Since the publication of The Three-Body Problem, the first installment of Cixin Liu’s epic science fiction trilogy about making contact with an alien civilization, the series has gone on to earn the Chinese author enormous acclaim and legions of fans worldwide — including President Barack Obama. Next year, Tor Books will publish a new novel set in the same world, titled The Redemption of Time, but it won’t be by Liu. Instead, the book is written by Baoshu, an ardent fan of the series who originally published it online as a novel-length fan fiction story — one that became so popular that the trilogy’s publisher decided to release it as an official novel.

Liu first serialized The Three-Body Problem in China’s biggest science fiction magazine, Science Fiction World, in 2006, and published it as a novel two years later. It was followed by two sequels — The Dark Forest and Death’s End, which came in 2008 and 2010, respectively. In China, it became a massive phenomenon that expanded to the rest of the world in 2014, when the book was published in English for the first time with a translation by Ken Liu, and went on to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel the following year.