Books: Hum

Most of the novels my local book club picks are light historical or mainstream fiction (think Oprah's Book Club), but every once in a while, I throw the group a curveball and recommend something in the sci-fi, fantasy, or horror genres. That's how we came to read Hum, a dystopian sci-fi novel by Helen Phillips.

Hum is a fable about May, a young mother living in a not-too-distant future where AI, surveillance, and global warming have rendered most people into economically insecure gig workers trapped in polluted gray cities. Struggling to make ends meet, May gets paid to undergo adversarial camouflage cosmetic surgery, designed to spoof the omnipresent facial recognition sensors.  With the money, she splurges on a vacation to a botanical garden with her kids.  Things, as you might guess, go awry.

There's a number of thought-provoking issues in Hum - how people interact with AI, the dehumanizing effects of social media, and the thirst for an authentic experience in a world of artifice. On the downside, the story is pretty simple, the characters are shallow, and readers might be left hanging by the novel's ambiguous ending.