Liu Cixin
Chinese engineer and science-fiction writerWikipedia
17
MENTIONS
13
EPISODES
9
PODCASTS
Search complete. 17 mentions across 13 episodes found for "Liu Cixin".
Sep 10, 2026
BrockHOST
Please don't come at me.
BrockHOST
Uh, Cixin Liu.
AJHOST
There you go.
AJHOST
That's, that's, you've heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen.
Jeff O'NealHOST
Yeah, let's talk it later.
Jeff O'NealHOST
My, um, number 10 is Three Body Pr- The Three Body Problem by, uh, Liu Cixin.
Rebecca SchinskyHOST
Okay.
Jeff O'NealHOST
The ch- massive science fiction phenomenon that became a bestseller a little bit later.
Adam FrankGUEST
Like, why? Why would they wanna do that?
Megan McArdleHOST
This is the thesis of, uh, Cixin Liu's "Three-Body Problem," right?
Adam FrankGUEST
Right.
Megan McArdleHOST
Which is that i- it's a great metaphor where he just says, "You're the hunter in the woods."
Mark RostickGUEST
There's even a Netflix series now, but the book is really awesome.
Mark RostickGUEST
I'll pronounce the name wrong, but it's Liu Cixin, so it's L-I-U-C-I-X-I-N is the name of the author.
Mark RostickGUEST
Really interesting book, worth a read for sure.
Firas SozanHOST
Thank you, Mark.
speaker_0HOST
But the number one book on this list, the one that defines the era, achieves its maximum voltage through pure pitiless physics and philosophy.
speaker_1HOST
We are talking about Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem, which was translated into English by Ken Liu in 2014.
speaker_0HOST
The scope of this narrative is just staggering.
speaker_0HOST
It doesn't start in space.
Tim PoolHOST
How do you say this? Uh, Ki, Chi...
Tim PoolHOST
I don't know how you pronounce C. Cixin? I don't know.
Tim PoolHOST
Cixin? "Humans on Earth are issued a warning, 'Do not answer.
Tim PoolHOST
Otherwise, the coming aliens will take over your world.' Since virality is the name of the game on social media, people use anything like this to make claims that sound authentic.
Tim PoolHOST
In the book, an alien race," blah, blah, blah, "Bizarre gravity loss claim," blah, blah, blah.
Tim PoolHOST
Scientists would first need to understand and verify a signal rather than rush to answer it, and consultations over a response should involve the UN and other broadly representative international institutions.
Tim PoolHOST
Then CCTV News, the state broadcaster, gave the story even more visibility.
Tim PoolHOST
Its June 23rd segment began with the essentially the same dramatic formulation, 'Do not reply to extraterrestrial signals without authorization.' It explicitly compared the development with the famous do not answer warning in Liu Cix- uh, Cixin's, I don't know, Cixin's 'Three-Body Problem.' So there's no reason to pretend the strange-looking Chinese coverage never happened.
speaker_3HOST
Oh, completely.
speaker_2HOST
The essay highlights Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem to show what happens when the streaming model encounters a narrative that is fundamentally hostile to Western television tropes.
speaker_3HOST
This is a Hugo-winning Chinese epic, incredibly dense, and deeply rooted in the historical trauma of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
speaker_2HOST
Right.
speaker_2HOST
Right.
speaker_3HOST
The intellectual coldness of the text is exactly the point.
speaker_3HOST
Liu Cixin's characters do not exist to be charming.
speaker_3HOST
They exist as structural scaffolding to carry these massive, terrifying philosophical ideas about systems and survival.
Chuck WendigGUEST
Yeah.
Neil McRobertHOST
But when it comes to something like, um, Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem-
Chuck WendigGUEST
Oh, yeah.
Chuck WendigGUEST
Yep, can't do it
QuinnHOST
It is in the realm of science fiction that we can seize upon these seeming fundamental truths, expanding them to cosmic proportions.
QuinnHOST
Authors like Liu Cixin in his seminal work, The Three-Body Problem, explore the cascading chains of suspicion, while Frank Herbert in the Dune saga magnifies the intricate dynamics of feudalism.
QuinnHOST
Iain Banks envisions an entire society as a grand game in his book Player of Games, a single novel in his expansive and celebrated Culture series.
QuinnHOST
Science fiction offers us the extraordinary opportunity to ponder the profunity of existence.
QuinnHOST
Um, comparatively, when it comes to different worlds separated by a cosmic distance, chains of suspicions that would be resolved much more quickly on Earth due to shared culture, shared species, um, and just closer proximity, um, are not resolved in outer space.
QuinnHOST
And I go into this in more detail in my What, What Makes the Forest Dark video.
QuinnHOST
But as I've said before, Liu Cixin, just like all science fiction authors, is exploring a particular set of concepts, and he's using the story as a vehicle to do so.
QuinnHOST
Um, when reading science fiction, I don't necessarily-- even if I'm intrigued by a concept, it's not necessarily this is the way the universe actually functions.
3 more episodes mention Liu Cixin.
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