What If? 10th Anniversary Edition: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

by Randall Munroe

Overview

From the creator of the wildly popular webcomic xkcd, hilarious and informative answers to important questions you probably never thought to ask.

Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe’s iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have a large and passionate following.

Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions. What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last?

In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified military research memos, solves differential equations, and consults with nuclear reactor operators. His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, complemented by signature xkcd comics. They often predict the complete annihilation of humankind, or at least a really big explosion.

The book features new and never-before-answered questions, along with updated and expanded versions of the most popular answers from the xkcd website. What If? will be required reading for xkcd fans and anyone who loves to ponder the hypothetical.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780544272644
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/02/2014
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	149,732
File size:	31 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Randall Munroe is the author of the webcomic xkcd and the New York Times bestsellers What If?, What If? 2, Thing Explainer, and How To. A former NASA roboticist, he left the agency in 2006 to draw comics on the internet full time. The International Astronomical Union has named an asteroid after him; that asteroid, 4942 Munroe, is large enough that it could cause widespread devastation if it were to hit Earth. He lives in Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

10/01/2014
Have you ever wondered at what point in history there were too many English-language books to read in one lifetime? Or what would happen to the Earth if the Sun didn't exist? Munroe has your answers. A former NASA roboticist, the author launched the weblog xkcd.com, which purposely has no phonetic pronunciation, in 2005. The blog's blend of math and science, sarcasm, and stick-figure drawings has gained a loyal following. (His etching of someone who reads a book on juggling, tries to juggle, fails, and immediately trashes the book is especially poignant.) In 2012, Munroe started answering reader-submitted hypotheticals using Internet research along with his own knowledge. That series, "What If," is the focus of this witty nonfiction debut, which features a plethora of new black-and-white cartoons. VERDICT Those who enjoyed the irreverent style of Allie Brosh's best-selling memoir, Hyperbole and a Half, will enjoy Munroe's serious and silly musings on everything from science to romance. One question submitted to his blog: "If all digital data were stored on punch cards, how big would Google's data warehouse be?" was even answered by the search-engine behemoth. The response, "No comment."—Stephanie Sendaula, Library Journal

Library Journal

What If? maintains a delightfully free-wheeling tone throughout, especially when complicated calculations lead to whimsical results...Despite all the hard facts and gigantic numbers, it never feels like a textbook—and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to enjoy it. A.”  — Entertainment Weekly

“Catchy and approachable...There’s plenty of scientific rigor behind his elaborate explanations but he punctuates them with sly humor and winningly primitive cartoon diagrams...A cut above so many popular science and technology books.”  — NPR.org  

“Consistently fascinating and entertaining...Munroe leavens the hard science with whimsical touches...An illuminating handbook of methods of reasoning.”  — Wall Street Journal

“It’s fun to watch as Munroe tackles each question and examines every possible complication with nerdy and methodical aplomb, his distinctive scribblings providing clever running commentary of peanut-gallery jokes as his train of thought (sometimes) happily derails. The delightfully demented What If? is the most fun you can have with math and science, short of becoming your own evil genius...We feel the tug of Munroe’s playful yet existentially-tinged worldview, and all that geek logic and number-crunching becomes unexpectedly poignant.”  — Boston Globe

“Munroe has hit on a wonderful form of science and engineering communication that can do so much—extolling the value of analytical thinking, examining data, and doing back-of-the-envelope calculations—while entertaining readers at the same time… an incredibly fun book with quirky, hand-drawn pictures.”  — American Scientist

From the Publisher