Specialty publisher Subterranean Press has announced a new edition of Baoshu’s novel The Redemption of Time—a tie-in to Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy—to be released this September.
Like most of Subterranean Press’s offerings, the book will feature a new cover and interior art by Marc Simonetti and comes in two editions: a limited, numbered edition, as well as a lettered edition with a custom traycase (already sold out). Both come signed by the author.
The book is set during the final installment of Liu’s acclaimed Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, Death’s End, and represents an interesting moment in publishing: it’s an authorized piece of fan fiction that expands the world that Liu created.
That series, which starts with The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest, follows humanity after it makes contact with an alien civilization called the Trisolarans, which live in a chaotic solar system that orbits three stars. Because of the unpredictable path their planets take in the system, their civilization has continually risen and fallen, and when they discover that Earth is habitable, they plan to colonize it for themselves.
Liu’s trilogy follows humanity’s efforts against the Trisolarans as they prepare to invade, a journey that eventually takes them far out of the solar system and out to distant parts of the galaxy and future. The book earned an enthusiastic following in China when it was first published, with many fans turning to the internet to discuss the story and publish their own fan fiction.
A fan named Li Jun had been eagerly awaiting the publication of Liu’s Death’s End, and was particularly interested by the character of Yun Tianming, who exits the novel for some time before reappearing at a critical moment. Under the name Baoshu, Jun began writing his own version of what the character might have been up to while he had vanished. After publishing it online, it became a viral hit, and Liu’s publisher reached out to him to publish the story, eventually releasing it in 2011. Last year, Tor Books published an English edition (translated by Ken Liu), which Subterranean Press will now republish, fitting alongside its previous special editions of Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death’s End.
