(em português: sol2070.in/2024/12/livro-hum-helen-phillips/ )

“Hum” (2024, 272 pages), by Helen Phillips, is a dystopian fiction that is both suffocating and sensitive, about the difficulties of a woman and her family in a techno-surveillance society in ecological collapse.

Despite the futuristic setting, it could just as well be set today, with our current dependence on screens, corporate domination, ubiquitous digital ads, non-existent privacy, disastrous politics and the horror of environmental collapse. The difference is the absurd intensification of these factors, which includes the presence of advertising androids, called “Hum”.

But anyone expecting traditional science fiction may be disappointed, this is more like a backdrop for the drama — of marked internalization — of the protagonist May. Not that this is a flaw, I especially liked the psychological side, without seeing anything too special in the techno-dystopian part.

After losing her job to an AI, May undergoes facial microsurgery, in search of money, for an experiment on methods of obscuring surveillance cameras. Because of her longing for the lost natural world she experienced in childhood, she spends what she can't to take the two children and her husband for a few days in a kind of ecological dome. Unforeseen events, including a well-known internet phenomenon, exacerbate the protagonist's crisis.

It's not an easy read. There is a Kafkaesque tone, of a powerless person massacred by a vast automated system. This is compensated for by the tender moments of warm subtlety, and the character's feelings, without being cheesy. It's also worth it for the impressive ending.

I had read the author's previous acclaimed book, “The Need” (2020). A psychological horror similar to “Hum” in the internalization of a threatening crisis. Another point in common is that the genre of the story is just a backdrop for a powerful inner journey.