Ask Randall Munroe and Lev Grossman discussion

Welcome to the group! Randall and Lev will be answering questions from 2-3 PM EST on Thursday, September 25th in this thread only. In the meantime if you have a question for them, or just want to introduce yourself, feel free to do so in this thread.

I couldn't really come up with an actual question, but I do want to say I love all the extra details you put into What If?, Randall. The equations and scribbles on the endpapers, the map inside the dust-jacket. These are the things that made the already exciting event of the book's arrival even better than anticipated. (maybe next book the delivery by velociraptor will work out!)

Loved the trilogy Mr Grossman, very well done. One question: which was the easiest and which was the hardest character to write? I found them all quite fascinating and well-rounded but also quite distinct.

Thanks!

Oh, wow. I'm a huge fan of both of your works, but in very different ways, as I'm sure is obvious. :) In particular, Mr. Grossman, I really love the focus of your Magicians trilogy on mental-health stuff; it's deeply moving to not have these issues be ignored.

I think the best part about the series is how, although the fantasy setup is really interesting, the "quests" are much more about what the characters value than about what the worlds need - in fact, the worlds barely need anything from them, in a way.

Okay, that wasn't a question. Uh. Please take that as a compliment; I feel like the books said enough on their own, and don't need supplementary interrogation!

Mr. Munroe, you've also had a bunch of tragedy in your life... Would you say that it influences your work? Do you feel that it's important to you to talk about such things, or do you prefer privacy?

How exciting! The Magicians series and What If are among my favourite, and most-recommended, books.

Mr. Munroe: I've been recommending What If especially strongly to parents, but I think it's probably more enjoyable for teens and up. Have you considered or would you consider a STEM-is-fun-and-funny book for a younger crowd?

Mr. Grossman: For you I have almost the opposite question. I loved the college aspect of The Magicians, and the way the sequels followed the characters finding themselves in their twenties, Quentin especially. Are you planning to return to the new-adult area, or do you think future characters are more likely to age alongside you?

This is a question for Mr Grossman, The Magicians is my favourite book series and every time I wonder why so many names start with J? It's not a particularly important question, I'm just curious. Thanks!

Anna wrote: "This is a question for Mr Grossman, The Magicians is my favourite book series and every time I wonder why so many names start with J? It's not a particularly important question, I'm just curious. T..."

I noticed this too!

I read somewhere that The Magicians got picked up by Syfy. How closely are you going to work with the show creators?

Tasos wrote: "Loved the trilogy Mr Grossman, very well done. One question: which was the easiest and which was the hardest character to write? I found them all quite fascinating and well-rounded but also quite d..."

Is this thing on? I think it's on.

Easiest: Janet. Janet just says the mean things I think all the time but don't have the stones to actually say. Writing her is just a matter of removing the filters.

Hardest: honestly? Quentin. Quentin is a lot like me when I was in my 20s. I was depressed. I wasn't an awesome person. It can be hard to revisit that period in my personal development or lack-thereof.

I have a lot of questions for Randall but I’m going to try to keep them to a steady trickle.

What’s your position on the Marvel What if comics? I read “what if the Avengers had become pawns of Korvac?” approx. a million times. But then again I’m really old. Did you read them? Did you have a favorite?

Obvs I'm sticking to the really important stuff here.

Randall, did you get fired from NASA for, say, doodling on the job, or did you leave willingly?

Irene wrote: "Oh, wow. I'm a huge fan of both of your works, but in very different ways, as I'm sure is obvious. :) In particular, Mr. Grossman, I really love the focus of your Magicians trilogy on mental-heal..."

Good Q's. Even if that wasn't technically a Q. I'll just add that a) if the books are about any one single thing, to me, that thing would probably be depression: what it feels like, what it means, how and why you fight it. And b) that's a really good point. I love Harry Potter and Narnia more than I can say, but I also wanted to explore the question of what it feels like to have the fate of the world NOT rest on your shoulders. What if you're not the chosen one? How does it feel to be unchosen? To have the world not really care who you are and what you do?

