disclaimer: this review was written without the assistance of AI.

HUM was…wow. it surfaced all of my anxieties that i try to suppress about the world we live in today. perfectly disquieting and unsettling, HUM brought to life many of the themes that keep parents up at night- climate change, overconsumption, artificial intelligence, surveillance, the 24-hour news cycle, and more. and although Phillips did not focus in on character development, she perfectly captured the anxiety and whiplash of constantly living in unprecedented times through the eyes of May, Jem, and their young family.

many thanks to the team at marysue rucci books for the advanced copy.

Very relatable characters in a believable future not that far from now. The dilemmas they face are heart wrenching and a parent’s worst nightmare. I enjoyed the writing and read this in less than a day. The AI Hums are a bit more complicated than they first seem, but too much was left to the imagination about them at the end.

Thanks to NetGalley and S&S/ Marysue Rucci Books for an ARC of this book.

3.5 stars rounded up as I keep thinking about it.

Set in a pretty horrifying very near future, this smart but rather gloomy novel looks at the effects on society, families, and individuals of climate change and the ever increasing presence of artificial intelligence.

May’s job working in AI communication has become obsolete because the hums (as this society refers to the physical embodiments of the network) have grown past human training. In a desperate attempt to get some money, she has her face altered in order to test the ability of surveillance cameras to recognize her. With some of this money, May splurges on a 3-night stay for her family at the Botanical Gardens, a resort that recreates the natural world of the not too distant past. Once there, however, things go terribly awry and May’s family is completely upended.

The zing of this novel comes from all the tiny details the author weaves into this world she has created by barely extrapolating from current news stories: The warm empathy of the hums towards May and her family blends smoothly into targeted advertising; the replacement of social connection with “wooms” and devices; the children with their iPhone-esque “bunnies” permanently strapped to their wrists; the looming unemployment and inequity crisis as hums take on more and more jobs.

May is straddled between two eras. She can still remember actual forests, though the one behind her parents’ house has burned down, but she is now an urban being, as dependent on her phone and woom as everyone else. The joys and burdens of motherhood, however, seem to be timeless, along with the societal expectations and fault finding that comes with it.

With the exception of May’s friend Nova, other human individuals are only referenced obliquely, including the older people who still employ May’s husband instead of a hum to do odd jobs. People are only seen as a mass, on the barren and sweltering streets or in the subway, or online in social media. There is a hint that future hum society could be more gracious and compassionate than the human one but also more authoritarian.

The author does not give us an escape; May and her family are stuck in their world as we soon may be. Recommended but only if you’re not waiting for someone to come and save the day.

Thanks to Simon Element and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

As AI takes over our jobs and tracks our lives, Hum asks the question: Is technology really our friend?

Hum by Helen Phillips presents a unique and thought-provoking premise, immersing readers in a disquieting near-future where intelligent and benevolent robots, known as "hums", are integrated into daily life. In this speculative world, hums track every moment of our existence, trailing us with the promise of anticipating our needs, but at what cost? If Orwell had imagined a future with AI, Hum might have been the result—equal parts fascinating and terrifying.

The story follows May, a woman navigating a city ravaged by climate change and dominated by smart technology. After losing her job to AI, May, burdened by debt, undergoes an experiment that alters her face, making it unrecognizable to the ever-present cameras. In a desperate attempt to escape, she takes her family to one of the last green spaces, only to discover that leaving their devices behind brings unexpected stress. When her children's lives are threatened, May is forced to place her trust in a hum with questionable motives.

Phillips excels in worldbuilding, crafting an immersive environment filled with dread, anxiety, and chaos. The book explores the emotional and physical toll of constant surveillance and touches on significant themes like marriage, motherhood, selfhood, global warming, and technological advancement. However, despite its well-written prose and intriguing concept, Hum feels somewhat meandering, as if it’s juggling two different storylines that never fully converge.

