What If?
Randall Munroe
The best type of childishness
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. Because I read the books in reverse order, I have already written a review of book:What If? 2 with several content examples -- follow that link or this one to see them: https://broken-engines.blogspot.com/2... .
How does What If? 1 differ from What If? 2? Well, the first thing that leaps out when you open to the table of contents is that, whereas Munroe numbered the questions in What If? 2, he did not number the questions in What If? 1. Really, Randall? What is this? How could you, of all people, not number the questions? So, I did it myself, by hand: there are 57 fully answered questions, twelve short chapters of "Weird and Worrying" questions, and one short answer chapter.
The bigger difference, which surprised me, is with the subtitle, "Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions". 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. The answers in What If? 1, in contrast, are often less serious. Some questions do get serious answers (e.g. "Relativistic Baseball" is pretty thorough), but some are tongue-in-cheek and do not really engage (e.g. "Sunless Earth"). Although some of these were pretty funny, I found that overall my enjoyment of What If? 1 was diluted compared to What If? 2. As always, Your Mileage May Vary.
What I wrote about What If? 2 still holds:
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.)