences of a Chinese scientist who replied to such a signal, would keep silent forever.