Science fiction 【小题1】(regard) by many people as a mirror through which our future can be 【小题2】(free) imagined and explored. The Three-Body Problem 【小题3】(write) by Chinese writer Liu Cixin is one of those astonishing 【小题4】(predict) about the future. The work was first published in a Chinese sci-fi magazine in 2006 and printed as a three-volume book in 2008. When the first volume was translated into English by Chinese-American author Ken Liu, it attracted attention around the world, 【小题5】(become) the first Asian winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel. The book 【小题6】(represent) many themes such as space exploration, alien contact, AI, and the future of humans.

The Three-Body Problem begins with the stories of two unrelated people, Ye Wenjie and Wang Miao. Ye is recruited to join 【小题7】 secret project in a remote area of China, 【小题8】 has been set up to contact alien life forms. In the other story, set 20 years later, Wang Miao gets caught up in a popular online game called “Three Body”, in which people live on an unknown planet 【小题9】 three suns. But Wang discovers it is more than a game — it uncovers a great danger threatening human existence. How are these two people’s stories connected? And how will their behaviour change Earth’s future and the civilisations of other planets? Answers to all these questions are waiting to 【小题10】(discover) when you go on reading.

What will the city of the future look like? No one knows for sure, and making predictions is a risky business. But one thing is certain － they are going to get bigger before they get smaller. In the future, care for the environment will become very important as earth’s natural resources run out. We will use lots of 【小题1】(recycle) materials, such as plastic, aluminum, steel, glass, wood and paper, and we will waste fewer natural resources. We will also have to rely more on 【小题2】 (alternate) energy, such as solar and wind power. All this seems certain 【小题3】 there are plenty of things about city life in the future which are not certain.

To find out【小题4】young people think about the future of urban life, a teacher at【小题5】 university in Texas in the United States asked his students to think how they would run a city of 50,000 people in the year 2015. Here are some of the ideas they had:

Dr Richard Fairhurst, 【小题1】 new book The New Age of Invention has just been published, is an 【小题2】 (invent) himself. He thinks there have been golden ages of 【小题3】 (invent) throughout history and the present day is 【小题4】 new age for inventions. Most of the new great inventions are 【小题5】 (base) on advances in virtual reality, wearable tech, the flexible battery, madicine and 【小题6】 (environment) science. 3D printers have been used to make replacement hearts and bone parts. 【小题7】 terms of the environment, it is now possible 【小题8】 (create) an intelligent walking house. It is capable of using GPS technology to travel to different places, with computing technology 【小题9】 (control) its “legs”. Solar technology can be eco-friendly, too. Most inventions start with recognising a problem that【小题10】 (need) a solution. That people have an incredible desire to think and create, and that is the real spirit of invention.