{"product_id":"the-vacuum-we-return-to-paperback","title":"The Vacuum We Return To - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eTsung-Long Wu\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the Nevada desert there is a hole that light falls into and never leaves - a perfect hemisphere of absolute nothing, its edge turned as clean as if by a lathe the size of a mountain. The government offers no explanation. The sagebrush grows right up to its lip and stops.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHope Valentine has spent sixteen years learning to listen to fire the way other men learn to fight it. Then, on a burning night at the Wilmington refinery, he watches a fire run backward - smoke folding into flame, ash returning to wood - and he cannot un-know what he saw. A thousand miles away, neuroscientist Sophy has given six years to a machine built to hear the faintest whisper a thinking brain makes, and to one impossible subject: the eleventh.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat connects them is the thing in the desert, and the bargain it seems to offer - that the arrow of time is not a law but a choice, and that what runs forward might be made to run back. But every crossing has a cost. The question was never whether the past can be rewritten. It is which version of a life, a marriage, a self you would choose to return to.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTHE VACUUM WE RETURN TO is a hard science-fiction novel about entropy, love, and the geometry of an irreversible life.\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 228\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.52 x 9 x 6 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e May 30, 2026\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":68368509927645,"sku":"9798235056640","price":25.9,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0811\/9867\/8237\/files\/5AuswW0PJn9798235056640.webp?v=1793433042","url":"https:\/\/handfulofbooks.com\/products\/the-vacuum-we-return-to-paperback","provider":"Handful of Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}