Exploring Climate Fiction: Helen Phillips’ Award-Winning Novel “Hum”
“Hum”, set in an overheated futuristic metropolis, tells the compelling story of a mother’s struggle to protect her small family amidst relentless technological surveillance and climate change challenges. This year, Helen Phillips’ work won the prestigious Climate Fiction Award, a recognition supported by Climate Spring and valued at £10,000.
About the Award
The Climate Fiction Award, established to spotlight storytelling that engages with the realities of climate change, was previously awarded in 2025 to Abi Dalle for her novel And That’s Why I Roar. Phillips’ novel outshone other shortlisted titles, including Susanna Kwan’s tale of a flooded San Francisco in Wake Up in a Floating City and Maria Leva’s journey with a highly endangered snail in End Ring.
Judges’ Insights
Judge Friederike Otto, a professor of climate science at Imperial College London, praised “Hum” for addressing the core issues of privilege related to the climate crisis. Fellow judge and novelist Jesse Greengrass acknowledged the book’s exploration of existential anxiety, saying, “A book about how to deal with anxiety when nothing is right, or when every choice you make ends up making things worse.”
Story Overview
Set in a near-future city where super-intelligent robots known as Hams coexist with humans, the narrative centers around Mae, a mother fighting to keep her children away from addictive technology. Desperate for a natural escape, she embarks on a journey to a hidden oasis within the city, highlighting the struggles of parenthood in a technologically dominated environment.
Inspiration behind “Hum”
In a conversation with Alison Flood, Helen Phillips shared her inspirations, noting that every novel emerges from myriad small seeds. A personal incident involving targeted advertising sparked her contemplation of extreme algorithmic surveillance, subsequently shaping the central conflict faced by Mae.
Thematic Reflections
Phillips acknowledges her anxieties surrounding climate change, surveillance, and economic inequality as key influences in her writing process. A poignant quote from the book, delivered by a wise machine, states, “We know the world is damaged, but we don’t know what that means for our children’s lives.” This sentiment captures the collective fear many parents feel today.
Art Reflecting Reality
The themes in “Hum” are deeply rooted in current societal realities. Phillips reflects on Margaret Atwood’s famous quote from The Handmaid’s Tale, suggesting that many fictional narratives are extrapolations of real-life situations. This connection between reality and fiction serves to remind readers of the pressing issues at hand while allowing room for hope.
Looking Ahead
The emotional core of “Hum” resonates with the primary goal of nurturing connections—with family, the environment, and oneself. Phillips hopes that her work inspires readers to cherish what remains of nature, emphasizing the need to protect it for future generations.
The Impact of Storytelling
Phillips believes storytelling has the potential to spark meaningful discussions on climate change and human resilience. She asserts that while her writing stems from personal anxieties, it is not meant to provide direct solutions but rather to evoke curiosity and contemplation among readers.
A Commitment to Climate Fiction
Writing about climate issues has consistently been a priority for Phillips, evident even in her earlier works. Although she doesn’t set out to write a climate novel explicitly, themes of climate anxiety and environmental degradation remain central to her storytelling.
Hope for the Future
When asked about the future of her characters and humanity, Phillips emphasizes the necessity of connection, urging collective efforts to value and care for our planet. She believes that recognizing each other’s humanity is crucial in facing the climate crisis.
Michel Nieva's dengue boy is placed on a drowned future earth
Arami Stock Photo
Does that mean he's dead?
Dengue spreading the strange white surface under the Antarctic sun, and within a second, she saw everything flash. When you believe that a boy, a girl, a destroyed blank will die, how about life to look back at the space for a few moments? You might think of that dear mother. Do you lament your father who has never known or perhaps remembered a humorous or traumatic anecdote involving a classmate? Honestly, not many other things happened during her short time on Earth. However (the mind works in a mysterious and unpredictable way, especially the mind of a mutant mosquito), the destroyed dengue fever didn't think about any of these people, rather the story of her mother reading her at bedtime; Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She recalled the opening from her heart:
“Once upon a time, on a frozen, windy winter night, the Queen lived. This Queen watched snow fall as she knits by the window. From the window, the snowflakes slowly and rhythmically fell in an unpredictable pattern, like feathers from endless pillows. She was staring in wonder at the fall of snow, so she accidentally stabbed one of her fingers with a needle. Three drops of blood fell into the snow. And the Queen thought to herself. If I could have a daughter as white as snow, as blood red, as winter!”
