★★★★★ The best kind of childishness!

What If? 2

Randall Munroe

Randall Munroe is the author of the free web comic XKCD. XKCD comics are instantly recognizable by Munroe's surprisingly individual and expressive faceless stick-figure characters. They are less instantly recognizable by their focus on science and mathematics, and by Munroe's ability to write startlingly accurate jokes on these subjects which are actually funny, but also sometimes informative or touching,

For a few years now he has also had a blog called "What If?" in which he answers questions from users. What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions and What If? 2 are collections of those questions and answers. I started with What If? 2 because I mistakenly ordered it before What If? 1. I do, however, follow Munroe's What If? blog, so it is likely I've seen most of What If? 1.

Just to give you a taste, the first question of What If? 2 is this:

What would happen if the Solar System was filled with soup out to Jupiter?
--Amelia, age 5

This is a fairly typical type of What If? question. Not all the inquirers are as young as Amelia, but many of them are. The answer in this case begins, "Please make sure everyone is safely out of the Solar System before you fill it with soup.". It continues, "If the Solar System were full of soup out to Jupiter, things might be okay for some people for a few minutes. Then, for the next half hour, things would definitely not be okay for anyone. After that, time would end." Munroe goes on to explain in more detail, with pictures, how this all would come about. The full answer is five pages.

The subtitle is "Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions", and that is indeed the bulk of the book. It contains full answers to 64 such questions -- a typical answer is 3-5 pages. There are also some questions that get less serious answers, five "Short answers" chapters, and three "Weird and Worrying" chapters. Here's a "Weird and Worrying" example,

Can bees or other animals got to Hell? Or can they murder other bees without consequences?

Munroe doesn't answer.

Here's an example of a question and short answer:

I was wondering whether there's a way to use my welder as a defibrillator?
--Lukasz Grabowski

You should definitely not use your welder as a defibrillator, and after reading your question, I honestly don't think you should be allowed to use it as an arc welder, either.

Most of the fully answered questions fall into two categories, either "What would happen if...?" (obviously the sort of questions envisaged by the title "What If?"), and questions that ask for a number, "How much...?", "How many...", "How long...?" The "What If?" type questions are the most fun, because they allow Munroe to tell stories. However, the number questions are surprisingly fun, too -- they demonstrate a lot of ingenuity, which one has to admire.

Aside from the "Short Answers" and "Weird and Worrying" questions, what marks What If? 2 is Munroe's commitment to giving real answers -- answers that follow the scenario through to its logical consequences, with careful and well-explained reasoning.

And, here's the most important part: It's fun! Even though the subtitle uses the word "serious", and the book contains serious answers (for certain values of "serious"), this is NOT a serious book! It is funny and delightful. (Informative, too, but don't let that deter you.)

Amazon review

Goodreads review

Comments

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