The Physics Primer You Did Not Know You Needed

I bought The Three Body Problem twice before I finished it. The opening section set during China's Cultural Revolution is demanding and essential, and many readers I know stopped before it resolved into science fiction. The transition from historical trauma to astrophysics is abrupt and deliberate. Once you are through it, the scale of Liu Cixin's imagination opens in a way I have not encountered in any other science fiction I have read.