Between 1988 and 2010, the renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking wrote five popular science books aimed at bringing physics closer to a wider audience than the mere academia.The operation proved very successful -with his best-seller alone (A Brief History of Time, 1988) reported to have sold over 10 million copies 1 (Paris 2007) -and made him into an acclaimed popular author.This study considers the books Hawking wrote especially for popularizing purposes, presenting reflections on the relationship between specialized and popular discourse.It focuses in particular on Hawking's first such work, A Brief History of Time, which was made into an even more popular adaptation titled A Briefer History of Time (2005).The chapter details how the subject has been adapted and transferred from a high into a popular (writing) and an even more popular (re-writing) level.This is done by comparing the works against the general features of specialized/scientific discourse, to single out their variation from -or conformity to -the established norms thereof, providing samples of textual analysis and highlighting relevant lexical and syntactic phenomena.An interpretation of such phenomena is proposed according to Critical Discourse Analysis methodology, i.e. considering language in light of the many social, cultural and economic variables informing this type of communication.