Just finished reading 2017 edition of the “Brief History of time” of Stephen Hawking , the first edition published in April 1988. Since its first edition there have been many changes in physics and related areas of science. This edition contains revised text and additional information with adjusted scientific positions by writer.
If you are interested in physics or our universe or multi universes this book probably will give you short tour starting from Big Bang ( singularity concept) to no-boundary concepts ( ever expanding universe).
I am quoting here the first para of last chapter of the book and encourage you to read the rest.
Image sources taken by me brother
“We find ourselves in a bewildering world. We want to make sense of what we see around us and to ask: What is the nature of the universe? What is our place in it and where did it and we come from? Why is it the way it is?
To try to answer these questions we adopt some “world picture.” Just as an infinite tower of tortoises supporting the flat earth is such a picture, so is the theory of superstrings. Both are theories of the universe, though the latter is much more mathematical and precise than the former. Both theories lack observational evidence: no one has ever seen a giant tortoise with the earth on its back, but then, no one has seen a superstring either. However, the tortoise theory fails to be a good scientific theory because it predicts that people should be able to fall off the edge of the world. This has not been found to agree with experience, unless that turns out to be the explanation for the people who are supposed to have disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle!”