Liu, Cixin: The Three-Body Problem 1

1967: University student Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China's Cultural Revolution. His crime? Failure to recant his belief in science. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind. Four decades later, after a spate of apparent suicides among elite scientists, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of international scientists. During the course of his investigation, Wang is inducted into a mysterious online game that immerses him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable an d unpredictable interaction of its three suns. This is the Three-Body Problem and it is the key to everything. The key to the scientists' deaths, the key to humanity's place in the cosmos and the key to the extinction-level threat it now faces.