In a world where technology promises convenience, Hum shows us the emotional price we pay for it. While the premise is undeniably compelling, and the writing style is solid, the plot itself lacks the depth and resolution I was hoping for. It’s a quick read, but it left me wanting more substance to match the initial intrigue.

Overall, Hum is not a bad read, especially for fans of speculative fiction, but it didn’t quite live up to my expectations.

Thank you to Simon Element for providing me with an Advance Readers Copy for review.

This dystopian novel was right up my alley with AI in the spotlight and forests being in amusement parks that only the rich can access. While I say dystopian, the scary part is that this looks like the future we are headed toward which makes it that much more scary. Phillips brough t so many important questions to light about AI and technology! I am absolutely impressed with this book and look forward to reading more from this author in the future!

"It was common knowledge that hums were designed to obey human requests.. To do no harm to humans."

Hmm . . . I seem to remember a bespectacled gentleman with mutton chops mentioning something about that way back in the fifties.
As I recall, things didn't turn out very well.

Here we have a mother willing to trade in her own identity for a chance to give her family an unforgettable vacation.

And, yeah, things don't turn out too well for them either.

I really liked this one. The author deftly mixes blissful domestic scenes of everyday life with the anxiety and tension caused by financial insecurity, and the daily horrors reported by the newscasters. Everyone is connected to a device 24/7. Climate change has made life unlivable for many, yet plastics are still prevalent. This is speculative fiction, though much of it feels ripped from today's headlines.

Is it any wonder our heroine wants to escape for a few days to a blissful recreation of the past?

Packed with raw emotion this is a highly disturbing and perplexing read. I'll be thinking about this one for a long time to come . . . possibly even the rest of my life.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster/Simon Element/Marysue Rucci Books for gifting me a digital ARC of this fascinating book by Helen Phillips. All opinions expressed in this review are my own - 4.5 stars!

May has a job "teaching" AI to be more intelligent. But when her goal is accomplished and AI is smarter than humans, she loses her job. As the breadwinner of her family, consisting of husband, Jem, and children, Lu and Sy, she undertakes a procedure for to earn money that requires surgery to change her face so that it can't be recognized by surveillance cameras. After getting caught up on bills, May decides to splurge on a 3-day trip to the Botanical Garden, a refuge where forests, streams, and animals flourish - but only for those who can afford it. Wanting an immersive experience, she insists that everyone leave their phones and devices at home. But when there is an issue, May has to trust a hum to help her.

I tore through this book. It's thought-provoking on a near-future basis as well as our current culture. With AI being so prevalent now, it's not a big stretch to think that Hums could be part of our future. With climate changes and resultant devastation to our forests from wildfires, losing access to nature is certainly feasible. We are already living in a more virtual world than a real one, proven by our addiction to our devices. The best family experiences already go only to those who can afford them (think skipping lines at DisneyWorld). This book looks at motherhood in the midst of all that, and how one incident can change everything we hold to be true. The writing was wonderful and I'll be thinking about May for a while.

Over the weekend in the swimming pool, as a robot skimmer swept past me removing insects and small leaves from the surface of the water and we listened to music beamed wirelessly from my phone to a portable, voice-controllable, waterproof speaker across the patio, I was struck by the idea that we are very much living in the "future". We may not have all of the inventions imagined by science fiction writers over the years (still no flying cars or teleportation), but when you stop to think about it, we do have more of them than we might have expected to even a decade or two ago. And while that revelation can be somewhat awe-inspiring, when one considers the pace of change and the myriad negatives that same technology has had on our society it can also be more than a little frightening. Helen Phillips manages to perfectly capture those conflicting emotions in her short but stunning latest, Hum.

May recently lost her job developing the communicative abilities of AI when the hums (human-like robots) became smart enough to handle the task on their own. Now relying on her husband Jem's TaskRabbit-like gig work to support their small family, they are falling behind on bills while May continues in vain to find employment. Daughter Lu and son Sy are both addicted to the Bunny devices they keep strapped to their wrists, which also allow their parents to monitor their location and vitals, and to their Wooms, cocoon-like spaces they can hide in and browse the internet, while Jem relentlessly checks his phone, keeping an eye on his abnormally high customer rating.

