Every reader knows that super special feeling. You are reading a new book, your enjoyment keeps growing, and then a realization suddenly dawns. It’s perfect. Flawless. “It’s like this book was written especially for me!”
Readers are lucky if they experience this feeling a handful of times in their lives. My first was reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as a teen. My second was reading Rendezvous with Rama as a young adult. And the third just happened to me as a middle-aged adult.
I read What If? by Randall Munroe.
At the risk of sounding like Stefon from SNL, this book has everything! Science, humor, comics, monsters, all mashed together in a thoroughly delightful reading experience. The subtitle says everything you need to know: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions.
Randall Munroe is the brains and creator behind the wildly popular XKCD, a stick figure web comic that gleefully delves into science and nerd culture. It’s kind of hard to explain without seeing it for yourself, which I encourage you to do. It’s reliably funny, and it’s the driving force behind the What If? publication.
As a longtime fan of XKCD, I was already primed to like this book. I knew the humor well and greatly enjoyed Munroe’s commentary. He has a dryness to his delivery that is sharply funny, yet easily accessible. He’s a mega-nerd who can speak to the common folk.
Munroe is also a physicist who worked on robots for NASA. As with most scientists, he has a bottomless well of curiosity. This prompted him to add a “Submit a Question” feature to XKCD. And seeing as how his core audience is also a nerdy lot with bottomless wells of their own, the feature created a ceaseless flow of comedic inspiration.
The popularity of this feature led to the inevitable What If? book, a collection of the best (and most worrying) fan questions. Munroe answers them all with hard science, biting humor, and absurd visuals. It now tops every list for humorous nonfiction, and for very good reason. This was one of the most entertaining reads of my entire life.
What If? is an easy recommendation to anyone with a functioning sense of humor. I was also thrilled to learn that a follow-up book was published: What If? 2. In the immortal words of Philip J. Fry, “Shut up and take my money!”
