This book operates under false pretences. But in a good way.

The first pretence is a cover design that makes the book look like an uncorrected proof.

Then David Darling begins with a prologue that's a cute three-page piece of fiction. It's a science fiction story - a thought experiment, if you want to sound pretentious - about a man of the future named Luk Barr who 'commutes' between New York City and Sydney by teleportation.

After the 'Introduction', which recalls moments in popular culture featuring teleportation (or something like it), I grew suspicious. I had been expecting passably written and mildly amusing non-fiction, but with the lurid promise of the cover I was beginning to have doubts.

But no. What follows are some of the most lucidly written and cogently argued explanations of really tough science I have read.

In quick succession, Darling summarises the history of theories of light from Empedocles to Einstein and Planck (Chapter 1). Then, in an astonishing 30 pages, he does the same for theories of matter from Geiger and Marsden's experiments in the early 20th century, through quantum mechanics, to work on 'de-coherence' in 2004 (Chapter 2). Chapter 3 is about one of the weirdest aspects of the quantum world - entanglement - and Chapter 4 is about theories that imagine the universe as constructed essentially of information: a 'dataverse'.

And so on, for six more chapters.

And with every new chapter, Darling outlines another set of results from an increasing number of brilliant experiments.

For instance, what looks like an idiosyncratic digression (a chapter on cryptography) turns out to be crucial, because it links notions of the dataverse and quantum theory with the push to create a commercial application for all this kooky science: the quantum coding of information.

Throw in another chapter about constructing the ultimate quantum computer, and by the end you will believe that teleportation of objects is a 'deliverable', as they say in management-speak. Darling admits that teleportation of humans is a long way off (a time line at the end of the book suggests the year 2100 as a possible date) but, tellingly, he thinks the constraints are technical rather than theoretical. In other words, it's just a matter of time.

Darling has managed to put together a book that is at once cutting-edge and communicates a strong sense of history; it is both technical and comprehensible to non-specialists; it conveys a confident grasp of the underlying theoretical physics involved, as well as being full of childlike awe and fun.

This is no mean feat.