What if I wrote a book?

Posted bydavean 1,117 Comments on What if I wrote a book?

For the last couple years, I’ve been answering your science questions on What If.

Today, I’m excited to announce that the What If? book is coming!

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions will be published September 2nd by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Starting today you can pre-order it from your favorite bookseller (Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Indie Bound).  There are also foreign editions, including a UK and Commonwealth edition and a German edition.

As I’ve sifted through the letters submitted to What If every week, I’ve occasionally set aside particularly neat questions that I wanted to spend a little more time on. This book features my answers to those questions, along with revised and updated versions of some of my favorite articles from the site. (I’m also including my personal list of the weirdest questions people have submitted.)

Preorder today to get a copy as soon as it comes out!

1,117 replies on “What if I wrote a book?”

  1. Here’s a “what if” question: If you extrapolated the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale (which we all know ends at 5, though some have proposed going up to 6), where would Jupiter’s Great Red Spot fall?

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  2. I would also like to know the differece between the two English versions.
    Also, September, isn’t that a bit too far in the future?

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  3. I just wonder why German? I totally (pre)ordered it but why this specific language that only a handful of people somewhere in Central Europe can speak?

    @Troy: What-If *is* digital already 🙂

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  4. Signed copies would be awesome! I have a signed copy of “Volume 0” on the Shrine to Randall at the moment and pray to it every Sunday.
    Although, if there are signed copies, he’d probably only sign the US English ones, and then I’d have to buy two copies of the book: One that’s signed, and one with correct spelling.

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  5. @Sten

    From Wikipedia:
    German is spoken natively by approximately *100 million people*, making it one of the world’s major languages. It is also the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. With the inclusion of the second-language speakers, the number of German speakers is about *200 million*.

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  6. Well, I might as well pre-order the damn thing, it’ll be a happy surprise once it gets here because by then I will have forgotten all about ever pre-ordering it :3

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  11. Why a German version? Because Germans are one of those nationalities that simply dislike to speak another language, read in another language or even have their movies in another language. Sure, most people can read English, but most Germans prefer not to, more strongly than other large non-English speaking nationalities.

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  12. Hi guys.

    Helene, are you German? If not, let me clarify some things – not just for you, but for all the readers -, and if yes, you have too negative a perception of your (and my) fellow citizens 😉

    I think you’re mistaken about the willingness of Germans to read in a foreign language. Many Germans, especially younger and scientifically literate ones, i.e. the typical xkcd-reader, enjoy speaking and reading English.
    I’m sure most of us wouldn’t mind if there was no German edition of the book, but it’s always good to put a foot in the door of the European market by offering a translated version. German is not spoken by just a “handful of people” in Central Europe, but by, as someone pointed out, more than 100 mio native speakers, making it the most widely spoken language in Europe. Also, xkcd is hugely popular in Germany (namely *because* most of us don’t mind reading webcomics in English), so there’s quite a number of potential buyers. If the German version of the book is a success, translations into other more or less widely spoken languages might follow.
    Last but not least, it’s quite easy to find English-to-German translators, which makes it more practical to translate the book to German instead of, let’s say, Swedish.

    Thanks for listening.

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  14. I’m confused, why is everyone so upset about there being a German version of this book? Even if it wasn’t a widely spoken language why would it matter? Just don’t buy that version right?

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  15. Just preordered it from amazon!
    Very happy you’ve published a book!
    Thank you!!
    Ed

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  17. We could always insist that it be translated into every European language. The debate over which counted as languages and which were “merely” as dialects would probably take longer than the translation process itself.

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  18. Helene, just for the sake of argument (because argument is sooo sweet), more and more people in Germany enjoy their entertainment in original English over here. An ever increasing number of Germans are very proficient in English and prefer to watch the original to watching crappy translations. Several Theaters are even showing original versions of movies in my hometown, and not only in English. So, yes, almost everything and anything is still being translated, but come to think of it… isn’t that better than what happens to foreign media in the US? French, Swedish, Korean and Japanese movies get remade for the US all the time. To name some of those: The Next Three Days, The Tourist, 12 Monkeys were based on french films, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a Swedish film, Oldboy was Korean, and For a Fistful of Dollars / The last Man standing, The Ring and Godzilla were all Japanese. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English-language_films_with_previous_foreign-language_film_versions)

    I speak two foreign languages fluently, and get around in two others, and am even learning the basics of two more right now. Most of my German friends speak at least English fluently and some of them even up to three foreign languages.

