Baoshu - The Redemption of Time

Writing The Redemption of Time is one of the most remarkable events of my life.

Like many others, I became a loyal fan of Liu Cixin at the beginning of the twenty-first century, when Liu was just starting to make his mark as a science fiction author. We called ourselves cti (meaning magnets, which is a pun for the Chinese abbreviation of die-hard fans of Liu Cixin) and passionately discussed his stories on internet forums. As each of his stories was published, the news spread among us like wildfire and we rushed out to buy the magazine issue. In 2006, when Science Fiction World serialized The Three-Body Problem, the first book in his magnificent Remembrance of Earths Past trilogy (also known as the Three-Body trilogy), I devoured each installment and hungered for the next, utterly entranced.

The stand-alone edition of The Three-Body Problem was published at the beginning of 2008, and the first sequel, The Dark Forest, came out about six months later. Although the books hadnt yet penetrated mainstream literary conversation, science fiction fans enjoyed the rich imaginative feast presented by these two books. However, after those first two books, I and the other cti had to resign ourselves to a long wait for the next installment.

Two and a half years later, in November of 2010, the last volume of the trilogy, Deaths End, finally went on sale in China. At the time, I was in graduate school in Belgium and could not get my hands on the book. I seriously considered flying back to China just to buy it. In the end, my friend Gao Xiang helped me out by photographing every page of the book and emailing the pictures to me.

I was deeply touched by my friends gesture, but it wasnt until much later that I understood the full significance of the publication of this novel for me. After I finished Deaths End, along with fans in China who had bought the book as soon as it came out, we debated and explored every detail in the book over the internet. But no matter how many posts we wrote, the magnificent, grand arc of the trilogy was at an end, and we felt ourselves drifting away from the story day by day. The melancholy that seized us made me decide to write separate stories for a few of the characters in the trilogy and extend the epic tale a little longer. Two days later, I wrote down a dialogue between Yun Tianming and AA on Planet Blue and posted it on the Web under the title Three-Body X. X didnt mean ten; rather, it stood for uncertain.

This wasnt the first time I wrote Liu Cixin fanfiction, and I certainly wasnt the first to do so. But before my tale, most such efforts were written by fans for a small group of other hardcore fans. I had no idea that the context for Three-Body X was entirely different. What I wrote was exactly what tens of thousands of readers needed at that moment: more stories from the Three-Body universe. Its timely appearance (barely a week after the publication of Deaths End) allowed it to receive far more attention than could be justified by its inherent quality, and the praise encouraged me to continue writing, developing, and growing the story line I had in mind until it gradually took on a shape of its own. Three weeks later, before Christmas 2010, I completed my novel.

By then, Three-Body X had spread to every corner of the Chinese Web, and received almost as much discussion and attention as Deaths End itself. Mr. Yao Haijun, Liu Cixins good friend, who is nicknamed the Chinese Campbell for his role in developing new writers as the executive editor of Science Fiction World, contacted me to ask if he could publish it as a stand-alone book. A few months later, as Three-Body fever continued to sweep Chinese SF fandom, more fanfiction appeared. But the brief window of opportunity was gone, and these new works did not receive nearly as much attention as mine. I knew that I was lucky.

When I first posted my story online, I wasnt thinking much about copyright; of course, once a formal offer of publication came from Mr. Yao, I was faced with a complicated set of issues. But Liu Cixin displayed incredible generosity and kindness toward new writers by giving me permission to publish, and I cannot express the full extent of my deep gratitude. As soon as the book came off the presses, I sent a copy to Liu Cixin. A few years later, after Id published some original stories and become a regular member of the small circle of Chinese science fiction writers, Liu and I became friends and often met at fandom events. He told me that he enjoyed Three-Body X, and indeed, had even voted for it at Chinese science fiction awards. The book didnt win, but Lius encouragement and approval were better than winning ten such awards.

The subtitle for the paraquel, The Redemption of Time, and some other names in the novel have special meanings for fans, though few now probably remember the sources of the allusions. Between 2008 and 2010, while fans impatiently waited for the arrival of the last volume of the trilogy, many speculated on potential directions the plot could take and spread various rumors centered around supposed leaks from Liu Cixins draft-in-progress. Of course, all of these rumors turned out to be hoaxes, and not a single one matched the published book. But even such rumors brought eager fans some joy in imagining the conclusion of Liu Cixins masterpiece, and so I referenced some keywords from those rumors as a memorial to that innocent time when Three-Body was still a relatively obscure playground known to only the most dedicated fans.

To be sure, my paraquel did not receive and could not have received the sort of plaudits that accompanied the Three-Body series proper, but it was also true that many readers enjoyed it greatly. I certainly make no claim that Three-Body X constitutes a part of the Three-Body canon, though it was published by the same publisher as the original trilogy and sold together with Liu Cixins books. I view it as a dedicated fans attempt to explain and fill out some of the gaps in the original trilogy, one of countless possible developments of the Three-Body universe. Any fans of the trilogy proper could reject it as incompatible with their vision, or could enjoy it without treating it as part of the universe. I think these are all perfectly reasonable responses.

Four years after the publication of Three-Body X, China Educational Publications Import & Export Corporation, Ltd., decided to introduce this book to Anglophone readers after the publication of the English edition of the Three-Body trilogy. I feel both anxiety and trepidation at this prospect. There certainly have been some notable works of fanfiction in the history of English science fiction, such as the Second Foundation trilogy, by Gregory Benford, Greg Bear, and David Brin, as well as Stephen Baxters epic