The Universe in a Nutshell Stephen Hawking Bantam Press, 216pp, £20 ISBN 0593048156

At once it has to be said that this is a much, much better book than A Brief History of Time, its prequel. A Brief History, published 13 years ago, sold millions of copies around the world, turned its author into a media star and spawned a generation of popular science books, all making increasingly grand claims to compete with Stephen Hawking's valedictory promise about knowing the mind of God. But it was inherently incomprehensible - not just to the layperson, but also to many physicists who were obliged to admit it had them baffled.

The reason was not that the science was unsound, but that the book had been, as it were, over-published. Stripped of equations and any detailed science that might alienate the casual browser, it was an arcane text in which truths were handed down from on high. It was successful because what it said seemed so weird that it took on a thrilling sci-fi quality. It was a global sacred text whose declarations the lay reader must accept - or reject - on trust.

In contrast, The Universe in a Nutshell is difficult, though not absolutely so. It is beautifully produced, with quite exquisite artwork employing strange, rather Edwardian-looking machines that seem to owe something to the computer game Myst. It is equally well edited so that, instead of grand statements about contemporary physics, we have more detailed explanations of which the layperson can, with effort, make sense.

One reason for this may be that A Brief History was written at a time when physicists did generally believe that the Theory of Everything, the completion of their subject, was imminent. That did not prove to be the case, and The Universe is written in a climate in which the Theory of Everything seems as remote as ever. As Hawking makes clear, we are moving forward, though neither he nor anybody else can any longer be sure we are on the right path, or how far along that path we have walked. Furthermore, since A Brief History, biology has taken over from physics in the popular imagination as the hottest field of contemporary science. Theoretical physics, we feel, is unlikely to affect our lives in the near future; biology already does, not least in our current anxiety about bioterrorism.

This gives the book a less triumphalist tone, which is welcome, and it results in the necessary inclusion of biology in Hawking's prophetic passages. There has, he says, been no significant change - via the slow processes of evolution - in human DNA in the past 10,000 years. But over the next thousand years, we shall be able artificially to increase its complexity, creating, in theory, "improved" human beings. People in the future will be different. He avoids an argument about whether this will be desirable, but insists it is going to happen and we should face the consequences.

The practical effects of physics, however, are less clear. Time travel, for example, is unlikely, though there does seem to be a slim chance. Hawking remarks with characteristic archness that this conclusion might be part of a government cover-up. For the time being, faster-than-light space travel also seems improbable. Indeed, at the practical level, there seems to be very little hard news coming from the labs, observatories and blackboards of the physicists.

But the theory has taken on a new intricacy. Certainly we are still in the world of big bangs, black holes, curved time and cosmic strings, but to these have now been added p-branes, the M Theory and vacuum energy. The physics faith is that all these things are really aspects of one thing - a complete theory of matter - but, Hawking admits, only the edges of the jigsaw are in place. The picture remains indecipherable.

But the big questions are: what is this all about? How real is it? In one sense, as Hawking acknowledges, it is not real at all. He is a positivist. The question "Do p-branes or whatever exist?" is, therefore, meaningless. Such things merely have explanatory power because they accord with theory and observation. Some have argued, reasonably enough, that this represents a postmodern retreat from the grand project of physics, which is to paint a conclusive picture of the material world. It certainly calls into question the possibility of finality and the seriousness with which the layperson should take contemporary physics. Is it, ultimately, a game played by humans on the surface of an unknowable cosmos?

If it is, then it is not the mind of God we are about to know, but merely a specialised aspect of the imagination of man. In this context, it is the title of this book that raises the most fundamental questions. Hawking takes it from Hamlet - "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space . . ."

"Hamlet may have meant," comments Hawking, "that although we human beings are very limited physically, our minds are free to explore the whole universe, and to boldly go where even Star Trek fears to tread - bad dreams permitting."

At one level, this poignantly evokes the condition of the man himself - wheelchair-bound with a body wrecked by motor neurone disease and yet supporting a mind still able to roam the stars. But the reading of the quotation is plainly wrong. Hamlet adds, as Hawking acknowledges without comment, "were it not that I have bad dreams". The qualification - as clear a sign of genius as anything in Shakespeare - changes everything. Hamlet's bad dreams reveal that, in the nutshell, the space of which he is king is an illusion, and a petty one at that.

So the real implication of Hawking's title is that what we know is an illusion - surely not what he, however positivistic, meant. Or did he? Is he actually an ironic magus for an ironic age? Is he merely being sloppy? Or is this book the disguised confession of a cunningly camouflaged mystic? I hope so.

Bryan Appleyard's most recent book is Brave New Worlds (HarperCollins, £8.99)

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