About A Brief History of Time

A Brief History of Time (subtitled "From the Big Bang to Black Holes") is a popular-science book written by British physicist Stephen Hawking and first published by the Bantam Dell Publishing Group in 1988. It became a best-seller and has sold more than 10 million copies. It was also on the London Sunday Times best-seller list for more than four years.

Overview[edit]

A Brief History of Time attempts to explain a range of subjects in cosmology, including the Big Bang, black holes and light cones, to the nonspecialist reader. Its main goal is to give an overview of the subject but, unusual for a popular science book, it also attempts to explain some complex mathematics. The 1996 edition of the book and subsequent editions discuss the possibility of time travel and wormholes and explore the possibility of having a universe without a quantum singularity at the beginning of time.
The author notes that an editor warned him that for every equation in the book the readership would be halved, hence it includes only a single equation: E = mc. Early in 1983, Hawking approached Simon Mitton, the editor in charge of astronomy books at Cambridge University Press, with his ideas for a popular book on cosmology. Mitton was doubtful about all the equations in the draft manuscript, which he felt would put off the buyers in airport bookshops that Hawking wished to reach. It was with some difficulty that he persuaded Hawking to drop all but one equation. In addition to Hawking's notable abstention from presenting equations, the book also simplifies matters by means of illustrations throughout the text, depicting complex models and diagrams.

Editions[edit]

• 1988: First edition. It included an Introduction by Carl Sagan that tells the following story: Sagan was in London for a scientific conference in 1974, and between sessions he wandered into a different room, where a larger meeting was taking place. "I realized that I was watching an ancient ceremony: the investiture of new fellows into the Royal Society, one of the most ancient scholarly organizations on the planet. In the front row, a young man in a wheelchair was, very slowly, signing his name in a book that bore on its earliest pages the signature of Isaac Newton... Stephen Hawking was a legend even then." In his Introduction, Sagan goes on to add that Hawking is the "worthy successor" to Newton and P. A. M. Dirac, both former Lucasian Professors of Mathematics.

The Introduction was removed after the first edition, as it was copyrighted by Sagan, rather than by Hawking or the publisher, and the publisher did not have the right to reprint it in perpetuity. Hawking wrote his own introduction for later editions.

• 1996: Illustrated, updated and expanded edition. This hardcover edition contained full color illustrations and photographs to help further explain the text, as well as the addition of topics that were not included in the original book.

• 1998: The Tenth Anniversary Edition. It features the same text as the one published in 1996, but was also released in paperback and has only a few diagrams included.

September 2005 saw the release of A Briefer History of Time (a collaboration with Leonard Mlodinow), which is an abridged version of the original book. It was updated again to address new issues that have arisen due to further scientific development.