May longs for more human connection with her family, recalling what it was like growing up before an unnamed ecological disaster struck, decimating the planet's natural resources, but she finds her husband and children either unwilling or unable to participate. She enrolls in a trial program for a new cosmetic procedure that promises to subtly alter a person's face enough to avoid identification by the surveillance systems in place around the city in exchange for enough money to sustain the family for several more months, and then immediately decides to spend a large chunk of her payout on a vacation to the Botanical Gardens, a walled off site amidst the city's industrial sprawl that features lush forests, fresh fruit, and wild creatures seldom seen anymore. When she informs them of her purchase, Jem is initially worried over the expense, but the kids are beyond excited, and since her discounted rate requires them to enter the next day, they pack their things, get some sleep, and head to the park, but (at May's insistence) without all of their devices.

While May is initially blissful in the Botanical Garden, on the second day she and Jem become separated from Lu and Sy. Detached from their technology, the hums that man the park are heavily limited in their ability to help and May begins to search frantically for them on her own as she finds herself second-guessing all of her decisions and desires. In an increasingly tech-obsessed world all she wanted was an authentic experience with her loved ones, but in so doing has she failed at her job to keep her children safe?

The near-future world that Phillips has created here is well-imagined and frighteningly plausible, perhaps because of how strikingly similar it is to today. Anyone who has ever wondered at and worried over the breakneck rate of technological advancement we are currently living through will feel an immediate kinship with May. But many of the fears she experiences are relevant in any time and will ring true to any parent, succinctly summed up by a hum who assesses her by saying, "You feel disoriented, May. You are unsure how to be in the world as it is now. You know the world is damaged, but you don't know what that means for the lives of your children. You want to prepare them for the future, but you are scared to picture the future. You are seeking inside yourself the scrappiness, the courage, that will power the rest of your life."

May lives in a world where everything is available almost instantly with a simple voice command. Where technology is cheap as long as you're willing to put up with relentless targeted advertising. Where the planet is dying and jobs are disappearing and people communicate with each other via AI-generated text messages, if at all. This is alarmingly close to today by design, and it will have you questioning your own relationship to technology. Whether Hum actually inspires you to make any changes is up to you, but it's a thoughtfully written and deeply engaging story that proves hard to put down. It's one of my favorite reads this year and it will certainly get readers talking. Or at least checking to see if their hands look "old."

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

This book took me by surprise. While I did find it hard to connect with May as a character, the writing was very beautiful. It began with a very real fear that many have, an A.I. taking over her job leaving her family with little to no money. After undergoing an experimental procedure to camouflage her face from facial recognition with some sort of tattoo, she receives a large sum of money in return. Rather than saving the money or paying off debts, she decides to pay for a family vacation to the city to the Botanical Garden, which is an environmental sanctuary with trees, clean water, and animals that can't be found elsewhere due to extreme climate change.

This book is less plot based and more introspective, tackling a few common issues. Normally, I would not gravitate towards something with such little actual plot, but Phillips writing is so good that I didn't find myself losing interest as I tend to with this kind of sci-fi. Hum discusses technology, climate change, money and family issues, and the desperation that many people feel when they don't have money for even basic necessities. The technology, in this case, was more of the focus, with Hums being the central AI that people encounter everyday. These reminded me of the Black Mirror episode "Fifteen Million Merits", where the entertainment and service bots and technology will intermittently advertise to you. You can pay to skip the targeted advertisements. Hum was one of those sci-fi books that makes you question things, which is a huge reason that I'm drawn to the sci-fi genre in general. I highly recommend this book.

