Synopsis:

In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance.

Seeking some reprieve from her recent hardships and from her family’s addiction to their devices, she splurges on passes that allow them three nights’ respite inside the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals flourish. But her insistence that her son, daughter, and husband leave their devices at home proves far more fraught than she anticipated, and the lush beauty of the Botanical Garden is not the balm she hoped it would be. When her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a hum of uncertain motives as she works to restore the life of her family.

Written in taut, urgent prose, Hum is a work of speculative fiction that unflinchingly explores marriage, motherhood, and selfhood in a world compromised by global warming and dizzying technological advancement, a world of both dystopian and utopian possibilities. As New York Times bestselling author Jeff VanderMeer says, “Helen Phillips, in typical bravura fashion, has found a way to make visible uncomfortable truths about our present by interrogating the near-future.”

Genre: Speculative Fiction
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Pub Date: 07 November 2024

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Review:

Climate change has ravaged the world. Sometimes the outside air is so bad you cannot leave your house. Greenery is a thing reserved for the richest people, packaged and sold as a luxury holiday. Capitalism is everything here. You can’t escape adverts and marketing, your personal data is used to sell you things, phones are permanently attached to kids’ wrists, and AI robots have taken all the jobs. This is the world in which May is trying to raise her family.

Some climate fiction is scary because it is so extreme. Some climate fiction is scary because it feels so incredibly real in the here and now. This book falls into the latter category. The world presented to us in Hum feels just a step away from where we are in 2026. It was not at all difficult to imagine May’s reality, and that, I think, makes for a truly unsettling read.

May has lost her job to an AI, and as a result, her family struggles to make ends meet. She opts to undergo facial surgery for cash, an experiment to see whether subtle changes can bypass facial recognition. This one, seemingly small decision is the catalyst for a string of events that spirals more and more out of her control.

I enjoyed this book for its exploration of themes surrounding AI, technology use, consumer culture and family. Interestingly, I did not get very attached to the characters, but I think that might be thanks to the way it is written, and I do think it is purposeful. The world here is one of constant surveillance and marketing. It’s inescapable, and it almost dissolves people of their individuality. We are definitely observers in this story, much like the faceless bureaucracy.

Overall, a perceptive and unsettling read that feels far too close to home.

Congratulations to Helen Phillips for having Hum shortlisted for The Climate Fiction Prize!