Abstract
This article reads Liu Cixin's award-winning Chinese science fiction novel The Three-Body Problem (2007, in English 2014) as a work of climate fiction. By analyzing the novel's portrayal of ecological crisis, dystopian outlook, and inexplicable dream sequences, this article identifies an overarching environmental theme complexly entangled in politics and idealism. While signaling a definite shift away from anthropocentrism, the narrative nonetheless reasserts humanist and anthropocentric assumptions. As such, the novel speaks to the inseverable connections between humans and nonhumans while simultaneously contemplating the reality of human extinction events. Riddled with such contradictions, The Three-Body Problem thus represents the experience of hope and cynicism in the face of radically transforming human/nonhuman relationships—a sentiment likely shared by many readers in our age of eco-crisis.