The Three-Body Problem
Liu Cixin's 2008 novel begins with the Chinese Cultural Revolution and spirals outward to a three-sun alien civilization, triggering consequences across centuries. It changed what was possible in global SF and became the most important non-Anglophone SF novel of this century.
The characters are “two-dimensional cartoonish stick figures,” with Wang Miao “the viewfinder through which we see information” rather than a person, the dialogue existing so people can explain physics to each other. The game sequences in the middle are where readers nearly quit, “trudging through a physics textbook.” The emotional register is oddly flat, one reader clocking “same amount of emotion spent on a video game as on murders.” Ye Wenjie is thinly motivated for how much the plot rests on her. And it is mostly setup.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
