Liu Cixin was born in June 1963 in Yangquan city, Shanxi province. He has a bachelor degree and joined the workforce in October 1985. He is a senior engineer, a science fiction writer, and a member of the China Writers Association, the 9th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and the China Science Writers Association. In addition he is vice-chairman of the Shanxi Writers Association and the Yangquan Writers Association. Liu is one of the representative writers of Chinese science fiction.

His works include seven full-length novels, nine specialized works, 16 medium-length novels, 18 short stories, and some review articles. His writing has won many awards, including the Chinese Science Fiction Yinhe Award ("Galaxy Award") each year successively from 1999 to 2006, the Zhao Shuli Literature Award in 2010, and the third place for the top 5 novels of the year 2011 awarded by the bimonthly magazine Dangdai. He also took the 2011 Xingyun Award for Global Chinese Science Fiction for Best Novel and the 2010 and 2011 Xingyun Awards for Global Chinese Science Fiction for Best Science Fiction Writer, the 2012 People's Literature Roushi Award Short Story Gold Award, the 2013 Gold Award for West Lake Type Literature Prize and the Ninth National Outstanding Children's Literature Award.

His masterpieces include the novels The Era of Supernova, Ball Lightning, The Three-Body Problem, and short and medium stories The Wandering Earth, The Rural Teacher, and Full Spectrum Barrage Jamming. Of those, the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy (The Three-Body Problem is the first novel in the trilogy, and the second and third novels are titled The Dark Forest and Death's End) is widely regarded as a milestone that has taken Chinese science fiction to the highest level globally.

On Aug23, 2015, The Three-Body Problem won a Hugo Award for Best Novel from the 73rd World Science Fiction Conference, the first Asian novel ever to win the award. On June 25, 2017, Death's End, the third novel in the trilogy, won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. On Nov 8, 2018, Liu won the 2018 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society.

The cinematic adaptations of his short stories The Wandering Earth and Crazy Alien were released in China on Feb 5, 2019.