A Briefer History of Time

  • Stephen Hawking &
  • Leonard Mlodinow
Bantam Books: 2005. 176 pp. $25 0553804367 | ISBN: 0-553-80436-7

The phenomenal success of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time demands that the arrival of this new edition be treated as a major publishing event. So let me begin with a few facts. First, A Briefer History of Time is not a new book, but rather an updated and reworked edition of the original. Second, it is certainly briefer, at three-quarters the length of the original. Third, the simple black-and-white diagrams of the first book have been replaced by stylish colour images, ranging from the amusing (Hawking and co-author Leonard Mlodinow strapped into their time machine) to the misleading (space-times, of expanding universes and wormholes, embedded within space-time).

So what is the motivation for A Briefer History of Time? I will leave aside any cynical accusation of opportunistic marketing because I believe the authors have made an honest attempt here to rectify what they perceive as a problem with the original: that millions of readers with no scientific background did not get beyond the first chapter before their brains blew up. To remedy this, that first chapter has been chopped into three bite-sized and hopefully, one imagines, more digestible ones. On the whole I like this, but it does seem a bit of a cheat if readers get through the same amount of material before giving up, only now boasting of having seen off three chapters instead of one.

Credit: ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTIAN DARKIN

The new book is certainly easier going. The old third chapter (“The expanding Universe”) of 11 in the original is now the seventh chapter of 12, highlighting the additional weighting given to introductory material. The three middle chapters (“Black holes”, “Black holes ain't so black” and “The origin and fate of the Universe”), which together made up a total of 70 pages in the original, are now lumped into one chapter just 18 pages long. Elsewhere, every attempt has been made to clarify those passages deemed to be hard going. Finally, out goes the chapter on the arrows of time, the diagrams of light cones and event horizons, and discussions of chaotic boundary conditions, and in comes a new crowd-pleasing chapter on time machines.

I find myself unconvinced by this valiant effort, however. Clearly, the incredible success of A Brief History of Time was due to a combination of timing, marketing and the persona of the author. It can never be repeated. But what is often overlooked is that its major, paradoxical attraction was its charming incomprehensibility to the non-physicist — the idea that anyone could take a peak inside one of the greatest minds in science. This is lost in the new book. For millions of people around the world, A Brief History of Time would have been the only science book they have ever read or attempted to read. But with the briefer version, I feel the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater. It is just another run-of-the-mill popular science book on modern physics. The topics that it claims to treat more carefully have been covered better elsewhere. In any case, many of the topics left in and flagged as more introductory are just as baffling, abstract and abstruse to non-scientists as those left out. Just because quantum mechanics and the special theory of relativity are not at the cutting edge of current thinking doesn't mean they are any less counter-intuitive. The two-slit experiment and the notion of the relativity of simultaneity could have been explained better, especially as the latter receives just a single paragraph.

Fresh material, based on advances made over the past two decades, has been included, such as the concept of ‘dark energy’ and advances in string theory. I am also pleased to see that the discussion of the anthropic principle is retained. This is a hot topic of discussion at the moment in connection with multiverse theories. However, I found it a little surprising that the idea is still treated rather cautiously here.

I have no doubt that A Briefer History of Time will soon be on the shelves of every high-street bookstore around the world. This is surely to be welcomed: any book that can reach a wide audience and get across the excitement of science has to be a good thing. And with Hawking enjoying an iconic status not seen in a scientist since Einstein, his role as an ambassador for science should not be underestimated.