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''' '' WORLD LOSSES
WHIRL ' ''' : LIN -QI
LIN-QI - A 39-YEAR-OLD VIDEO GAME TYCOON was sometimes called the billionaire millennial, and his ambitions were no less grand than his nickname.
Lin Qi, a 39-year-old billionaire was working with Netflix and the creators of the ''Games of Thrones'' TV series to broaden Chinese novel's appeal.
He had spent a small fortune buying up the rights to a Chinese science fiction novel called ''Three-Body Problem.'' A tale of alien invasion that intertwined cosmic machinations with the horror's of China's Cultural Revolution, the book had become an unlikely international best seller that counted Barack Obama among its admirers.
Mr. Lin saw even bigger possibilities. He envisioned a global film and television franchise based on the book and its two sequels that would approach ''Star Wars'' levels of cultural recognition. He was working with Netflix and the creators of the ''Games of Thrones'' television series to make it come to pass.
He would never see it happen. Mr. Lin was poisoned in December, according to the police in Shanghai and accounts from state-run-media, and he died on Christmas Day, Dec 23. His death has rattled China's technology and gaming worlds and set off furious speculation about who killed him and why.
It has also turned attention to the unlikely story of Mr. Lin, a would-be global media tycoon undaunted by the rising tensions between China and the West, who dreamed of bringing a product of Chinese popular culture to the global mainstream.
China's government and its creative class alike have long worked to bring the country's ideas and characters to a world audience, opening up new markets and giving Beijing a soft-power boost to counter the mindshare the United States has won through Hollywood, popular music and other cultural ephemera.
In September, Netflix said it would turn the trilogy into an original series developed by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the executive producers of ''Games of Thrones'' with a creative team that included Liu Cixin, the author of the books. Mr. Lin was listed as an executive producer.
''The Three-Body Problem'' is the first in what Mr. Liu called the ''Remembrance of Earth's Past'' trilogy. The book, set in present-day China, tells the story of an engineer called upon by the Beijing authorities to look into spate of suicides by scientists.
He discovers an extraterrestrial plot with roots in the Cultural Revolution, the decade of paranoia that led to the persecution and torture of perceived enemies of the Communist Party, which lasted until Mao Zedong's death in 1976.
The English version of ''The Three-Body Problem,'' translated by Ken Liu, became a sensation when it was released in 2014. It won the Hugo Award, a major science fiction accolade, for best novel.
Mark Zuckerberg added it to his reading list. Mr. Obama, in an interview with The New York Times, called it ''fun to read, partly because my day-to-day problems with Congress seem fairly petty - not something to worry about. Aliens are about to invade.''
A hard-core video-gamer, Mr. Lin also enjoyed tea, soccer, car racing and Chinese calligraphy. In an appearance on a Chinese television show, ''Boss Town,'' he recalled that his entrepreneurial instincts came early.
After spending his monthly allowance in middle school, he said, he would raise money from his family. ''If you keep going forward, there will always be opportunity lying ahead,'' he said. ''I am not afraid of failure. I can just start over again.''
After the news of his death spread, employees at Yoozoo held a vigil outside the Shanghai company's headquarters, Chinese media reported. Many others took to the Internet to express their grief.
''My friend has died,'' the science-fiction author Kennedy Xu wrote in a post shared by Yoozoo on social media. ''It happened in a way that was impossible to imagine. He was a dreamer and lived life to the fullest. I have become numb to the absurdies of this world.
The World Students Society thanks authors Paul Mozur and Elsie Chen.
With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of China, and then the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :
''' Wind - Wand '''
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