A Brief History of Time
1988
- cosmologie
- temps (durée)
- espace-temps
- vulgarisation scientifique
- univers
- espace extraterrestre
- expansion
- cosmology
- origine
- trous noirs (astronomie)
The story
Stephen Hawking's ‘A Brief History of Time* has become an international publishing phenomenon. Translated into thirty languages, it has sold over ten million copies worldwide and lives on as a science book that continues to captivate and inspire new readers each year. When it was first published in 1988 the ideas discussed in it were at the cutting edge of what was then known about the universe. In the intervening twenty years there have been extraordinary advances in the technology of observing both the micro- and macro-cosmic world. Indeed, during that time cosmology and the theoretical sciences have entered a new golden age . Professor Hawking is one of the major scientists and thinkers to have contributed to this renaissance.
What it’s like
Clear, unhurried popular-science prose with a dry, good-humoured voice, the sort that explains black holes and the expanding universe in everyday images and then pauses to joke about it. The page is airy: short chapters, plain diagrams, and few equations, so the mind travels through vast distances without ever feeling crowded. The vibe is quietly wondering and cosmic, a calm kind of awe rather than dread, best suited to a slow Sunday morning with a mug of tea, a long train journey, or a late-night session when the sky feels big. The pacing is steady and conversational, circling back to revisit ideas from new angles, so it rewards short sittings as well as sustained reading. Emotionally it stays measured and curious, with a faint undercurrent of the author's personal resolve, though the focus is always on time, space and the origins of the universe. There is no violence, no sexual content, and nothing frightening beyond the strangeness of the cosmos itself. It suits readers who enjoy big questions explained patiently, and curious minds who want to feel the scale of creation without needing prior physics.
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