This opening is always a volatile dengue boy (as he was at the time). In particular, he didn't understand half of the words: what the hell was it? winterwhat was it coldwhat was it snowand why did they spark such attraction?
A precious daughter snowjust as beautiful winter . . .
The mystery of those words, whose meanings had always escaped him, sparked even greater doubt.
It was impossible to know, and there was no empirical way to experience their effects in this future, when cold, winter and snow was gone from the earth (at least not for a miserable boy from Victoria). Naturally, his mother, who spent all her miserable lives at Victorica, didn't really help. All she knew (or as strong as she believes she knows) was that the snow was soft and beautiful, and that the beautiful child's skin had the same colour and pleasant texture, unlike the dengue children, who had a greenish yellow colour with furry skin. For this reason, the dengue boy, like some kind of qabalic rabbis, was convinced that he could access mystical meanings. cold, winter and snowhe will open up the secret of that mysterious sacred breast and how to get the love of his mother.
Because nothing had hoped that insects would turn white like snow and be as beautiful as winter.
The desire to access the mysterious material hidden in these words grabbed the poor insects and he cooperated with all the dictionaries and encyclopedias that he could find in search of answers. He read the definitions over and over again:
winter. noun. obs. The extinction season of the earth's age that occurred between autumn and spring has also become extinct.
Example: “Winter was the coldest time of the year.”
cold. noun. obs. Physical sensations produced by cold temperatures, the characteristics of ancient winters.
Example: “It was cold during the winter, especially if there was snow.”
snow. noun. Precipitation in the form of small white ice crystals formed directly from air water vapor at temperatures below 32°F. This occurs in terrestrial winters and occurs by artificial means on other planets or Earth.
Example: “There was a lot of snow in the winter!”
The poor boy reads these definitions, rereads them, then reads them again, but he has no understanding of his great disappointment. Is that because (as his classmates always argued) he was half wit? winter, cold, snow. Just words. words! Worse, it was a word that had to be explained using other words, and its definition was even more vague and inaccurate.
Wint-er, cold, sn-ow.
The herbular pictograph, which the boy tasted the phonemes through phonemes, was under the illusion that the flesh that once lay beneath the vivid skin had not evaporated before his eyes. But, although removed from the meaning that once brought them to life, what remained was a hollow corpse of meaningless sounds.
Wint-er, cold, sn-ow.
It was an atmospheric phenomenon that so many humans and other species suffered and endured for thousands of years, and now it was merely a planetary mystery, a speculative prose written by fossils, a biblical water and soil sky, a geological stamp!
The only season Pampas and the Antarctic Caribbean knew was summer, burnt, relentless, homogeneous. So when dengue became neutralised, her body still numbed from the poison, believing that she would die, and that she saw her own blood (to be precise, she saw blood that she indiscriminately sucked from Victoria's children and office workers), yes. Boy), a confused F story Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
And certainly, the memory she believed that her last body was worthy of was that her poisoned body actually landed on the ice rink of Great Winter Cruise, the flagship of the cruise company that traveled along the Antarctic Caribbean coast, recreating the cold season, and now disappearing from Earth, snow, glacier, and iceberg. Operated using AIS cutting-edge technology, these luxurious cruise ships allow tourists to experience the unique winter joys, including one of the biggest attractions, the largest ice rink on the planet.
