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Start giftingHum
Narrator
Ariel Blake
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
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Length
7 hours 9 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“Hum dragged me in and didn't let me go. Hum took place in a world that was a little too close to reality. This is told from the perspective of a mother named May, who partakes in an experiment that alters her face so it won’t be recognized by security. Fed Up with her family’s addiction to devices, she uses the money from her surgery to go to botanical gardens in her city. The botanical gardens that May once saw as an oasis, turn into something much dark and more sinister. Blending ideas from our reality and maybe our future, Hum is a page-turner. While reading the book, I had a deep sense of dread in my chest, and I found myself gripped in suspense. ”
— Izzy • Off the Beaten Path
Bookseller recommendation
“Helen Phillips takes us on a wild, anxious ride into the (near?) future: an AI-driven world. Fast-paced and tense, Hum ponders the current state of technology and its effect on human behavior. A brilliant, futuristic page-turner!”
— Caroline • Andover Bookstore
Bookseller recommendation
“A very true, raw, and interesting look at the not-so-distant future. Really good story involving AI… the ending really makes you think. ”
— Brandy • Watermark Book Company
Bookseller recommendation
“A dystopian look at cities, families, and AI in the future. Written in a taut, suspenseful, blunted style, one family goes through some very difficult times, just trying to survive. I listened on Libro.fm to this well produced story. ”
— Melanie • The Well-Read Moose
Bookseller recommendation
“Set in the near yet distant future where AI is integrated in all things, a mother makes extreme sacrifices after being laid off (truly replaced by AI) to ensure her family can survive. This is uncomfortable commentary on technology addiction, the endless reach of AI, and how even doing the right thing can me viewed as wrong. Hum will leave you rethinking if you need to make the time to read the Terms & Conditions that we mindlessly accept.”
— Jenny • E. Shaver, bookseller
Bookseller recommendation
“This thrilling dystopian sci-fi was intense and anxiety provoking!! Forests and wild animals are a thing of the past, and there are robots called Hums that coexist with humans. When May loses her job to AI, in order to keep her family afloat, she undergoes an experimental surgery that makes her face unrecognizable to AI. The unforeseen consequences of this decision slowly escalate, putting her entire family at risk, until she is forced to trust a Hum to save her children. This book is very fast paced, eye opening, and so relatable in so many areas that we are currently dealing with—AI, technology, climate change, screen time, and unrealistic expectation of mothers. ”
— Sandra • Underground Books
A New York Times Editors’ Choice
Named Most Anticipated by Goodreads, LitHub, and Book Riot, this “tense dystopian thriller” (Time) captures an urgent and unflinching portrayal of a woman’s fight for her family’s security in a world shaped by global warming and rapid technological progress.
In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance.
Seeking some reprieve from her recent hardships and from her family’s addiction to their devices, she splurges on passes that allow them three nights’ respite inside the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals flourish. But her insistence that her son, daughter, and husband leave their devices at home proves far more fraught than she anticipated, and the lush beauty of the Botanical Garden is not the balm she hoped it would be. When her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a hum of uncertain motives as she works to restore the life of her family.
Written in taut, urgent prose, Hum is a work of speculative fiction that unflinchingly explores marriage, motherhood, and selfhood in a world compromised by global warming and dizzying technological advancement, a world of both dystopian and utopian possibilities. As New York Times bestselling author Jeff VanderMeer says, “Helen Phillips, in typical bravura fashion, has found a way to make visible uncomfortable truths about our present by interrogating the near-future.”
Helen Phillips is the author of six books, including, most recently, the novel Hum. Her novel The Need was a National Book Award nominee and a New York Times Notable Book. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. Her collection Some Possible Solutions received the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her novel The Beautiful Bureaucrat was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A professor at Brooklyn College, she lives in Brooklyn with artist/cartoonist Adam Douglas Thompson and their children. Find her online at HelenCPhillips.com or on X @HelenCPhillips.