    All that to say: generalizations will not get you far.
    Still I wonder… Why the hell is there going to be a German edition? 😉

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  19. Will there be a sample text for the different versions? I would really like to compare the quality of the translation to the original text. In case of a disastrous translation or lost humor by translated text I would absolutely prefer to read the original version.
    At the moment that’s the only thing that prevents me from buying this sweet pile of lovely arranged letters. 🙂

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  20. If I had to guess which language group found dealing with English most distasteful, I would have put a lot of money on French. In Quebec, it’s literally illegal for a store to display a sign with lettering in English larger than in French. It is the only place on the planet where English is not used by air traffic control if the pilot and controller want to speak French together. French-speakers are the only language group known to speak their own language together in a room full of non-French-speakers even when they know the other language in the room. In France, there’s a government agency that approves new words allowed to seep into their language.

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  22. Speaking as an Englishman recently returned from 4 years living and working in Deutschland why German? After 4 years my German language skills never got much above terrible, I had an English speaking workplace and my wife speaks fluent German. When I tried asking a question in my horrible Deutsch I would get an answer 9 times out of 10 in English. When I went to Germany for my job interview I listened to the radio, most pop songs were in English with German adverts inbetween. As someone else pointed out the German speaking target audience for xkcd will probably be fluent in technical and scientific English.
    Keep up the good work.

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  24. @Tony Bell

    Well, the German version adds some extra fun due to translation errors 🙂

    And well, Randall often uses advanced language which is often hard to understand If you are not a native speaker. You should know from the other side, even with some years of practicing you won’t be able to get any joke in German language.

    *writing is the whoole opposite

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  25. Why German? Well, most media (Books, Movies, TV Shows) is translated to German and broadly available only in German. If you want to get your favourite stuff in the original language, you have to know where to look. We Germans are just used to consuming translated media, so that’s probably the reason why “What if?” has been translated too.
    Of course it doesn’t make too much sense, since the target audience of this book is a younger, more technical, generation, who speak English quite well.
    Amazon’s selling rank is #189 for the English edition and only #18,466 for the German one. So good luck with making a profit from it 😉

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  26. well guys… you might forgot an important edition not avaliable here…
    the CHINESE edition
    there are many people reading What-If, typically the young people like me. since the Chinese have a large diffusion on their levels of mastering English, someone like me would not mind reading in English but others strongly rely on the Chinese translated edition of What-If articles
    if this can be published in German so it can be in Chinese
    also, we have the largest market in the world (the population of 1.3 billion means…yeah, more native speakers than German)

    looking forward to it

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  28. I live in Germany and speak fluent German and also don’t understand why there will be a German version. Why not Spanish? Spanish is my first language and I’ve seen tons of translated versions of xkcd on the internet, so I can guarantee that there’s a market for it, and Spanish is much more widely spoken than German; as in, Spanish is the second most widely spoken language in the world, after Chinese and before English. Even French seems like a more logical choice.

    So I propose the following What if?: What if Mr. Munroe explained the reasoning behind a German version over any other language? I’m sure the explanation will be very interesting.

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  30. People are making this more complicated than it needs to be. It’s a book about science and German is the official language of science. OK, maybe that’s not quite as true since that unpleasant situation in August ’14, but it should be bouncing back any time, now.

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  31. Why German and not Spanish, French, Chinese etc? Because there are enough Germans (and Austrians and Swiss) who can afford buying it. It is the richest country in Europe, not influenced by the Euro crisis at all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita

    I guess it will be translated into other languages, if there is a chance of being profitable.

    But I wonder a lot about this discussion. I never complained that a certain book should NOT be translated into a certain language. Very strange…

    PS: I hate captchas!!

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  32. Another German humor book. Will those people ever take anything seriously?

    I’ll have to read it, even though I don’t understand German.

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  33. Why not French? There are more people (like me) whose second language is French than any other language but English, way more than German. Also more Germans know English and don’t need it translated.

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  34. My guess would be that it’s been translated into German because Randall knows someone who offered to translate it into German. For a while, the comic itself has had a German verison. Mayhaps Randall worked with them to translate it? Or, maybe it’s the publisher’s marketing department and their own statistics on how books like Randall’s sell internationally, or maybe it’s because of Randall’s private traffic data for the website? Why does it matter?

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  35. It matters, Matt, because we want to know (perhaps you are in the wrong thread?). We are, after all, the target audience for a book of absurdly precise mathematical answers to ridiculous hypothetical questions. . .’why a German edition?’ is the kind of question that will spark romance, eternal enmity, and religious factionalism between readers of this column (though hopefully not all three between the same readers of this column. . .)

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  36. @Pseudomonas, please don’t insult everyone’s intelligence. The people who order this book are mostly starving doctoral students and not much better off teachers; the euro crisis has nothing to do with it. I know several people who have preordered the book and they are all Spanish and affected by the crisis. But having your healthcare taken away by a thieving government doesn’t mean you won’t buy a book you’re interested in.

    @Hans Castorp, really? You use that name and don’t speak German? Methinks you have a good reason to learn 😀

    @Sophie, I completely agree! This is a question of scientific curiosity.