And it was exactly where dengue died, ruining the fun of tourists. Imagine the scene: On this impressive slab of ice, 100 feet long and 55 feet wide, crowned the terrace of a 21 feet cruise ship, a massive crowd flocked to try a unique experience, perhaps for the first time, as large visitors were not present. Not only was it an opportunity to slide the unmistakably elegant ice skating strides on frozen sheets, but it was to do so at zero temperatures as the atmosphere in which the rink was installed recreated the harsh winter feel of old New York, lurking long under the waves. Plus, it was Christmas, the busiest and most eagerly awaited season in international tourism. And as the carols rang, the enchanting tourists dressed in fierce courts, moving like swans sliding down the Terra Incognita. It mimics the long-standing things at Rockefeller Center in Old New York, and there are also many leagues now under the sea.
Naturally, the sculptor hired on the cruise ship was sharp enough to replace the flames on Prometheus' right hand with a huge block of pure ice, and the Titans had taken from the deep by the planetary age, allowing these wealthy tourists to recover to the geologic era (as long as the cruise continues) which was permanently eclipsed eclocene to Earth. In fact, this was a cruise company slogan.Great Winter Cruise with 12,000 years of history in one place”, as humans promised to completely recreate the topography of a planet that lost winter, as humans knew it was born and died. Thus, “hibernation” (as the company called the advertising cruise experience) proceeded upwards from the floor, narrating winter history in ascending order. It began with a bottom deck that recreated the Pleistocene end in a giant fridge with robotic mammoths and mastodons, including a family-friendly game in which prehistoric mammals had to be set on fire with sticks and stones before they were attacked. The higher levels provided a variety of experiences from the old winter. Historic included the ability to invade Scandinavian cities on Viking ships, kill, sack, rape, or cross the Andes with General San Martin's white horse. Winter precipitation such as snow, hail, and sleet. There was also a huge igloo with outdoor cinemas, casinos, spas, carousels, cocktail bars and sushi and barbecue restaurants. Ancient frozen delights of ice, snow and cold were the real treasures of the gods stolen by Prometheus himself for the exclusive enjoyment of visitors to the cruise. The skaters slid across the rink in an atmosphere of pure joy, and were saved by Christmas carols, people clashing and dancing with each other cheerfully, shining and laughing at each other with the shared bliss. A true, unforgettable celebration recorded forever in the tourist retinus, a real dream, if mosquitoes had not landed violently on ice links and ruined everything.
This extract has been reproduced With permission to write a novel Dengue fever boy Michel Nieva (translated by Rahul Berry) is now appearing in the snake tail. Available from the North American version Astra House. This novel is the latest choice for the New Scientist Book Club. Sign up here and read with us
“Things can only get better,” D:Ream promised, but they were wrong, as were most people throughout history who tried to predict the future.
But that hasn’t stopped us from trying, and some visionaries have been quite successful. Leonardo da Vinci also envisioned a helicopter and a refrigerator. Joseph Granville suggested in 1661 that lunar travel and communication using “magnetic waves” might be possible. Civil engineer John Elfreth Watkins, writing in 1900, predicted mobile phones, prepared meals, and global digital media (“Photos can be sent via telegram even if you are far away. If there were a battle in China in 100 years, a snapshot of that most shocking event would be in the newspapers an hour later.”). Visionary American cartoonist Arthur Radbaugh in the late 1950s to early 1960s, through his series Closer Than We Think, introduced ideas like wrist-worn televisions, robot-run warehouses, and bloodless surgery.
Many of these predictions, however, turned out to be inaccurate. Watkins believed he could eradicate mosquitoes and the letters C, X, and Q. Radbaugh imagined a colony of monkeys in space riding a hamster wheel-shaped “unicycle” vehicle. Most futurists simply added imaginative touches to existing technological advancements. It requires a great deal of creativity to envisage a truly different world.
Perhaps that is why more outlandish events occur in fiction. Jules Verne’s book Paris in the 20th Century, written in 1860 but not published until 1994, foretold a world with copy machines, techno music, and individuals who view art degrees as foolish. HG Wells took it further (or deeper) by imagining the atomic bomb.
