What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

Published in 2022, What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions is a popular science book by Randall Munroe. A physicist and former NASA roboticist, Munroe is best known for his Hugo Award-winning webcomic xkcd as well as his contributions to the popular science genre. He has published multiple best-selling nonfiction books and has lectured across the US in addition to running several popular online blogs and channels.

In this sequel to his 2014 bestselling book What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, Munroe continues to apply his characteristic blend of expert knowledge and playful humor to answer bizarre hypothetical questions. The author’s imminently recognizable artwork accompanies (or sometimes stands in for) scientifically rigorous analyses to provide entertaining and credible answers to some of the absurd questions that readers submit via Munroe’s popular question-and-answer blog What If?. Throughout What If? 2, Munroe explores themes that include Humor as a Tool to Facilitate Communication and Education, Encouraging Engagement and Curiosity in Science, and Absurdity In Imaginary Situations and Real-World Phenomena.

This guide uses the 2022 John Murray Publishers UK edition of the book.

Summary

What If? 2 contains 64 short, numbered chapters interspersed with five Short Answers chapters and three Weird & Worrying chapters. Each of the main numbered chapters begins with a question that a reader has submitted to Munroe’s What If? blog, followed by Munroe’s answer. Each of these answers is generally several pages long, consisting of a combination of prose explanations and short, illustrative comics. The Short Answers chapters consist of multiple questions submitted by various readers, each followed by a brief response from Munroe, typically a single paragraph, an illustration, or both. The Weird & Worrying chapters consist of a single page displaying multiple questions submitted by different readers. These questions, however, are ones that Munroe considers too bizarre, nonsensical, or concerning to actually answer; he instead illustrates each question via a playfully mocking little comic. Throughout the book, Munroe often offers wry social commentary. Such commentary stands out particularly in the Short Answers and Weird & Worrying chapters because the answers are brief.

The book includes a short Introduction, in which Munroe explains that he appreciates “silly questions” because they encourage the exploration of “serious science” without the pressure of serious or mainstream scientific inquiries. In addition, Munroe includes a References section that functions as a bibliography, listing all the sources that Munroe used to answer the questions in each chapter. The book’s main chapters are in a seemingly random order; they’re not organized by thematic or subject areas, or by any progressive, plot-like structure. The questions and answers cover a wide range of topics; the overwhelming majority are science-related, but several cover other topics, such as law, history, and geography. Of the interconnected disciplines that Munroe encapsulates under the umbrella term “science,” physics and astronomy dominate throughout the book, although geology, chemistry, and biology feature significantly. Questions concerning space and astronomy are particularly frequent: Almost a third of the numbered chapters focus on astronomical phenomena and celestial bodies and objects.