"Stephen Hawking 'nervous' about reaction to Shining sequel"

From The BBC:

Stephen Hawking has admitted he is nervous about the reaction to his forthcoming sequel to Stephen King's novel The Shining. The Cambridge physicist told the BBC he expects 95% of the reviews for Doctor Sleep to be a comparison with A Brief History Of Time.

"You are faced with that comparison and that has got to make you nervous", he said, "because there is a lot of water under the bridge. I'm a different man".

He admitted visiting literary websites to see what fans were saying about the book ahead of its publication. Now aged 71, the veteran cosmologist said he thinks the quality of his writing has improved since he wrote A Brief History Of Time at the age of 45.

"What a lot of people are saying is, 'Well okay, I will probably read this book but it cannot be as good as either A Brief History Of Time or The Shining'. But I am obviously an optimist and I want them to say when they get done with it, that it was as good. But what I really want them to say is that it is better than both."

Veteran American author, Stephen King, now 65, is currently finalising A Beginner's Guide To Gravitational Singularity Theorems. As usual, there's a scary bit right at the end when the whole of time and space collapses into a black void, taking all of humanity with it.