HUM is a tautly written, stark work of speculative fiction that takes many things already present in our modern society to a new level. It is thought-provoking and often disturbing, especially after reading the real-life headlines found in the expansive Endnotes. 😳⁣
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The deceptively simple plot revolves around a vacation taken by May and her family at the luxurious and verdant Botanical Garden. She has undergone a surgical procedure to render her face undetectable to the omnipresent AI cameras, and because of that is able to afford the brief 3-day stay with her family. May was terminated from her job working in AI because she had become obsolete; the network had learned to teach itself. Her husband Jem works gigs based on a Task Rabbit-like app and so the family’s financial situation is precarious. ⁣
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The title refers to the “Hums”, silvery-metallic looking humanoid robots which have now replaced humans in many situations. They work in doctor’s offices and deliver food orders, among other tasks. May’s children are also tethered to the internet via their “bunnies” which seem to be Apple-like watches that can track their movements, heart rates and locations. 🤖

The author doesn’t judge our reliance on the internet or our mindless and endless consumption. She instead imagines what might become of us and our planet if we keep on this path. ⁣This novel reminded me of the series ⁣𝘉𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘔𝘪𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘳, which I loved. It is both unsettling and unnerving. If you’re a fan of speculative fiction, I recommend this one. ⁣
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Thank you @_simonelement and @marysueruccibooks for the opportunity to read an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

SciFi from a woman's PoV by an actual woman is not as rare a thing as it once was. Even women SF writers of the comparatively recent past wrote a boy's or man's PoV as often as not. Now this ignoring of The Future (as seen by women in it) is passé. We still don't see a ton of mothers as PoV characters, though.

May is such a PoV character, and she resonates powerfully with me. Her steely determination to provide for her family is the bedrock of the story. The worldbuilding is subtle, as one would expect from an author working in the (very) near future. Probably my single favorite touch of worldbuilding is one I think is largely invisible to most: May, our main charater, is married to Jem; their children are Sy and Lu.

Even their names are minimized. That most human of sounds, our names, is clipped down to the minimum of syllables, squeezing these beings into a narrower, and narrowing, bandwidth. One better suited, not coincidentally, to the vocal apparatus of the "hums" of the title.

Ah, the hums...the titular beings who represent the next (?) generation of the smartphones now falling out of favor among the young (to me) user base. If, as I suspect, their increasing disenchantment with these devices is being quietly steered, I suspect the course they're being steered ON is the one Author Phillips is showing us in this story.

The worst nightmare of a parent is to lose their children. Especially very young ones whose understanding of the World around them is unformed. Why else did the Satanic Panic/Stranger Danger epidemic get rolling? Losing a child to death by disease is less and less common...thank all those useless gods for that...but accidents, and malicious actions like addictions, malefactors who prey on the innocent are still there to obsess the fretful. Now add AI to that mix, and Author Phillips is on a winner to speak to this seething mass market. She does not do this cynically. Her brushes against the eerieness of the surveillance capitalism around us border on entry into the Uncanny Valley. Her own previous writing has been used without permission or compensation to train the generative AI we're being told will take over. I myownself think, however, that Sabine Hossenfelder's got the right handle on the reality of the eventual results. Author Phillips is wise to point to the ways this borning system is likely to fail Humanity, to the humans who still have time to change course.

<I>Hum</I> traverses nightmarish loss, dystopian social catastrophe, and failures of a deeply human sort in this tale. I wish I could pooh-pooh its premise, or its cconclusions, but I can't. I think all y'all who read my reviews will know what you need to know about my opinion of the read by the fact that a) I published a review on a Tuesday, 2) I was apprived for this DRC on 2 August and am reviewing it four days later, and iii) have not said, and do not intend to say, one critical word about its conception or execution.

Many of y'all do not like anything SFnal or speculative. I encourage those folk most especially to get this from the library and read it.

You're going to live it soon enough.
<B>NB <I>there are links to sources and definitions in the blogged review</I></b>

I really loved THE NEED, so I was thrilled to get an advanced copy of Helen Phillips’ newest novel, HUM — available today.

Hum is a dystopian novel that takes plaice in the future where technology is further advanced than it is today. Picture this: Children have electronic “bunnies” attached to their wrists; people sleep in Wooms, small pods surrounded in screens that can show you nature of the past or make you feel like you are in a womb. Nature is gone and the city as taken over; air quality is poor. A “Hum” is a robot that acts like a person but also is an advertising vehicle. The economy is terrible.

