Shaping a shared future across the Pacific

The Three-Body trilogy by Liu Cixin, a milestone of contemporary Chinese science fiction (SF), celebrates the tenth anniversary of its historic Hugo Award win in 2025. The trilogy has attracted worldwide attention through its translations and represents a key moment in the global circulation of Chinese literature over the past decade. This paper adopts a socio-discursive perspective to examine the translation, dissemination, and reception of the trilogy in the English-speaking world, situating it within broader debates on cross-cultural literary exchange and the global circulation of SF. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the study argues that the trilogy’s global success resulted from the coordinated efforts of a heterogeneous network of human and non-human actors, including the author, editor, translators, publisher, literary agent, critics, fandom, as well as social media platforms, all of which collectively shaped both the translation and its reception through continuous negotiations and interactions. This collaborative process not only brought the novel series commercial success and literary recognition on the world stage, but also enabled Chinese SF and its futuristic discourse to establish legitimacy and challenge dominant interpretive frameworks within the Anglophone literary fi ld. The analysis further illustrates how translators, guided by an ethos of harmonizing diversity, carefully balanced the cultural distinctiveness of the source text with narrative vitality for English-speaking readers. In addition, the study examines the extended network of literary reception. Reviewers from both the professional SF community and the general readership, media outlets, and other stakeholders played a key role in shaping the trilogy’s global significance and in positioning Chinese SF within broader intercultural dialogue. Ultimately, the enduring impact of the trilogy lies in the poetics of SF itself, which offers a narrative platform for imagining a shared future for humanity beyond cultural and national boundaries. By tracing these processes, the paper demonstrates how SF can serve as both a vehicle for cross-cultural understanding and a site where literary, cultural, and translational forces converge to produce global literary phenomena.

2025年恰逢刘慈欣《三体》荣获雨果奖十周年。这部中国当代科幻文学的 里程碑式作品在全球范围内引发持续关注，成为近年来中国文学“走出去”的典 范。本文立足社会—话语视角，考察该系列小说在英语世界的译介、传播与接受过 程，并将其置于全球科幻文学跨文化流通的语境中展开探讨。研究借鉴行动者网络 理论，指出《三体》三部曲的成功译介得益于行动者网络的有效构建：作家、编 辑、译者、出版商、文学代理人、评论界、读者群体乃至社交媒体平台等人类与非 人类行动者，通过持续协商与互动，共同塑造了作品的译介形态及接受轨迹。这一 协作机制不仅推动译作在全球出版市场获得认可、提升文学声誉，更使中国科幻文 学及其“未来”叙事在英语主导的世界文学体系中确立合法地位。研究进一步揭 示，两位译者秉持“求同存异”的理念，通过与作者和编辑的密切合作，巧妙平衡 原作的思想文化特质和目标语读者的阅读审美需求。此外，由专业科幻界和大众读 者的书评、媒体报道等组成的接受网络，亦在构建作品的全球意义和推动科幻文学 融入中外文明交流互鉴中发挥关键作用。不仅如此，《三体》三部曲的全球影响根 植于科幻文学自身的诗学特质，为弥合文化差异、想象人类共同未来提供了有效的 叙事路径。本文指出，科幻文学不仅是推动跨文化对话的有效载体，更是文学、文 化与翻译等多重力量交汇、催生全球新兴文学现象的重要场域。