Growing up in the middle of nowhere, Canada in the 1980s, the library didn't have many good science books. When Hawking's book got published, it was the only thing available like that anywhere around. Remember, this is before you could get any book in existence within one month via Amazon. There was no Amazon.
I got A Brief History of Time and read it, and it's almost cliche to say so, but it changed the course of my life. It's not the only book that affected me, but it was pivotal. George Gamow's little book also was available, and some good Asimov stuff, but otherwise nothing really.
So I went to university in the big city (Saskatoon!) and studied physics, and they had a whole library of physics books! You'd think it was like heaven, but a lot of those books were crap or hard to read. Hawking showed how one can aim for a book that's interesting-and-good and actually achieve it. A few others managed to do the same. There are probably 20 actually-good and readable physics books in the whole world, and his books are a few of them.
I got A Brief History of Time and read it, and it's almost cliche to say so, but it changed the course of my life. It's not the only book that affected me, but it was pivotal. George Gamow's little book also was available, and some good Asimov stuff, but otherwise nothing really.
So I went to university in the big city (Saskatoon!) and studied physics, and they had a whole library of physics books! You'd think it was like heaven, but a lot of those books were crap or hard to read. Hawking showed how one can aim for a book that's interesting-and-good and actually achieve it. A few others managed to do the same. There are probably 20 actually-good and readable physics books in the whole world, and his books are a few of them.