（ Produced by Liu Rui）In recent years, Chinese science fiction has captured significant attention in international markets, with Liu Cixin's landmark The Three-Body Problem trilogy achieving remarkable success.

In an exclusive interview, Nicholas Cheetham, Managing Director of the UK's Head of Zeus publishing house, offered insights from a publishing perspective on the global impact of Chinese sci-fi, the deeper significance of the Three-Body Problem phenomenon, and his observations on the genre's future in China.

As a publisher long focused on bringing Chinese literature to overseas readers, Head of Zeus has now partnered with five or six Chinese authors, including sci-fi writers such as Bao Shu and Chen Qiufan. Discussing the international performance of Chinese sci-fi, Cheetham highlighted the unique status of The Three-Body Problem: "It's a true phenomenon—its sales far exceed those of other sci-fi works in its category."

On the key question of whether Chinese sci-fi has seen broad success following Liu Cixin, Cheetham provided a balanced view: "It's a topic worth exploring—is this the triumph of Chinese sci-fi as a whole, Liu Cixin personally, or just the Three-Body Problem itself? At present, it leans more toward the latter."

While noting that the current surge in Chinese sci-fi remains largely tied to The Three-Body Problem, Cheetham praised its profound market impact: "The trilogy's contribution is enormous—it has nurtured a readership hungry for highly imaginative, epic-scale sci-fi." He elaborated that, since the start of the 21st century, Liu Cixin's (known as "Big Liu") hard sci-fi works stand out as "the most imaginative and original," with narratives that break from tradition and "take readers into territories sci-fi has rarely explored before."

In contrast to "soft" sci-fi often focused on the near future, Cheetham stressed that Liu's works are rooted in hard sci-fi—challenging yet uniquely compelling: "The Three-Body Problem begins in China's imperial era of 1463 and spans 18.9 million years all the way to the end of the universe. No other narrative matches this grandeur." In his view, the trilogy's success signals the revival of the hard sci-fi market, and Liu himself is "a towering figure in 21st-century science fiction."