This book is a collection of strips from xkcd, a free webcomic. I want to get that out of the way so you don't feel betrayed later when you realize you paid for a book of things that you could get for free on the Internet. I like books a lot, so I've put this one together from my webcomic (and added some annotations and other tidbits), but that's really no excuse for poor economic sense on your part. Still, if you've purchased this book, I suppose it's too late for regrets. Let's gloss over this incident and move on to the story of xkcd.

I remember thinking, sometime around age ten, that being a cartoonist must be wonderful. You get to draw things, people think you're clever, you can do your work whenever you want, and you can hang around at home all day in your underwear. But I had two problems: I couldn't draw and I didn't know how to write jokes. With that career choice obviously out of reach, I went for my second choice: awkward science nerd.