Hum, a Sci-Fi Novel Review
Book cover image from Amazon
Envision a world overly reliant on tech and AI with abundant advertisements: Do you approve this purchase? That might as well be our world. You can’t check your email, watch a movie, or even find a dinner recipe without being urged to buy something; we’re only about three clicks removed from purchasing anything.
Released in September 2024, Hum by Helen Philips follows May, a wife and mother whose not-so-distant world has been decimated by deforestation and pollution.
And the cause of this trouble? The society-controlling Hums, an advanced group of robots that mimic human behavior: Trained to be likable with a highly-complex algorithm, the Hums have made human labor obsolete in most customer-facing professions, like retail and even medical roles.
Hum: What Carries True Value?
May is a mother navigating a near-futuristic society after being laid off from her comfy office job. Desperate for cash to help support her family and her excessive shopping habit, she undergoes a procedure to subtly change her facial features, thus rendering her unrecognizable by the cameras tracking everyone’s every move.
The procedure enables May to take her family on a three-day getaway to the Botanical Garden, a resort with manufactured gardens providing a glimpse of greenery in an otherwise dull city. At the gardens, she must confront all of these questions while attempting to get in-sync with her husband Jem.
These Botanical Gardens provide the backdrop for most of the remaining novel. The hints of “life atop of machinery” eerily imitates the rest of the environment Helen Philips creates: human life mingling with a mechanized world.
Hum: Unsettlingly Real
Told in quick-paced yet immersive detail, the world-building was my favorite part, as the exaggerated bits of our present world created an uncanny feeling of familiarity. Despite the novel being fully sci-fi, Helen Philips has managed to create a world not too far from current Western society.
Hum was unsettling enough to force the reader to undergo the same self-examination that May struggles with: Am I easily giving into consumerism? Should my children have unbridled access to the newest tech? What did I do wrong?
Perfect for fans of Ex-Machina, Annie Bot, or the more casual speculative readers alike, Hum is a must-read for navigating our current technological climate. Hum sometimes depicts characters who are hard to sympathize with, but reminds us all: They’re just human.
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Zina Mona
Zina Mona is a writer and student from Texas. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in the Trinity Review and 34 Orchard. She studies literature and economics, but in her free time, she loves watching Audrey Hepburn movies.
Visit her website to read more!
