The Univese in a Nutshell by Sephen Hawking

Theories of nearly everything

Anyone interested in communicating the excitement of science to a wide audience will be delighted to see this new book by Stephen Hawking – not because it is particularly good, but because, thanks to the glamour attached to his name, it is bound to reach readers who have never opened a book about science. The duty of the reviewer, then, is not to assess the book entirely on its merits as a competitor for all other books about cutting-edge cosmology, but from the perspective of a reader to whom all this is new and wonderful.

Following the huge sales success of A Brief History of Time and the widespread description of it as an "unread bestseller", Hawking and his publishers have gone a long way towards meeting the needs of this audience by dressing this text up with colourful illustrations and explanatory boxes. Whereas previously the party line was that A Brief History was all his own work (which anyone who has seen the early draft knows cannot be true), this time Hawking thanks Ann Harris and Kitty Ferguson, "who edited the manuscript".

I don't know the work of Ann Harris, but some of the less technical parts of the present book certainly read like the work of Kitty Ferguson. She is good at putting things in simple language for the lay reader, but unfortunately (perhaps partly because of this writing by committee), some of the simple things are wrong.

This is really no more than an irritation. Most readers will not care, for example, whether the famous eclipse expedition of 1919 that tested the general theory of relativity studied one star (as it says here) or half a dozen (as was the case, which makes the proof much stronger), or whether Edwin Hubble made his key observations of redshifts in the second or third decade of the 20th century. (The book offers both possibilities; the second is correct.)

Such sloppiness is unprofessional, though and inexcusable in a project on which a great deal of effort has been lavished, and which all concerned must know will reach a naive audience. If anything, the less sophisticated the reader, the greater the duty to get everything just right. But Hawking, of course, is not really a writer; rather, a scientist who writes. The wonder is not that it is done well, but that it is done at all.

Apart from buying Hawking's name, the naive reader will be attracted to this book by its discussion of speculative ideas at the fringes of science, notably time travel and the idea that the three dimensions of space and one of time are just the visible manifestation of some more complicated world, existing in perhaps as many as 26 dimensions.

It is here that Hawking makes the most profound statement in the book. After saying that "I have been reluctant to believe in extra dimensions," he points out that it doesn't matter whether or not such dimensions do exist. All that matters is that the mathematical equations based on the idea of extra dimensions provide a good description of the way the visible Universe works. This positivist approach lies at the heart of modern physics, and I would have liked to have seen more about his philosophy of science here.

I'm not convinced that the technical discussion here will be that much more accessible to naive readers than A Brief History was, and on these topics Hawking is outshone by other scientists-who-write – notably his friend Kip Thorne on time travel (in Black Holes and Time Warps) and Brian Greene on multiple dimensions (in The Elegant Universe). The irony, though, is that in all probability neither of those books would have been written had it not been for the commercial success of Hawking's earlier work.

The intended readership of his present book, however, would be much better served not by scientists-who-write but by writers who know about science; anything by Marcia Bartusiak, or the non-academic books of Paul Davies (who is now much more a writer than a scientist); or, if you are a devotee of the illustrated format, try Universe, by Heather Couper and Nigel Henbest. The people who will get most out of Hawking's new book will have already cut their teeth on some of these writings, and will be ready for something more technical from the horse's mouth.

Not that this horse should be regarded as the ultimate oracle, whatever the hype. Somebody at Bantam should have had the guts to tell Hawking that his jokes aren't funny, and Hawking, assuming he hasn't begun to believe his own publicity, should have told them in no uncertain terms to tone down the blurb. "Great" is an adjective that should be used sparingly, and when used in science reserved for the likes of Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman.

One of Hawking's most endearing characteristics is that he is often wrong, and sometimes even acknowledges this. Especially when writing (or reading) about cutting-edge science theory, it is important to remember that there are different schools of thought, and an idea that is a front runner today may fall flat on its face tomorrow.

This warning applies especially to Hawking's brave attempt, in the later chapters of this book, to guess both how civilisation and how science will develop in the decades and centuries to come.

If history is any guide, the one sure thing is that these forecasts are not going to come true. But they provide an entertaining insight into the "What if?" mentality which is common to both science and science fiction, especially where the boundary between the two is blurred.

Dirk Bogarde always made a point of ending his reviews by advising his readers whether the book in question was worth buying. In my view, The Universe in a Nutshell would not be a good buy for its intended audience of scientific neophytes; but it could be just the ticket for people who have more or less been following the story so far and want more detail on current cosmological thinking. But I do wish that someone had bothered to check all the "facts".

Dr John Gribbin is a professional writer and a visiting fellow in astronomy at the University of Sussex. His latest book, 'Space: our final frontier', is now published by BBC Worldwide