What If?

Praise for Randall Munroe, What If? and xkcd: What If? is one of my Internet must-reads, and I look forward to each new installment, and always read it with delight. --Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing Randall Munroe is a national treasure. --Phil Plait For scientists, the price of progress is specialization. When the goal of any researcher is to lay claim to a tiny niche in a crowded discipline, it's hard for laypeople to find answers to the really important interdisciplinary questions. Questions like, 'Is it possible to build a jetpack using downward-firing machine guns?' Fortunately, such people can turn to Randall Munroe, the author of the xkcd comic strip loved by fans of internet culture. . . . For Munroe, who writes with a clarity and wit honed over eight years of writing captions for his webcomic, the fact that a question might be impossible to solve is no deterrent to pursuing it. -- Wall Street Journal Speakeasy blog By speaking the language of geeks. . . while dealing with relationships and the meaning of a computer-centric life, xkcd has become required reading for techies across the world....The Internet has also created a bond between Mr. Munroe and his readers that is exceptional. They reenact in real life the odd ideas he puts forward in his strip. -- The New York Times With his steady regimen of math jokes, physics jokes, and antisocial optimism, xkcd creator Randall Munroe, a former NASA roboticist, scores traffic numbers in NBC.com or Oprah.com territory. One key to the strip's success may be that it doesn't just comment on nerd culture, it embodies nerd culture. -- Wired, in an issue featuring the people who have shaped the planet's past 20 years What If? maintains a delightfully free-wheeling tone throughout, especially when complicated calculations lead to whimsical results. (Did you know that Yoda's Force power roughly translates to the amount of energy used to drive a smart car?) 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 What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions includes old favorites, new inquiries and the mix of expert research and accessible wit that has made Munroe a favorite among both geeks and laymen. -- TIME Munroe takes inane, useless and often quite pointless questions asked by real humans (mostly sent to him through his website), and turns them into beautiful expositions on the impossible that illuminate the furthest reaches, almost to the limits, of the modern sciences..The answers are all illustrated with XKCD's trademark stick figures...and these are eminently approachable. -- Newsweek [ What If? ] has solved my annual birthday-present and holiday-gift dilemmas for a large group of people...What makes Munroe's work so fantastic is a combination of two elements: his commitment to trying to answer even the weirdest question with solid science, and his undeniable sense of humor. -- Huffington Post Munroe's brilliant What-If? column--which features scientifically rigorous, utterly absurd answers to ridiculous hypotheticals--has been on the bestseller lists since it was announced in March. Today, it hits shelves and: It. Is. A. Triumph. --BoingBoing What If? is a fast, engrossing read...The charm of What If? lies in the ease Munroe has jumping past intensely interesting conclusions and onto his next thought, tangent, or consequence. It's as if Munroe is a unseen stage technician pulling back the curtain -- the answers were always there, we just needed someone who knew how to show us. Even he seems surprised at what he finds. - Nerdist Sometimes the beloved geek-chic webcomic xkcd is funny in a broadly accessible way. Sometimes it's achingly poignant, sometimes it's socially intelligent, and sometimes it's esoteric humor that programmers or scientists have to explain to the rest of us. But at its most ambitious, it either packs massive amounts of interesting information into a small space, or engages in breathtaking experiments with the medium....[A]t its best [xkcd] isn't a strip comic so much as an idea factory and a shared experience. -- Onion AV Club 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