Professor Andrew Martin is dead before the book even begins. An alien from another galaxy now inhabits his body. As the alien soon discovers, Andrew wasn’t a very nice person. The alien is sent to Earth to destroy evidence of a major mathematical problem that Andrew had recently solved. But he soon finds himself learning more about “the humans”, including the professor, his wife and son, than he ever thought possible, and he even starts to care for, and even love, his wife and son. The alien must make a decision whether to complete his mission and return home, or to find a new home on Earth. The Humans is a funny, compulsively readable novel about alien abduction, mathematics, and that most interesting subject of all: ourselves. Combine Douglas Adams’s irreverent take on life, the universe, and everything with a genuinely moving love story, and you have some idea of the humor, originality, and poignancy of Matt Haig’s latest novel.

I had no preconceptions and while I love Star Trek myself - I took this as more of a discovery of human traits and emotions.At times the movie feels like " Hereditary" without the supernatural elements and gore. It's a psychological horror movie about the ordinary miseries and compromises of family. You can feel the tension radiating from all of them, as if they were mortals being watched by ghosts, or ghosts being observed by parapsychologists: blobs of energy whose every shift in feeling registers as a change in color temperature. You are human. You will care about money. But realise it can’t make you happy because happiness is not for sale.

I found the alien's facination with mathematics to be a bit out there for me - I know music is supposed to be based on math etc but I still enjoy music without the math theorem behind it.Kidd, James (29 November 2015). "Matt Haig interview: The writer hopes his new book will help him banish the ghosts of Christmas past". The Independent. Archived from the original on 12 May 2022 . Retrieved 2 October 2016.