HUM by Helen Phillips — Review by Stella

Meg’s been made redundant from her Human Resources job. She trained the AI too well. She’s the main breadwinner for the family. Her husband Jem does gig work. He had been a professional photographer. Now he catches mice and other pests for the wealthy. Lu and Sy are kids in the world of climate anxiety, measuring the air quality and doing disaster drills. With no work on the horizon, Meg’s ex-boss tells her about a trial programme that pays well. A trial that changes your face, just slightly, with high tech tattooing. A procedure that makes her unreadable by the surveillance cameras. She doesn’t ask why the Hum are interested in this research — she’s desperate for the money. She’s also desperate to give herself and her family a special experience. An experience from the past when trees grew and the air was clean. A past reminiscent of her childhood walking through the forest (all burnt now). A family ticket to the Botanical Gardens is on the top of her list, even though it is wildly extravagant for this middle class family. This is a gated retreat — a curated space. (As I was reading Hum, I came across an article in The Guardian about manufactured wilderness spaces.) Set in the near future, this is a dystopian novel that is close to the bone. (It’s not so distant considering the speed of change, and Phillips references current articles and research at the close of the novel.) There is AI — the Hums are well developed. The climate crisis is at an elevated pitch. Many traditional human work roles have disappeared. This could have been a hard-edged doom-scrolling novel, but it is far from this. Hum is set in a world where relationships within families matter and the Hum are not hard cold machines. They are all-knowing — clue privacy issues here — but also highly empathetic to the humans. They understand you like no one else, they are observant, caring and they know how you tick. Frightening and reassuring. Meg and Jem’s children are hooked on their Bunnies — Alexas on steroids — and all the family members are enchanted by (addicted to) their Wooms: cocoon-like high-tech places of refuge and privacy, if you don’t count the pervasive advertising and the recording of your every desire/search/interaction. The internet plus plus. The trip to the Botanics is dreamy until the children get lost. They inadvertently leave the sanctuary via a utility door, and without their Bunnies (which Meg has ‘ripped off’ their wrists prior to the holiday) they are untrackable. Yet the lost children are not the climatic scene in this novel. Phillips is more interested in what comes next. Internet shaming, family services alerted, suspicion and blame, love and understanding. This is a novel about how technology can change us, and how we may affect it. The Hum will surprise you. It’s a novel about connection, about how to find connection as a parent, in your most intimate relationships, and with yourself in a world flooded with distraction and pervasive change.