Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have a large and passionate following. 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? In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified …
Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have a large and passionate following. 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? 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 signature xkcd comics. They often predict the complete annihilation of humankind, or at least a really big explosion. The book features new and never-before-answered questions, along with updated and expanded versions of the most popular answers from the xkcd website.
Hardcover, 320 pages
english language
Published Nov. 26, 2024
What If? employs Munroe's signature humour and rigor, famous in his XKCD comics, and delivers them in prose. It's a fun, quick read that I've enjoyed revisiting.
Seriøse svar på useriøse spørsmål. Har du lurt på kva skjer når du svarer seriøst på eit retorisk spørsmål mange gangar? Denne boka er svaret.
Stort sett ei morosam bok, og veldig lettlesen.
Parts of this book went over my head, but I still enjoyed it alot. It is a love letter to science and curiousity, answering questions I never knew I had.
My one problem with this book is the "weird and worrying questions"-sections, as it at times points fun at the questions, and other times just serve as unanswered interesting questions. Where is the fun in that?
I ended up getting the UK version of this, which had a fun preface explaining its use of units. I still would have preferred the metric system.
