Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions | 2014 | Randall Munroe | Buy |
| 2 | What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions | 2022 | Randall Munroe | Buy |
The What If? series consists of two books – What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions (2014) and What If? 2 (2022) – both adapting and expanding on the What If? blog that Munroe ran alongside xkcd. Readers submit hypothetical questions (“What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% of the speed of light?”) and Munroe answers them with genuine physics and engineering calculations, illustrated with xkcd-style diagrams and humor.
The first book was a substantial commercial success and established Munroe as a book author beyond his webcomic audience. It covers a wide range of topics from astrophysics to biology to geography, with Munroe using each question as an excuse to explain real scientific principles in an entertaining way. The second volume followed eight years later with a new set of questions in the same format.
Both books can be read in any order and in any sequence – each question-and-answer is self-contained. They are best read as entertainments rather than reference texts, dipped into and sampled rather than read straight through. What If? (2014) is the more widely read and is the natural starting point.