Black Flower Social Book Club Choice – January 2027

We’re so excited to be launching our Black Flower Social bookish chat.

Thursday 14 January 2027, 6.30pm.

January – Speculative fiction

If this sounds like your sort of thing you can join our bookish social by messaging @blackflowerocial to book your spot.

Playground by Richard Powers 

Rafi and Todd are two polar opposites at an elite high school. As adults, Rafi gets lost in literature, while Todd’s enters the world of AI. Elsewhere, Evie sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs; Ina grows up in naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home.

All of these people meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, marked for humanity’s next great adventure. Set in the world’s largest ocean, Playground interweaves profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity.

Hum by Helen Phillips

In a hot and gritty city populated by super-intelligent robots called ‘Hums’, May seeks some reprieve from recent hardships and from her family’s addiction to their devices. She splurges on a weekend away at the Botanical Garden – a rare, green refuge in the heart of the city, where forests, streams and animals flourish. But when it becomes clear that the Garden is not the idyll she hoped it would be, and her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a Hum of uncertain motives in order to restore the life of her family.

Gripping and unflinching, Hum is about our most cherished human relationships in a world compromised by climate change and dizzying technological revolution, a world with both dystopian and utopian possibilities.

Winner of the Climate Fiction Prize 2026