Here's another question for Randall, a bit less personal, but more in line with the What If? format: I read that Los Angelos has completely synchronized every traffic light. Would it be possible to continue the process from there, until every traffic light in the country was synchronized? Or is this just an idle thought?

Sanasai wrote: "I couldn't really come up with an actual question, but I do want to say I love all the extra details you put into What If?, Randall. The equations and scribbles on the endpapers, the map inside th..."

Thank you! The endpapers are one of my favorite things in the book.

There's a table of numbers near the fold, which was actually a table directly from my notes—something to do with specific heats. It just so happens that each line follows a 3-3-4 digit pattern; this didn't stand out to me at the time.

But after it was published, someone came up to me and said "Hey, what's up with those Colorado-area phone numbers in the front of the book? I called them all and they seemed pretty random."

Oops.

Molly wrote: "How exciting! The Magicians series and What If are among my favourite, and most-recommended, books.

Mr. Munroe: I've been recommending What If especially strongly to parents, but I think it's prob..."

I actually have something in the works -- pretty far along in the works -- that deals with characters who are slightly younger than the characters in The Magicians. My own teenage years were so critical, and so disastrous, I think I still have some questions about them that I'm working out in fiction. Also I have a 10-yr-old daughter who's just about to embark on that period in her life, so I've been thinking about that a lot too.

But I think that might be it for me for young characters, at least for now. I have another outline I'm tinkering with, and every time I come back to it I tack on another five years to the characters' ages. I want to try writing something that's more about my life now.

Anna wrote: "This is a question for Mr Grossman, The Magicians is my favourite book series and every time I wonder why so many names start with J? It's not a particularly important question, I'm just curious. T..."

It's a good question. Wish I had a good answer. I can remember one of the early conversations I had with a Hollywood studio, when they sent back notes on a draft of a Magicians script, and the main one was: WHY DOES EVERYBODY'S NAME START WITH J? WE CAN'T TELL THEM APART.

I think in that one Josh's name got changed to some non-J name. Then they killed the entire project. Lesson learned.

Lev wrote: "I have a lot of questions for Randall but I’m going to try to keep them to a steady trickle.

What’s your position on the Marvel What if comics? I read “what if the Avengers had become pawns of Ko..."

I actually never read Marvel or DC comics growing up! My exposure to comics was entirely through newspaper comic book collections—things like Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side. The only longer-form comics I read were Tintin and Asterix.

People submit a lot of What If questions about superhero battles/powers, and I don't tend to answer them. Partly because it often turns from an exercise in science to into an exercise in guessing how the author would have resolved a question, but mostly because almost everyone I meet seems to know more about superhero comics than me, so I'd be way out of my league!

Alan wrote: "Randall, did you get fired from NASA for, say, doodling on the job, or did you leave willingly?"

It was sort of a mutual parting. I was working on short-term contracts, and they decided not to renew one. They offered to find me a new contract, but I decided not to pursue it.

I never actually drew comics on the job, but I did make an ethernet cable harness for one of the robots, hitched it up to my desk chair, and had it tow me around the building at full speed a charioteer. It's possible that contributed to their decision.

Lev,I read your piece in Time on "Never Offline" and was wondering if you or Matt Vella wrote the paragraph about smart devices "mak[ing] reality feel just that little bit less real" and "one is apt to pay attention to the thoughts and opinions of distant anonymous strangers over those of loved ones who are in the same room". Very insightful! So, did one of you write the whole article while the other did the research? I'm not sure I understand crediting two authors for one article.

Lev G: Apart from What If?, what were some favorite comics growing up? If you still read comics, what are you excited about now?

Do you get a lot of questions about magic/fantasy? In a way the Magicians books are basically just a big cluster of hypothetical answers to what-if questions about fantasy novels:

-- What if Harry Potter were American?
-- What if Hogwarts were a college not a high school?
-- What if there were no Dumbledore to give Harry advice/guidance counseling?
-- What if the Harry Potter books were written by Casual-Vacancy JK Rowling instead of Harry-Potter JK Rowling?
-- What would really happen if, per The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, you dropped a bunch of children into the middle of a civil war in a magical country about which they knew nothing?

