Synopses & Reviews
A special 10th anniversary edition of the million-copy bestseller What If? from the creator of the wildly popular webcomic xkcd--revised and annotated with brand-new illustrations and answers to important questions you never thought to ask.
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? What if everyone only
had one soulmate? What would happen if the moon went away?
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 his signature xkcd comics. (They often predict the complete annihilation of humankind, or at least a really big explosion.)
In celebration of 10 years of unusual insight, Randall Munroe has
revised his classic blockbuster to ask what if? x 10. The result is 10x
the adventure of scientific inquiry. Featuring brand-new 2-color
annotations and illustrations, this special anniversary edition is far
more than a book for geeks, What If? explains the laws of
science in operation in a way that every intelligent reader will enjoy
and feel much smarter for having read.
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.