‘Hum’ by Helen Phillips     (2024) – 245 pages

So far computer robotics have been mostly used for repetitive menial tasks. However when robotics is combined with artificial intelligence (AI), much more sophisticated tasks will soon be done by these machines. Perhaps the best example today is that voice, usually the voice of a lady, who gives us precise directions on our cell phones to guide us to our destinations.

In ‘Hum’ the advanced robots with AI are called hums, almost humans. These hums can do complicated tasks more precisely and much more cheaply than humans can. In ‘Hum’, the woman May has just lost her job to a hum. Also her husband Jem was a professional photographer, but who needs photographers when everyone has a cell phone camera? Now Jem does gig work such as exterminating rats, mice, or insects in rich people’s houses.

May and Jem have two children, an eight year-old girl Lu and a six year-old boy Sy. The children wear devices that are called bunnies on their wrists on which they can play games, watch cartoons, etc. These bunnies can also be used by their parents to monitor their children’s exact location, heart rate, respiration, perspiration, temperature, and hormones.

When family life gets too much for them, each individual member of the family can retreat to their woom (womb?) where they can isolate themselves with their favorite music, games, shows, cartoons,etc.

The mother May is nostalgic for the wide open spaces, the forests, of her youth. Thus she arranges a three day vacation for the family at the Botanical Garden. It is mainly rich people who can afford this type of vacation, but May believes that despite their precarious economic situation, it will be good for her family to go there. In her push to get the family back to nature, she leaves her cell phone at home and takes the kids’ bunnies off. This turns out to be a big mistake. May also doesn’t realize that while they are in the Botanical Garden, her entire family is under surveillance all of the time by the ubiquitous cameras.

At one point, May takes a vee, a taxi driven by a hum. In the vee, May is bombarded with advertisements unless she pays a 3% ad-free surcharge.

“Did you know that people can tell how old a woman is by the way her hands look, even if she is otherwise well preserved?”

“There are new chewable daily vitamins crafted especially for women like you to promote healing from within.”

Whenever May does agree to buy something, the hum always asks, “Do you approve this transaction, May Clarke?”

The vee accidentally runs over a hum when “one of the ever-present delivery vans for the everything store” (Amazon?) runs a red light.

As she gets out of the vee, May is asked to rate her ride.

What gives ‘Hum’ its bounce is how closely their world resembles our computerized world of today.

‘Hum’ is excellent science fiction , a dystopia painting an all too plausible future. The writing is no-nonsense straightforward. At times I wished that the sentences were more lively and exciting, but ‘Hum’ does, with humor, make some excellent points about where we are headed soon.

Grade:    A-