Etc. Though my answers are totally unrigorous and based on zero research. And with no drawings. I can't draw.

Ami: is this author chat really only 1 hour? Because it's more than half over, and I'm only seeing 16 messages, none of which answered any of my questions. Or will the string of replies continue past 3pm?

Sarah wrote: "I read somewhere that The Magicians got picked up by Syfy. How closely are you going to work with the show creators?"

You read right. I'm in close touch with the creators (Sera Gamble, John McNamara, Michael London; they recently added a director, Mike Cahill), and I've seen a lot of drafts of scripts. I comment on them, but I have no real power -- my title is something like 'creative consultant.' Though if the show turns out really well -- which I'm hopeful it will -- I'm going to take as much credit as possible.

Alan wrote: "Here's another question for Randall, a bit less personal, but more in line with the What If? format: I read that Los Angelos has completely synchronized every traffic light. Would it be possible t..."

I'm not a traffic engineer, but I imagine there's some minimum separation between lights at which the uncertainty in the average car's travel time is much larger than the light cycle time, and then you'd lose the benefit of the synchronization. Without doing any calculation, I'd guess that distance is on the order of a few miles.

But the idea of synchronized traffic lights makes me imagine that all the lights were actually synchronized—every light had to be the same color. I wonder how hard it would be to get around in that city. I guess you'd probably just leave them all at red and treat them like stop signs.

Ah! It pays to hit the refresh button once in a while. (^_^)

Juergen wrote: "Lev G: Apart from What If?, what were some favorite comics growing up? If you still read comics, what are you excited about now?"

For some reason the kids on my block were all Marvel kids. That was the thing, we didn't really read DC. So I read a lot of Dr. Strange (obvs), and Silver Surfer, and the X-Men, New Mutants, etc. Though the X-Men were heavy into the Brood Saga at that point, which was pretty dark and depressing.

Later on I read Miracleman and Watchmen, and those changed everything for me. You can see Alan Moore's influence in pretty much everything I do.

Alan wrote: "Lev,I read your piece in Time on "Never Offline" and was wondering if you or Matt Vella wrote the paragraph about smart devices "mak[ing] reality feel just that little bit less real" and "one is ap..."

That particular bit was mine. We were under a lot of time pressure to produce that story, just given the timing of Apple's announcement (we didn't get an early look) and Time's print deadlines, so it made sense to double-team it. Matt was out in California and did most of the reporting and technical research. I did more of the think-piece type stuff.

Lev, I cannot overstate how much I adore your trilogy. Quentin has become my sort-of hero in my ongoing struggles with depression and I find so much to relate with in all the characters.

As a queer man I also really appreciate how you wrote Eliot's sexual orientation as mostly a non-issue and have included other minor characters like Wharton, etc.

I was just wondering where the inspiration for Eliot came from and if his character was always gay or if that was something that evolved as you were writing The Magicians?

These are the things that made the already exciting event of the book's arrival even better than anticipated. (maybe next book the delivery by velociraptor will work out!)

The book is in front of you, and you're paying attention to it (looking for raptors near it), which means you're not watching your left and right.

Mr. Munroe: have you ever been really stumped by a question? And, what is the longest amount of time it has taken you to come up with the answer to a question?

I love "What If".

C-3PO: Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1.
Han Solo: Never tell me the odds.

Apologies if this is covered in the book, or if you've been asked a jillion times, but back-of-the-envelope, do you think C-3P0's anywhere near correct on this one?

Also: how much does it piss you off when journalists cap the first letter of Xkcd?

KEF wrote: "Mr. Munroe: have you ever been really stumped by a question? And, what is the longest amount of time it has taken you to come up with the answer to a question?

I love "What If"."

