Along with short and long dresses, she has created interesting ethnic options including salwaar kameez with dupatta. While some have diversified in terms of colour code and cuts, others have given interesting twists rhinestone mixed embroidery machines Factory to conventional pinks and haute reds. First published in Chinese in 2008, it’s the first of a trilogy, and one of the best-selling Chinese science fiction novels of all time. After putting so much thought into the details of the astrophysics and interstellar communication that underpin the book, Liu is surprisingly lazy with his extraterrestrials.Overall, it’s an excellent read. The book features frequent digressions into scientific and mathematical detail. A new wave of translations is changing that. Somehow, these science lessons never weigh the book down. The scenes set within the VR (virtual reality) game had me picturing a version of World of Warcraft redesigned by Tsui Hark.

 Over the last couple of years, Ken Liu and John Chu, both award-winning science fiction authors themselves, have translated an exciting selection of Chinese science fiction short stories for magazines like Clarkesworld and Pathlight. But when the alien characters begin making references to earthly things such as camera film, embroidery, and walnuts in order to elucidate these concepts, it gets a bit ridiculous. One of these is a virtual reality sword-and-planet game called "Three Body", through which humans are initiated into the Trisolaran cult. It’s set in a surreal landscape on a world where suns of different sizes seem to rise and set randomly, and where the player encounters Zhou dynasty astrologers, medieval European knights, brutal kings, and Isaac Newton.

 There is a riddle to solve about the structure of this gameworld, and in some ways these chapters are reminiscent of classic works of "Hard SF" novels that put scientific accuracy in the foreground, like Larry Niven’s Ringworld or Arthur C. I won’t give it away, but it involves a Chinese zither made out of nanofibres, a 60,000-ton oil tanker, and the Panama canal. One highlight of the game is the terrifying ritual of Dehydration, where the residents are flattened into "man-shaped pieces of leather", rolled up and stacked in huge storehouses for the long winters when the suns are all far away. Here the action shifts to planet Trisolaris, where we finally meet the aliens and they’re terribly disappointing. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama only quite a bit more fun.