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  37. @Pseudomonas: the link you provided shows that the Netherlands are richer than Germany, so following your logic, it would be more profitable to publish in Dutch instead of German. Norwegian would even be a lot better choice, since they are Europe’s richest country (by far).
    What you don’t take into account, is that the original English version is preferred over a translation into their own language in both Norway and the Netherlands. This probably has to do with the strange tendency of the Germans to translate almost everything into their own language (movies, brands, music, etc.). Only the French are more stubborn…

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  38. I’m a doctoral candidate in Germany (@cheyenne – I’m not starving, thanks to the fact that my position is a salaried one). I’m just learning German so I’ll be buying the book in English, but I’m pretty sure my (German) co-workers will do the same, assuming they don’t just borrow mine. So I also wonder about the German language edition, because I think a Venn diagram of Germans who aren’t comfortable using English and people who are interested in this website to show minimal overlap.

    Of course it doesn’t matter to me if a German edition is published, but curiosity about unimportant things is clearly the hallmark of What If readers so this discussion is unsurprising.

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  39. I would say that all of you are possibly arguing pointlessly on this topic. You all clearly understand English otherwise you wouldn’t understand the initial message or the comments underneath, so the existence of a German edition (or any other edition) is completely irrelevant. The only people who should have an issue with this would be people who don’t understand German or English, and I should imagine it would be unlikely we would hear from them in these comment threads.

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  40. Amazon UK has provided a wonderful statistic – the What If book is #1 in… Children’s Cartoons. So all those potential purchasers who are any of the set of {Ph.D students, engineers who can speak multiple languages, other “nerdy” types} can rest comfortably knowing that there are many children out there who like What If for the drawings. As proof, my 4-year-old just loves it even though he can’t read the big words yet.

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  41. What if….you had to translate your book in all official dialects and languages known?

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  42. I think the German thing might have to do with the author possibly knowing german himself. I know most North Americans (I am Canadian, but live on the US-Canada border so I have little issue dealing with Americans compared to the already nearly non-existent for all non-Quebec Canadians) who I know that also know German to a reasonable capacity are almost always from an engineering background. So I would not be surprised if this is the case here. Also, German is strange as it has a structure that allows more true translation from English to German. Which is a rarity.

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  43. While you’re all getting hot under the collar about there being an edition for the world’s hundred-odd-million (native) German speakers, does nobody think it’s weird that there’s a Commonwealth edition? American English is perfectly well understood over here, if sneered at a little, and Randall usually puts things in SI units (or giraffes), which are more commonly used than imperial CupOfTeasworths or avoirdupois Short-Long Gallons. Is there a dedication to the Queen? Is it bound with Devon lace and Highland tartan? Can it be used as a wicket in a friendly backyard cricket match?

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  44. It’s being translated into German so that many Hungarians can read it, because most certainly it won’t be translated into Hungarian because only a few people outside of Hungary can speak it. Duh.

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  45. Preordered!
    You may want to know that WhatIF is the no.1 topseller in “humor for kids” in germany 😉

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  46. I’d assume there’s a UK version because the translation is so trivial. I’d also assume Sten intended to call one-hundred-million people a “Handful” as that leaves German in 11th place.
    I’m rooting for the Simple English version; mostly because of #547. However the high numbers of foreigners and children reading it is a better argument.

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  48. So what’s wrong with a Swedish version? It’s a Norse language, so it’s closer to English than German is and if you’re Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, Dutch, Finnish, a speaker of Scots, Doric, Norn, or Faroese, you can probably read it.

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  49. Dear iatttmp,

    “In Quebec, it’s literally illegal for a store to display a sign with lettering in English larger than in French.”

    There was a time in Québec when businesses would put up signs in english only and would not care to write in french despite the fact that the majority of the population spoke french. The population got fed up and legislated. You can now write signs in any language that you wish as long as you include french.

    “It is the only place on the planet where English is not used by air traffic control if the pilot and controller want to speak French together.”

    Two native french speakers talking to each other in their native language in order to better understand each other (in, for instance, an emergency situation). What a crazy idea, isn’t it?

    “French-speakers are the only language group known to speak their own language together in a room full of non-French-speakers even when they know the other language in the room.”

    Québec is also a place where, when 10 francophones and 1 anglophone hold a meeting, the meeting is held in english because of this one anglo. But, you know, you don’t have to thank us.

    “In France, there’s a government agency that approves new words allowed to seep into their language.”

    I hear a lot of bitching about L’Académie Française. Strangely, I rarely hear comments about the 22 Royal Spanish Academies.

    Mr iatttmp, given your contemptuous comments on Québec, I was not surprised to see on your LindIn profile that you were, who would have thought, canadian.

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  50. The whole German bit could probably be explained by the bar chart at the top of this page, only changing the title to “Number of acquaintances who offered assistance with translation who are native speakers of:” and changing the x-axis values to “French”, “Swedish”, “German”, and “Sindarin”.

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