The one about rowing a boat on liquid helium had me stumped for months, because liquid helium is weird and quantum. When it gets cold enough, you get strange theoretical effects like objects falling through it like without touching it because they're not at the right energy level to interact with it.

Lev wrote: "C-3PO: Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1.
Han Solo: Never tell me the odds.

Apologies if this is covered in the book, or if you've been..."

The asteroids in our asteroid belt are so far apart that if you were standing on one, you wouldn't be able to see another. We've sent something like 7 or 8 probes through it and nothing happened to them. (Although I think I heard we were definitely nervous about the first one ...)

Lukas wrote: "Lev, I cannot overstate how much I adore your trilogy. Quentin has become my sort-of hero in my ongoing struggles with depression and I find so much to relate with in all the characters.

As a que..."

Thanks Lukas. Oddly enough I can tell you pretty exactly what the inspiration was for Eliot. He's about 1/3 Sebastian Flyte from BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, 1/3 late-teenage John Lennon, and 1/3 my roommate in college (who was/is gay).

Eliot was always gay. But it was really important to me that his gay-ness not be treated as a BIG DEAL -- I didn't want it become an issue-oriented after-school special, and I didn't want it to be his entire identity. He's just gay. It's a thing.

If I have a regret it's that Eliot didn't get a proper love story. I may have to write another sequel after all.

Lev wrote: Also: how much does it piss you off when journalists cap the first letter of Xkcd?

I've tried hard recently to move to a place in my life where I don't worry too much about other peoples' spelling and grammar. I started thinking more about why I felt so strongly about correcting grammar and stuff, and I think a lot of it was my gratification at the reassurance that I know how things work and they don't, which I don't really want to cultivate. I've written a few comics hinting at this. I've heard it said that in the battle between the descriptivists and the prescriptivists, the score is descriptivists 500,000,000, prescriptivists 0.

And "Xkcd" looks kind of silly. I think we're safe from it catching on.

Lev wrote: ... Though my answers are totally unrigorous and based on zero research. And with no drawings. I can't draw.

For so many years, I assumed that was a barrier to a comics career ...

Lev, I have a question: Do you feel surprised by your characters or feel like they're acting on their own, or do you not really think about writing that way? I was listening to some writers talk about this idea, and they had really varying takes on it.

I’ve always admired/imitated-on-my-blog your use of alt text. Do you have a favorite? Tips for the writing of Great Alt Text?

Sub-question: stick figure drawings vs. ASCII art: fight!

Randall wrote: "Lev, I have a question: Do you feel surprised by your characters or feel like they're acting on their own, or do you not really think about writing that way? I was listening to some writers talk ab..."

For many (=approximately 15) years I thought it was bullshit when writers talked about how their characters behaved independently and they just transcribed their whims and clever remarks and that's how they wrote novels! But this ended with one particular character, Julia, who was meant to be a one-off character who appeared in the first scene of The Magicians and never again. But she wouldn't go away: she kept turning up. Quentin would turn around, and there she would be, popping into my mental model of the scene, and saying a bunch of stuff that came from I-don't-know-where.

Then in the second book, when I gave her a chapter of her own so she could explain to me who she was and what she was up to, she was so adamant that the books were about her and not Quentin that she ended up taking over the novel.

So: usually characters do what I tell them. But not always. And when they contradict me, they're always right.

Whoops -- we're supposed to stop now. Thanks everybody! This was great.

Lev wrote: "I’ve always admired/imitated-on-my-blog your use of alt text. Do you have a favorite? Tips for the writing of Great Alt Text?

It's sort of a trap, because once you teach people to expect it, you have to include it or they get frustrated! On the other hand, it makes people feel a slight disappointment every time they read another comic that doesn't use it. So it's really all a plot.

I don't know how many people actually read the mouseover text (it's hard to get an unbiased sample) but I try to assume that a lot of people don't.

I've had a few What If alt-texts that I've really liked. Like the first one here...

Yeah, thank you—this was fun! Thanks for joining us!