Science fiction usually comes packed with a wallop. Death stars explode, or they aren't worthy of the name. Mystery viruses wipe out millions, and make the Black Plague look like a case of the sniffles. Galactic civilizations are subjugated, if they’re lucky, or swallowed by black holes if they aren’t. And if a weapon of mass destruction appears in the opening chapter, you can bet the complete works of Chekhov that it will destruct the masses, or a good majority of them, before the final page.
Subtlety is as scarce as plutonium-239 in these books. That’s what makes Matt Haig's The Humans all the more remarkable. Haig has written a science fiction novel about compassion, and the frailties of the human condition. But the sweetest twist is the narrator: an extra-terrestrial from a remote galaxy who is trying to live undercover in human society. Even better, he sees us more clearly than we see ourselves.
Let’s call our alien Professor Andrew Martin. That isn’t his real name, but rather the identity he has assumed on Earth. Our visitor from a distant galaxy murdered the real Professor Martin, a 43-year-old mathematics professor at University of Cambridge, and has adopted a passable imitation of the dead man’s body. His purpose is to destroy Martin’s proof of the Riemann hypothesis, a famous math problem that has dogged the best minds for the last 150 years, and murder anyone who knows about it.
But this isn’t a simple task. This hapless extraterrestrial has to take on Martin’s various responsibilities as a husband, father, friend and teacher. He is ill-prepared for this mission—partly due to his ignorance of human customs (even the basics, such as wearing clothes or eating meals), and even more because he comes from a society that values rationality and mathematics above all other pursuits. Face it, it’s hard adjusting to mundane concerns after spending your formative years on a planet where individuals devote leisure hours to contemplating prime numbers.
But let’s let our narrator tell his own side of the story:
“Prior to arriving on Earth I did not have midbrown hair that fell in a natural side-parting. Equally, I did not have an opinion on The Planets by Holtz [sic] or Talking Heads’ second album, because I did not agree with the concept of music. Or I shouldn't have anyway. And how could I believe that Australian wine was automatically inferior to wine sourced from other regions on the planet when I had never drunk anything but liquid nitrogen?”
There are many pleasures in reading this novel, but I especially enjoy Haig’s deftness in shifting from comedy to profundity, and maintaining a fast-paced story all the while. Some of the finest passages deal with the new Professor Martin’s haphazard encounters with those many things we take for granted. We watch in the wings while he has his first experience with shopping, cigarettes, the Beach Boys, the family dog, coffee, sporting events, TV news, poetry, police interrogation techniques, automobiles, mental health professionals, school bullies, peanut butter, and various other quotidian ingredients of everyday life. Along the way, our narrator discovers new passions—for Emily Dickinson, Cinema Paradiso and Debussy on the one hand, and his inherited wife and son on the other—and starts questioning old ones. Rationality doesn't look quite so appealing after a few glasses of Australian wine, with the right music and company to set the mood.
The success of this kind of writing rests solely on the insight and skill of the writer, and Haig delivers a virtuoso performance. Other science fiction writers are skilled at constructing new worlds, but Haig achieves something better, he creates a whole new worldview. Adding to the difficulty, he shows how this perspective on the vanity of human wishes might prove so persuasive that even someone lacking all experience with it—indeed, approaching it with outright hostility—might be persuaded of its validity. This is the softest of polemics, but no less effective for that fact.
A story of this sort could easily collapse into facile absurdist comedy. The fact that Haig manages to deliver so much more than mere laughs, without losing the humorous elements inherent in his plot, probably results from the autobiographical origins of The Humans . In his mid-twenties, Haig fell into a deep psychic malaise, a combination of depression and anxiety that left him literally incapacitated. Storytelling played a key role in his recovery, and his vocation as an author became linked in Haig’s mind, with an affirmation of the human condition and the quest for a life worth living.
Even at that early stage, Haig had conceived the basic plot of The Humans , although he didn’t find the courage to reveal himself so intimately in print for many years. But over time Haig’s work has increasingly embraced self revelation, and with powerful results. “I think books can save us,” he declares, “and I think they sort of saved me.” One could hardly find a less postmodern or more unfashionable stance for a novelist, but the lived authenticity that permeates this narrative probably couldn’t exist without Haig’s deeply held conviction that fiction, even genre fiction, has a destiny beyond escapism and entertainment.
I guess I should be shocked and appalled that the science fiction community hasn’t embraced this book. The Humans didn’t even earn a nomination from the Hugo voters (or combatants, I should perhaps say), who seem to disagree on many things, but apparently agree that science fiction ought to return to its origins as exemplary stories for youngsters (albeit sometimes masquerading as books for adults), filled with teachable moments and driven by didactic impulses. At the very moment when established literary fiction is turning to sci-fi, sci-fi seems determined to punish books that don’t fit into formulas. And The Humans definitely goes against that grain.
Here’s the strange twist. The Edgar Awards, given by the Mystery Writers of America, did nominate Haig’s book—despite its complete disconnection from anything having to do with mystery fiction. And I note that The Humans has attracted a cult following since its initial release. Teachers are sneaking it into their classroom. Fans are building its reputation by word of mouth. I even hear accounts of readers who found their life changed and psychic wounds healed by this novel. If someone doesn’t step in and stop it, this whole book might by bypass the gatekeepers and hit the big time.
Haig isn’t your typical novelist. In other books, he has retold Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I with the main characters replaced by dogs, and updated Hamlet from the perspective of an autistic pre-teen. He isn’t afraid of taking chances. But Haig has said that he hopes to be remembered for The Humans . I suspect that might happen; in fact, I think it might already be happening.
Ted Gioia writes on music, literature and popular culture. He is the author of ten books. His most recent book is How to Listen to Jazz (Basic Books).