I was reminded by Alissa, that we don’t usually do obits for people on this site, unless they were critical to the show, or the game. However, there were few guest appearances on The Simpsons, that had the “Cool Factor” that came with Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest minds of the past century.
There is something simply fun about a man who spent his life trying to bring about a solution to the “Unified Theory of Physics” (a way to resolve traditional Physics with Quantum Physics), and playing a part in a show as irreverent and fun as The Simpsons.
For this reason alone, I was overjoyed when he became a character in our game, able to fly around our own little universes in a way he never could in real life.
It’s interesting to me that a man like Hawking could generate so much controversy with his theories. And I admit, I didn’t totally buy into his version of creation, although in later years, he showed a flexibility in the “what could be” that some of his contemporaries (Neil deGrasse Tyson as an example) seem to lack.
But his courage, in a life that could have, and perhaps should have been full of bitterness, was the thing that I respected more than anything else.
Continue reading
