‘Brief History’ Makes Some of Its Own After 2 Years as Best Seller

Traditionally, the nonfiction marketplace was a black hole for science books. Simplistic self-help books, cooking guides and glitz-biographies regularly ascended to publishing superstardom. The egghead stuff disappeared into a cultural cosmic void.

Then a gnomish University of Cambridge theoretical physicist wrote a book about the possible origins of the universe.

This week, Stephen W. Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time--from the Big Bang to Black Holes,” celebrates its second year--104 weeks--on the New York Time’s best-seller list. That is astronomical success for any book, but it’s a particularly quirky achievement for a serious book about quarks, quantum mechanics and particle physics.

Disabled by the neurological disorder, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (or Lou Gehrig’s disease), Hawking is confined to a wheelchair and to a body that provides only minimal support to his celebrated brain. By most informed estimations, he will be ranked alongside scientific luminaries such as Sir Issac Newton and Albert Einstein.

“My goal is simple,” Hawking once said. “It is complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”

But shortly before “A Brief History” hit the bookstores in 1988, Hawking was less grand in his explanation of why he wrote a layman’s book discussing those lofty matters. Speaking with a computerized voice that he laboriously activates with a small joy-stick, and flashing the lopsided, devilish grin that has become his trademark, he said: “I want to see it displayed in airport bookstores.”

“We always thought the book would do well,” said Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Bantam. But no one had a clue to just how well. The book is now in its 37th printing, and with the 1.2 million hardcover copies still selling briskly at $18.95 there are no foreseeable plans for a paperback release, Applebaum said.

With Steven Spielberg currently co-producing a 90-minute nonfiction film based on the book--with Hawking playing himself--its potential for continued success seems infinite.

Hawking has attributed his book’s popularity to people’s natural curiosity about the universe they inhabit, and the fact that he left out the complex equations of his craft, making it accessible to readers who are not astrophysicists.

Scientists and publishers, meanwhile, have found hope in the public’s growing appetite for books about hard science. As Applebaum remarked: “Remember the old H. L. Mencken dictum, ‘No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people?’ The success of Stephen Hawking’s book is a wonderful rebuttal to that sort of cynicism.”