Hum tells the story of May, a mother of two who loses her job training AI. Her husband, Jem, is a gig worker (mostly cleaning mouse traps). To raise funds for her family, May decides to undergo an experimental procedure where her face is altered so she can no longer be identified by Face ID.

She splurges on a vacation for the family — basically to a forrest filled with nature that her children have never seen before. Something happens there that changes the family’s life….

Pick this one up if you like dystopian novels that feel a little too possible. The world that Phillips created was eerie because it didn’t seem too far fetched with the way technology is progressing.

HUM by Helen Phillips ~to be published August 6, 2024

Thank you to @marysueruccibooks and @simonandschuster for the gifted advance reader copy. I absolutely loved this book and it will undoubtedly be a favorite of the year! This is truly speculative fiction at its finest.

Set in the near future, yet so incredibly relatable, Philips has written an urgent and necessary story. May’s life is fraying at the edges. Artificial intelligence has replaced her at work, she is deeply in debt but continues to spend, and she fears she is losing her connection with her husband and young children. Phillips explores so many weighty and relevant topics – from surveillance, AI, and our addiction to our devices, to climate change and consumerism – with such humor and heart.

No other book I’ve read this year has resonated with me as much as this one in its exploration of both motherhood and selfhood. I highly recommended this to all!

Hum was a compelling and propulsive read and May a relatable character who is trying hard, but makes her difficulties worse. I read this book rapidly in order to find out what happened next to this family, and also because the apocalyptic world they lived in seemed almost familiar - just a few steps ahead of where ours is now.

I felt this book was well crafted and Phillips deftly wove several social and relational threads together.

I completely enjoyed reading Hum.

May Webb lives in a major city with her husband and two children at an unspecified time in the (presumably) not too distant future. Climate change is rampant, AI is everywhere, and adults and children alike are completely tech connected. When May is laid off, she makes ends meet by allowing a tech company to subtly alter her face in order to test facial recognition software. She uses a large chunk of the money to take her family on a visit to the Botanical Gardens, the green space in the middle of the city generally reserved for the wealthy. A series of small choices sets off a string of events in which everything May cares for is threatened.

I have extremely mixed feelings about this book. It was a quick, propulsive read that I finished in a few days. There were moments that felt so true to life - I felt May’s stress when she overspent on an experience for her kids, then stressed out when every moment wasn’t perfect; I love how “safe” it feels like I can locate my kids through their tech but then I worry that without it they won’t be able to weather the regular hiccups of daily life.

Ultimately, though, for a 267-page book Phillips just spread herself too thin; she touched on climate change, technology, facial recognition, the divide between the rich and poor, and changing family dynamics due to technology but never had the time to really get into depth on any of them. Things moved so quickly that there wasn’t enough time to build the characters as thoroughly and nuanced as she seemed capable of.

To be completely fair, though, I am not a huge fan of sci-fi or speculative fiction, so if that is your preferred genre I would still recommend this book as it was a quick and exciting read.

4 ⭐️. love me a dystopian, sci-fi light read. while I really enjoyed this story, I do feel like it needed fledged out more. It felt like each section was going off in a different direction and didn't feel entirely meshed together as a cohesive story. SPOILER: it also just.....ended? out of nowhere. I felt very unfulfilled.


ty to Simon Element & NetGalley for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

I’m confused. We are literally thrown into this world full of AI machines called “Hums” where our main character is getting some experimental procedure done to make her face unrecognizable to all of the machines running this dystopian world. Apparently she also created these machines and then they took her job? Anyway, she’s getting paid a lot of money to do this procedure and her and her family desperately need that money.

