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When I mentioned to my friend Carver Yu that I was reading this book, he scrunched up his face in the way that only a man who knows the field well can do and commented, `Well, of course, that book contains a fair bit of metaphysical speculation.’
Precisely.
That is what makes Hawking’s attempt to simplify his original one-syllable-less A Brief History of Time such a beguiling reader for a non-specialist like me. Call it metaphysical speculation or call it a daring attempt to translate the astrophysicists’ language into yours and mine without losing the power of asking us to imagine a world nearly completely different than the one we thought we lived in. Call it what you want, it’s still a read well worth the effort it requires.
Don’t shy away from finishing this book if you don’t understand it all. Allow it the chance to paint an impressionistic portrait of what physicists—many of them justly awe-struck by the object of their inquiry—believe that they see `out there’ when some of humanity’s best minds ask the fundamental questions and follow the theories (theirs is a theory-rich pursuit) where they lead. Many of those theories, as Hawking describes them, will sound like nonsense. Unless sense is different than we thought.
When I was at Cambridge, I used to bicycle past the severely disabled Stephen Hawking in his wheelchair, followed by his personal nurse, as he wheeled between home and office, his mind no doubt drifting far from the concrete course of his wheelchair across the Commons. One wonders whether paragraphs of Briefer History and other of his works were taking shape as our paths crossed.
Metaphysical speculation for those who dare to imagine things they may not fully understand. Things like wormholes, peabrains, and a universe curved so severely that words almost fail in the explaing of it.
If that sounds provocative enough to justify the effort, this book is for you.
Canter Bridge 
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