Marcus Chown - What a wonderful world: one mans attempt to explain the big stuff

This book came about because I have an exceptional editor Neil Belton. In fact, I am his stalker. I have pursued him all the way from Jonathan Cape to Faber. Neil has many talents. But one of those talents is that he knows what his authors are good at and what they should be writing better than they do.

My skill is that I can take complex physics and explain it to someone on a number 25 bus (or perhaps I should say someone unfortunate enough to be sitting next to me on a number 25 bus). But, in addition to physics, I am also interested in other things. I read a lot of fiction. I am interested in history. I like running. In fact, in 2012, I did the London Marathon (something I rarely fail to mention in the first three minutes of meeting someone).

Neils big idea was that I combine these two things: that I use my skill at explaining complex physics in laypersons terms to explain everything in laypersons terms.

I was daunted. How could I possibly write about everything? Where would I even start? I began thinking about how to organise such a wide range of material logically. But I tore up outline after outline. What changed everything, however, was writing Solar System for iPad. I had only 9 weeks to write 120 stories about planets, moons, asteroids and comets, so I had no option but simply to dive in and learn to swim on the job. It must have worked because the App won several awards. So that is what I did. I overcame my apprehension and just dived in.

It was a struggle. Usually, when I need to know something about physics, I identify a physicist it could be a Nobel Prizewinner and simply phone them. There is a 95 per cent chance they will be able to answer my stupid questions immediately. And, if they cannot, they will at least make an attempt at answering them. But, with subjects I knew nothing about, such as money, sex and the human brain, it was difficult even to identify someone who might be able to answer my incredibly basic questions. And, when I did and phoned them, they were often not able to explain things at the toddler level I needed. Worse, it was sometimes as if we were speaking different languages. Often, I had to go to two, three or four people before I could find someone who could answer all my questions. And, on occasion, I could not find anyone who was able to do that. Instead, I was forced to piece together an explanation from things people I had gone to had said and from things I had read.

But Neil was right. This was the book I should have been writing. It was one that stretched me beyond my comfort zone and that, ultimately, proved to be an exhilarating and a joyful experience. I loved learning about all kinds of things I know nothing about. And I began to appreciate what a wonderful world we live in one far more incredible than anything we could possibly have invented. Along the way, I learnt many surprising things, such as

• To understand a single collaterised debt obligation squared one of the toxic investments that sunk the world economy in 2008 would require reading 1 billion pages of documentation
• Slime moulds have 13 sexes (and you think you have problems finding and keeping a partner)
• You could fit the whole human race in the volume of a sugar cube
• You are / mushroom that is, you share / of your DNA with fungi
• You age more slowly on the ground floor of a building than on the top floor
• The crucial advantage that humans had over Neanderthals was sewing
• IBM once predicted that the global market for computers was five
• Today your body will build about 300 billion cells more than there are stars in our Galaxy (no wonder I get knackered doing nothing)
• Believe it or not, the Universe may be a giant hologram. You may be a hologram

If everything in our information-overloaded society has passed you by in a high-speed blur, my book just might bring you quickly and painlessly up to speed on how the world of the twenty-first century works. It is, after all, one mans attempt to understand everything. No, I cannot really claim that. Its one mans attempt to understand everything volume one.

Marcus Chown, London, March 2013