Book 36: What If?

What If? Serious Scientific Answers in Absurd Hypothetical Questions

Randall Munroe

I've been reading xkcd for years and its companion blog, What If?, for the entirety of its existence, and I was thrilled to see that Randall Munroe decided to release a book based on the latter concept. What makes What If?- in both blog and book form- so wonderful is that it shows how complex, stunning, and downright silly the world can be when taken seriously and not so seriously, all at once. The book is composed of Munroe's thorough, and often very literal, answers to readers' hypothetical questions, ranging from the mundane (How high can humans throw things?) to the absurd (What if we had a bullet as dense as a neutron star? What would happen if a baseball pitcher threw at the speed of light?) to the strangely profound (What is the furthest a living person has ever been from every other living person? How long would it take the last two people on Earth to find each other?). It is evident, both from the questions he selects and the answers he provides, that Munroe is intelligent, witty, and, above all, human. What If? indulges our collective curiosity and creativity, asking us to question our world and, more importantly, to figure out a way to find the answers. Laced with a fine layer of sarcasm, the book tackles even the most mundane questions with surprising energy, often finding ways to make even the more straightforward questions (What effects would a Richter 15 earthquake have? What did Times Square look like a million years ago?) surprisingly poignant. This is a book about being alive, questioning everything, and enjoying every goddamn moment of it.

This is often where I voice my criticisms, and I'm struggling to think of one. Perhaps loyal What If? readers will be slightly disheartened to see that many of the book's chapters are recycled wholesale from the blog; I, for one, was eager to read and rediscover them again. Munroe's blend of explanatory text and cartoons is as well suited to print as it is to the Internet, and I actually found much of it (especially the footnotes) easier to read in printed form. The stick-figure drawings and more elaborate cartoon explorations of world destruction are- of course- terrific, illustrating (ha) Munroe's inclusive and enthusiastic approach to scientific inquiry. The illustrations enhance and interact with the text in an innovative way that makes some of the more advanced concepts much more accessible and much of the book far more lively than most others. It is refreshing, too, to note how many of them are or contain jokes, lending the book a degree of levity that would benefit works across all disciplines. The science is real and I'm sure the math checks out (Munroe worked for NASA, after all), yet Munroe approaches science in a very relatable way. He never talks down to his readers, but strives to make even the most challenging, complex concepts easily understandable to anyone who is willing to stretch their mind and expand their horizons. Munroe is at once completely serious and completely irreverent, and the result is absolutely perfect.

I am convinced that the central question of What If? is not any of the questions it contains but, rather, an exploration of what it means to be human. If a central facet of our humanity relies on our desire and ability to question the world around us and devise ways to discover whatever answers the world might yield, then the book is a perfect manifestation of this desire. Why not ask what might happen if absurd and impossible thing x happens? Just imagine what we might learn if we suspend disbelief and believe, if only for a few pages, that the most wonderful (and utterly terrifying) things could happen. What If? goes there, managing to balance scientific rigor with the evident, honest, and unbridled thrill of being alive. Hell, I'm a humanities person to the core (with degrees in English, history, and library science), and I am half considering becoming a physicist after reading this book. What If? encourages- no, forces- readers to engage directly with the world around us, to question our assumptions and to think boldly about all of the possibilities the world offers us; no matter how absurd our questions may seem, they can often lead to some pretty surprising, and surprisingly poignant, answers and questions about the world around us.

Grade: A