{"title":"Heather Mccalden","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"observable-universe-book-heather-mccalden-9781804270141","title":"The Observable Universe","description":"Are we ever truly lost in the internet age? The Observable Universe is a moving, genre-defying memoir of a woman reckoning with the loss of her parents, the virus that took them, and what it means to search for meaning in a hyperconnected world. When she was a child, Heather McCalden lost her parents to AIDS. She was seven when her father died and ten when she lost her mother. Growing up in Los Angeles in the 1990s, her personal devastation was mirrored by a city that was ground zero for the virus and its destruction. Years later, after becoming a writer and an artist, she begins to research the mysterious parallels between the histories of AIDS and the internet. She questions what it means to ‘go viral’ in an era of explosive biological and virtual contagion and simultaneously finds her own past seeping into her investigation. While connecting her disparate strands of research – images, fragments of scientific thought, musings on Raymond Chandler and late-night Netflix binges – she makes an unexpected discovery about what happened to her family and who her parents might have been. Entwining an intensely personal search with a history of viral culture and an ode to Los Angeles, The Observable Universe is a prismatic account of loss calibrated precisely to our existence in a post-pandemic, post-internet life.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49746624512273,"sku":"NGR9781804270141","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49971980009745,"sku":"GOR013718162","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50272808698129,"sku":"GOR013907913","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50949331190033,"sku":"GOR014139632","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52660759953681,"sku":"NLS9781804270141","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1804270148.jpg?v=1751434279"},{"product_id":"observable-universe-book-heather-mccalden-9780593596470","title":"The Observable Universe","description":"\u003cb\u003eIs anyone ever truly lost in the internet age? A moving, original memoir of a young woman reckoning with her parents' absence, the virus that took them, and what it means to search for meaning in a hyperconnected world. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBrilliantly innovative . . . syncing a narrative of profoundly personal emotion with the invention and evolution of today's cyberspace.--William Gibson, author of\u0026gt;\u003ci\u003eNeuromancer\u003c\/i\u003e and\u0026gt;\u003ci\u003eThe Peripheral\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the early 1990s, Heather McCalden lost both her parents to AIDS. She was seven when her father died, ten when she lost her mother. Raised by her grandmother, Nivia, she grew up in Los Angeles, also known as ground zero for the virus and its destruction. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eYears later, she begins researching online the history of HIV as a way to deal with her loss, which leads her to the unexpected realization that the AIDS crisis and the internet developed on parallel timelines. By accumulating whatever fragments she could about both phenomena--images, anecdotes, and scientific entries--alongside her own personal history, McCalden forms a synaptic journey of what happened to her family, one that leads to an equally unexpected discovery about who her parents might have been. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eEntwining this personal search with a wider cultural narrative of what the virus and virality mean in our times--interrogating what it means to go viral in an era of explosive biochemical and virtual contagion--\u003ci\u003eThe Observable Universe\u003c\/i\u003e is at once a history of our viral culture and a prismatic account of grief in the internet age.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50129361142033,"sku":"CIN0593596471VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50354843353361,"sku":"CIN0593596471G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53181110812945,"sku":"NIN9780593596470","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0593596471.jpg?v=1750943721"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-heather-mccalden.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}