May Webb sees her first hum standing at a bus stop, and mistakes it for a sculpture. One year later, in the anxious “now” of Helen Phillips’ new novel , AI-based robots called “hums” have taken over many jobs, or rendered them obsolete (May’s job working on AI communications has been erased). In fact, as the novel opens, a hum is performing facial recognition obscuring surgery on May’s face.
May is being paid well to be a guinea pig in this test, a choice she may come to regret. Reading is like shifting your perspective a couple of years into a dystopian future. Everything could turn out this way.
In fact, it seems likely this is where we might be headed, based on the current state of climate change, artificial intelligence, surveillance, and government control. Read it as a warning, and double down on that danger when you consider the dire implications for a responsible mother trying to grab a few moments of private time with her husband while giving her children a taste of the quickly dwindling natural world in a pricey Disneyland-esque botanic garden. Phillips’ short stories and earlier novels have been compared to the work of Calvino, Kafka, Margaret Atwood, Ursula Le Guin, and Lorrie Moore.
But she’s truly an original. is speculative fiction at its best. (No AI was involved in our email conversation, which spanned the continent.
) How have these recent years of pandemic and conflict affected your life, your work, the writing of and launch of your new nov.