She’s also having marital problems and she reallllly wants her husband to f*** her (the sex scenes in this book were so…weird). So, she spends a chunk of the money she just made to let a robot disfigure her face (but to what extent I’m never really sure because some people treat her like she’s grotesque while others are like not bothered by her appearance) to bring her family on a vacation to the Botanical Gardens (because apparently there’s no wildlife or nature in this world), and she ends up seeking help from a Hum to find her kids while she’s in distress.

The synopsis makes you this will be some epic story because her “kids come under threat” but it was so anticlimactic???? There’s so much that this book doesn’t explain and since family drama is such a big component some background info would have been nice. Anyway, by the end I was just left beyond underwhelmed. Maybe I’m just dumb and didn’t read the context clues or look at the bigger picture, but even though this ARC was gifted to me I really don’t have many positives to state except that this had major potential and I thought this was going to be so much more than it was. The writing was clunky, it lacked important details, the plot fell extremely flat, and I am left completely and utterly confused.

Thank you Atria/Marysue Rucci books for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

May needs money a signs up for an experimental procedure to alter her face so she cannot be recognized on surveillance. Her world is a world of intelligent robots and AI. With her new money she takes her family on a trip to a Garden, to see forests, streams, and animals but it is not the relaxing restoration she expected.

This was a fast paced read, especially for science fiction. Sci fi is not a favorite of mine, as it’s often complicated and too detailed for me. This story was very easy to understand. I loved the look at a possible future. Most importantly, I loved the look at motherhood in a possible future and the insecurities we always have.

“… if others were steeped in the context of your life, as I am, they would feel compassion for you, as I do.”

Hum comes out 8/6.

Thanks, I hated it.

Very beautiful capture of the anxiety of raising children in a surveillance and consumerism based state, unsettlingly accurate. The entire story was exquisitely tense, claustrophobic, and hit way too close to home. I loved it, but was legitimately stressed out about how familiar everything felt, and I don't even have kids. Phillips has an incredible atmospheric style- describing specific sensations or details of scenes set the whole vibe so well.

I kind of wish this was shorter, or longer, there were some pacing points that felt a little off, either too quick or took a long time to build up.

Four stars because the ending had me so confused and lost that I re-read it three times and still don't really understand the resolution. I also very much wanted a comeuppance and the end upheld the very realistic helplessness we would all have in the same situation.

This is a great story for people who distrust AI, or maybe should be.

As with The Need, Phillips' writing is easily devoured and requires thorough digestion. The story is set in the not too distant future where climate change has created hazardous living conditions and interactions with robots called Hums have become a significant part of daily life. But the growing capabilities of AI have left many, like May obsolete in the workplace. Philips writing is very direct in the way it draws the reader into this world, and refreshing in the way she trusts the reader to understand the structure of the is society and the science fiction elements without excessive world building.

At several points, the story left me feeling unsettled and on the edge of my seat waiting for something bad to happen, which is exactly how Philips portrays May throughout the book. The way we see May's anxieties and desires come off as very realistic and perhaps transcend time and circumstance because in spite of the futuristic setting, her anxieties are still around the safety and hippieness of her children and financial security.

While Philips highlights the pitfalls of AI and dependence on technology, the reality this story depicts is that our relationship with technology is complex. Even throughout the novel, May's own stance remains undecided. She wants to take her family on a tech free vacation to engage with nature, and each other without the distraction, but finds herself desperate to return to it when her children are missing, and once again desperate to escape when she goes viral as a bad parent. What stands out in the novel is the way Philips draws attention to the Hums 'learning' and the ways the humans willingly participate in this process in both implicit and explicit ways. Before she lost her job, May was responsible for building up the communication abilities for AI, and to keep her family financially stable, she opted to have her face altered as part of a study that would make her face unreadable by the existing AI metrics, but is still meant to teach the system how to read her new face. Even through the distrust May feels towards the Hum throughout the end of the book, the story is heartwarming as the Hum shows May all of the things her and her family have taught it, not just from a scientific or marketing perspective as it's generally designed to do, but about the nuances of motherhood, family and herself.


I would recommend this book to readers who also enjoyed A School For Good Mothers