Book excerpt: Chinese and Western Literary Influence in Liu Cixin’s Three Body Trilogy examines Liu Cixin’s acclaimed trilogy, a Chinese science fiction epic whose translation is exceedingly popular in the Western world. Will Peyton argues that the ingenuity of Liu’s writing is found in its conscious engagement with translated Western fiction rather than, as one might expect, in Chinese language science fiction of the past. The book illustrates how contemporary Chinese fiction, since the economic opening of China in the late 1980s, is deeply and complexly influenced by various strains in Western literary and intellectual thought, an area that scholars of Chinese literature have tended to neglect. Providing a lucid and succinct close-reading and textual analysis of Three Body trilogy, the book also makes reference to broader ideas and themes in modern Chinese and Western intellectual history.