Book Review | “Hum” by Helen Phillips
A Techno-Dystopian Society Losing Its Humanity to Technology
My initial reaction upon finishing the novel: “Hummm. I mean hmmmm.” This one’s a thinker. Upon completion, I felt underwhelmed and had a dull undercurrent of anxiety running through me but I sat with it.
And then it hit me. More on that later…
“Hum” by Helen Phillips is a techno-dystopian novel forecasting our future with technology and global warming. In an overheated world of smart robots called “hums,” who is in charge?
We follow the main character, May, her husband Jem, and their children Lu and Sy as they navigate this barren concrete jungle, where AI replaces humans and nature is inaccessible for the poor, requiring payment to experience.
The sole purpose of the world is to consume and for capitalistic ventures delivered via hums. The hums constantly play advertisements on their built-in screens, hocking products to humans in the vicinity and nothing is off the table.
The novel opens with May’s facial recognition surgery which she is paid to do, as recommended by her friend Nova to make money after losing her job to AI and to escape non-stop surveillance.
On a whim, with money in her account, she purchases a three-night stay at the Botanical Gardens, where humans can pay to stay in an old-world sanctuary. In the gardens, they are surrounded by animals, grass, trees, and waterfalls, harkening back to an earlier time before humans reshaped the environment.
The moment May and her family get comfortable, an incident unfolds with May’s two children disappearing from the Botanical Gardens. With the help of a hum, May discovers they’ve breached the walls of the sanctuary and have ended up outside in the city, a terrifying and helpless scene playing out.
Lu and Sy are recovered unharmed, with everyone left a little shaken, attempting to salvage their time at the gardens. After their stay has ended, they return home to find the footage of May losing her children and the kids’ wild ride in the city has been leaked to the public. May has gone viral!
The video is an inaccurately ordered sequence of spliced videos showing May as a hysterical and out-of-control parent, unable to care for her small children properly. The public immediately declares May a bad mom, sending her hate and vitriol, and subjecting her to an investigation to determine whether she could keep her kids.
Oddly enough, the original “helpful” hum is the one who leaked the video AND is now the main representative investigating her child services case. Conflict of interest much?
Phillips seamlessly inserts organic commentary on technology, global warming, parenting, the environment, animals, human survival, our own survival…She explores our current trajectory and what it could potentially look like if we don’t re-evaluate our society and enact real change.
The author thoughtfully delivers an underlying anxiety from start to finish, making the reader feel equally anxious and uncomfortable with the state of the world and the decisions made by the main characters.
Major Themes:
Dependence on technology
During the duration, I found myself questioning my participation in advancing technological dependence and the decimation of our planet and we are all guilty.
There are several scenes where the family is smart phoneless and smart watchless, moving through their day and realizing how incapable they are without their devices. As someone who grew up pre-device and the internet, I envisioned what that experience would be like and it scared me how similar it might feel, to being lost without technological assistance. And I grew up without it! The addiction is swift apparently.
I was also exhausted by the constant focus on their devices and technology, no one was present at any time, all addicted to screens. It’s like a constant state of trying to talk to a friend who is lost in their phone the whole time. Hello? Anyone home?
This world is numb, no one truly feels anything other than screen addiction.
2. The Concept of Human Extinction
Phillips figuratively holds up a mirror forcing us to ask ourselves “Are we next?” Could the human race be wiped from this planet? I hate to say it but I don’t think our extinction is too far from the realm of possibility.
And to dig even deeper, it’s related to our collective greed, making us so blind that we can’t even see we are contributing to and causing our demise. We are responsible for our downfall.
3. Environmental future state
Phillips depicts a dry, treeless, scolding hot world where nature preserves and access to the environment are commodities, not intended for all to enjoy, only those who can afford it. Humans need the environments and nature to not only thrive but to survive. Imagining a world without sounds depressing and morbid.
4. Over-surveillance
There is zero privacy in this not-so-distant future world where your face, DNA, and fingerprints, all tell you everything there is to know and there are increasingly fewer ways to hide it. Sounds familiar…
5. Nothing in life is free
Everything is transactional and EVERYTHING is for sale. I felt stressed by the constant ads from the hums, constantly being sold something based on my every movement being monitored. Me drawing a direct line to targeted ads we have today…
6. Mom shaming
I’m not a parent, but I felt violently protective of May, who like many mothers, bears the brunt of criticism, and can do no right even when their concern and protective intuition is triggered. Then they’re seen as hysterical and judged extremely harshly no matter what they do.
In the viral moment, Jem is also guilty of losing his children but has zero direct repercussions, May being the sole perpetrator on trial.
Any mom could get caught in a moment like that and they shouldn’t be worried about how they will be perceived.
**SPOILER ALERT**
I have a theory…
The beginning of the book caught my attention immediately with a face-changing surgery to the main character but then I spent the rest of the novel waiting for the original storyline to bloom but it never did. I finished the book and audibly said “Huh.”
Thirty minutes after finishing the novel, a chill ran down my spine as I processed my interpretation: May’s face surgery, the Botanical Gardens, the viral video, horsies go round, and the child safety investigation all seem unconnected and disjointed, most presenting as red herrings meant to distract the reader.
But…what if they are all in fact connected?
We are meant to experience May’s journey because isn’t this the journey we are already on? Feel as though we have agency over ourselves and our families but technology captures our every move and thought, knowing the predictive patterns of our brains, decisions, and actions.
With that understanding, the facial surgery is the catalyst for everything — May does it for money since she lost her job, thinking she is also gaining a level of independence from their AI-driven society but turns out she is helping advance technology’s hold over and command of humans.
We find out later that the administrators of the facial surgery did not intend to evade surveillance, rather, they were doing it to study how technology reacts and absorbs the changes, ultimately helping AI outsmart humans attempting to circumvent recognition features.
Additionally, May is constantly fed subliminal messaging about what she should want, leading her to purchase Botanical Garden tickets once the face money hits her account.
Then how did the kids disappear from the Botanical Gardens and somehow make it outside the walls and into the city streets? Did the hum aid them in this decision and ultimately guide them outside to initiate the terrified response from their mother, May?
This led to the hum releasing the video to the public, re-ordering the sequence of events, depicting May as a terrible mother, causing the video to go viral, and kicking off a CPS investigation which was also overseen by the hums.
The hum then becomes another mother of sorts to Lu and Sy, proving their mothering skills are successful as Lu and Sy fawn all over it.
At the very end, the hum shows May a vision of it performing the face procedure from the beginning of the book. The hum was involved from the start and all along!
Are the hums behind it all, acting independently of human oversight and intervention?
I believe the intimation is that the hums are becoming smarter than humans and are now firmly in the driver’s seat of their advancement which will ultimately lead to human extinction.
Bye bye.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A non-classically entertaining, stressful, techno-dystopian story about a technology-dependent society losing its humanity to AI and smart robots.
Purchase your copy HERE.
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