The Grand Design is a marvelously concise book that provides new answers to the ultimate questions of life. When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? What is the nature of reality? These fundamental questions, once the province of philosophy, are now explored through the lens of science.

In this groundbreaking work, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow present the most recent scientific thinking about the mysteries of the universe, using nontechnical language marked by both brilliance and simplicity. According to quantum theory, the cosmos does not have just a single existence or history, but rather every possible history of the universe exists simultaneously. This challenges the very notion of cause and effect.

The authors explore the "top-down" approach to cosmology, suggesting that the past takes no definite form and that we create history by observing it. They further explain that we are the product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe and introduce the concept of the "multiverse"—the idea that our universe is just one of many that appeared spontaneously, each with different laws of nature.

Hawking and Mlodinow question conventional concepts of reality, proposing a "model-dependent" theory of reality as the best we can hope to find. They conclude with a riveting assessment of M-theory, the only viable candidate for a complete "theory of everything," potentially the unified theory that Einstein was seeking.

This succinct, startling, and lavishly illustrated guide to discoveries is altering our understanding and challenging some of our most cherished belief systems. The Grand Design is a book that will inform—and provoke—like no other.

By the end of the 30th century, humanity has the capability to travel the universe, to journey beyond Earth and beyond the confines of the vulnerable human frame.

The descendants of centuries of scientific, cultural, and physical development divide into three groups: fleshers — true Homo sapiens; Gleisner robots — embodying human minds within machines that interact with the physical world; and polises — supercomputers teeming with intelligent software, containing the direct copies of billions of human personalities now existing only in the virtual reality of the polis.

Diaspora is the story of Yatima — a polis being created from random mutations of the Konishi polis base mind seed — and of humankind. An astrophysical accident spurs the thousandfold cloning of the polises, leading to the discovery of an alien race and a kink in time that ensures humanity — in whatever form it takes — will never again be threatened by acts of God.