What people anticipate often reveals more about their aspirations and anxieties than the actual future. Predictions tend to surge around significant dates and momentous global occurrences, reflecting contemporary concerns. The rapid technological advancements of the 19th century gave rise to new uncertainties as well as hopes, and the future they envisaged mirrors this duality (women’s pursuit of happiness also emerges as a recurring theme). The 1960s vision encompasses the space race and the “sky’s the limit” enthusiasm that promotes a sense of boundless possibility – alongside the fear of the Cold War and the quest for viable alternatives in case nuclear annihilation renders life on Earth untenable. The reality tends to lie somewhere in between these extremes, but the list of people who have been anticipating the apocalypse for the past millennium serves as a peculiar consolation for those who believed in cataclysmic events involving fire, flood, comet impacts, or the Antichrist. Hey, we’re still here (for now).
It’s a whimsical retrospective vision of the future. So let’s hop off the hoverboard, ask the kangaroo butler, and start with the roast dinner pill.
March of the Intellect, 1829
“6 hours from London to Bath!” Photo: Heritage Images/Getty Images
The imaginative stride of cartoonists is remarkable. Much more captivating than reality. An enormous steam-powered horse emitting smoke; a vacuum tube transport to Bengal; a flying whale gargoyle ferrying convicts to New South Wales in style; a refuse collector biting into a whole pineapple; a postman with elegant wings – it’s bewildering. Heath believed the future would be kinder and more user-friendly. That, to me, signifies progress.
Test tube baby, 19th century
Simmer until done. Photo: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
French author and illustrator Albert Robida, in his “Twentieth Century” trilogy created in the 1880s and 1990s, predicted video conferences, doorbell cameras, pneumatic tube transport systems like hyperloops, industrialized food production, and a world polluted with “pathogenic ferments” clogging its rivers. The test tube baby seems a tad on the nose, but the image of a toddler scientist concocting this idea makes me wish they had invented something like ibuprofen instead.
City with a roof, 19th century
‘Is it still raining? I didn’t realize it.’ Photo: Alamy
The German Hildebrand chocolate company produced trading cards in the late 19th century envisioning various marvels of the future: buildings that could be moved on rails by steam engines, aquatic penny-farthings, summer holidays in the North Pole. Unfortunately, these might only become a reality in about 30 years from now. I won’t name names, but there are a few cities in the UK that could definitely benefit from a rainproof glass roof (cough, Manchester cough).
Crowded, c1901-14
Sky Rage first appears in this illustration for a French satirical magazine. Photo: Science and Society Image Library/SSPL/Getty Images
While imagined visions of future transportation frequently depict crowded skies with flying vehicles, road traffic continues to remain tediously earthbound (barely enough space for a two-lane road, I tell you). Robida presented a sleek, almost animalistic driverless vehicle approach. I, however, appreciate the comical impracticality of this airship traffic jam. You can easily tell it’s French from the man’s gesture on the far left. They sure threw this at me at numerous Gaulish crossroads.
Bathroom, 2000, 1899
Because she’s worth it. Photo: CCI/Shutterstock
Commissioned by French toymaker Jean-Marc Côté, illustrations of the year 2000 for the 1900 Paris Exposition achieved fame when Isaac Asimov republished them in 1986. They depict scenarios like underwater hippopotamus and seahorse rides, a bus pulled by whales, and scientists investigating giant, menacing “microorganisms.” I chose this specific piece illustrating how the laziest woman in the world would prefer to conduct her nightly errands. Science, let’s materialize this!
School, 2000, 1899
Are headphones required during class? Little did they know. Photo: Public domain
Another 2000 card portrays a rather bleak vista of the future school. I appreciate how the teacher reassigns the Racine and Molière editions to child apprentices rather than mastering them personally. Côté wasn’t alone in envisioning educational reforms that involve transmitting knowledge through buttons pressed with an audible click, as Arthur Radebaugh did in the late 1950s. The idea was to enable students to advance at a pace
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