Brief Answers to the Big Questions
a science book written by physicist Stephen Hawking
Brief Answers to the Big Questions is a popular science book written by physicist Stephen Hawking, and published by Hodder & Stoughton (hardcover) and Bantam Books (paperback) on 16 October 2018. The book examines some of the universe's greatest mysteries, and promotes the view that science is very important in helping to solve problems on planet Earth. The publisher describes the book as "a selection of [Hawking's] most profound, accessible, and timely reflections from his personal archive", and is based on, according to a book reviewer, "half a million or so words" from his essays, lectures and keynote speeches.
The book was incomplete at the time of the author's passing in March 2018, but was completed with "his academic colleagues, his family and the Stephen Hawking Estate". The book includes a foreword written by Eddie Redmayne, who won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Hawking in the 2014 film The Theory of Everything; an introduction by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Kip Thorne; and an afterword by Lucy Hawking, the author's daughter. A portion of the royalties from the book are to go to the Motor Neurone Disease Association and the Stephen Hawking Foundation.
Contents
The book treats four main subjects: "Why Are We Here? Will We Survive? Will Technology Save Us or Destroy Us? How Can We Thrive?".
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q57546887. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2018 and 2014.
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This entry incorporates text from “Brief Answers to the Big Questions” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.