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Hush Halo is a dystopian sci-fi poetry project where every poem comes with its own soundscape. You can read it, hear it, or hold it in your hand as a book or even as a mug. This page is the map for you to get around.
But hey, let’s make sure you have subscribed first.
What is Hush Halo?
Hush Halo is both a personal art publication and a developing book series. I started imagining this way earlier, but in August 2025 I published my first poem here in August 2025.
Hush Halo leads with speculative, dystopian poetry and near-future sci-fi storytelling, and it’s about technology, humanity, identity, and the strange direction the world sometimes feels like it’s heading toward.
I combine poetry, soundscapes and visual storytelling into one immersive form I call Poetry with a Pulse. Every poem has its own soundscape, so you can read it, listen to it, or do both at once.
The story starts after the Great Optimization. A privileged faction known as the Systoics wired themselves fully into the system. By stripping away everything inefficient, painful or unpredictable, they believed they had perfected the human form. My poems follow what that perfection costs.
Every poem stands on its own, and each one belongs to a larger world that unfolds piece by piece.
Where to go from Square One?
You don’t need to know the whole structure to experience Hush Halo. You can enter from almost anywhere, and every door leads to the same world. Here are four ways in, depending on what you’re after.
Read a poem. If you want to know whether this is for you, start with the latest poems, or go back to the very beginning with my first poem. Most pieces are short, so you can have a feel for the style within a minute.
Listen. Every poem has its own soundscape, and they work well on their own. Put on headphones and let the audio set the mood before you read a word.
Start from the beginning. If you like to read things in order, Book I.I, Paradise Beyond Pulse, is where the story begins. Books I.II and I.III, Rendering Humanity and Hollow Eye, follow after it.
Follow along. I write Writer’s Updates about the project and what’s on my mind, and subscribing is the easiest way to keep up as it unfolds.
Not sure where to start? Simply pick any poem that looks most interesting and let it pull you in.
You don’t need to know everything.
Just get in and explore.
BOOKS
The First Arc: Singularity of Systoics
The first three Hush Halo books form one arc called Singularity of Systoics. It follows the Systoics, the privileged few who merged with the system during the Great Optimization, and what their perfect world slowly does to them.
You can start with any book, they were not written to be read in order.
Paradise Beyond Pulse · Book I.I
The first volume opens after the transformation is complete. Every need is met before it is felt, desire has been optimized away, and calm is mistaken for peace. This isn’t a story about rebellion. It’s about a deal that can’t be undone, where comfort slowly replaces connection. Read the book page or go straight to the poems.
Rendering Humanity · Book I.II
The second volume looks at what happens to a person inside that system. Reactions are shaped before they form, grief and anger dissolve ahead of time, and identity is curated instead of lived. Then small cracks show up where individuality refuses to be processed. It’s the book where the cost of all that clarity starts to be visible. Here is the book page and the poems.
Hollow Eye · Book I.III
In the third volume, perfection no longer feels like a goal and starts to feel suffocating. It follows a slow, uneven awakening, and not everyone wakes up. Safety begins to look like paralysis, and a quiet search begins for something unfinished and alive. Read the book page or the poems.
Every poem in the books has a QR code that opens its own soundscape in your phone’s browser, no registration needed. The books are available as paperback on Amazon and as eBooks in the shop.
How did I bring my poetry to life
Let’s face it. Selling poetry is hard. I’ve written about it before and will write again (see What About Money?). I’ve thought a lot about how to lower the threshold for buying it.
A poetry book is a big ask for someone who has never heard of you. So I started looking for ways to make poetry feel less like a educated purchase decision and more like a coffee mug.
Poetry with pulse in the books
Every poem in the books has its own QR code. Point your phone’s camera at it, tap the link that appears, and the poem’s soundscape opens in your browser. No app, no registration. The books are on Amazon as paperbacks, and in the shop as eBooks, which are exact replicas of the printed pages.
Poetry in everyday products
How about a full poetry book in a coffee mug?
The mugs, coasters, magnets and stickers in the shop each carry one permanent QR code. Behind it runs a loop that shows a new poem experience every day, all year round.
The idea is simple: you don’t have to buy a whole book to live with a little Hush Halo. Scan it with your coffee, read the poem, hear the soundscape, and come back tomorrow for the next one.
My poetry in: Mugs · Coasters · Magnets · Stickers
Creating Circulta
I built these loops for Hush Halo first. Once they worked, I realized that other creators might need the same thing: poets, artists, photographers, musicians, anyone who has an archive of work and no easy way to put it into someone’s daily life. That’s how Circulta came about. It’s the tool I use for my own products, and anyone can build a loop with it. I write about the ideas behind it in Circulta Circle.
I don’t know yet how well this works. I’m trying it out loud, like most things here. But it already gives people a lower-pressure way into the poetry, and that was the point.
Subscribe & follow
The easiest way to keep up with Hush Halo is to subscribe. New poems, soundscapes and writer’s updates land in your inbox, so you don’t have to remember to check the site. Subscribing is free, and you can upgrade to a paid subscription if you want to support the work.
One Substack quirk is worth knowing about. If you only follow Hush Halo instead of subscribing, you’ll see my short notes in your feed, but not my posts and articles. It’s a Substack thing, not mine, so if you want the poems themselves, subscribe.
Call me Sam
Call me Sam. For privacy reasons, I work under the pen name Samia Oldman, or simply Sam. I’m a writer and creative working mostly with speculative poetry and various art projects. The name started as a joke, back when I was pretty annoyed at AI and at Sam Altman in particular. It stuck.
English is not my first language, so when you spot a typo, just smile. I also self-publish everything. That includes the writing, the editing, the concept, the book and cover design, the websites, the online store and the newsletters. The paintings, drawings and handmade things you may see here or on Instagram are mine too.
Connecting with me and my work
You’ve already subscribed to Hush Halo, right?
Right?!
Samia (Blog)
Samia is my personal, unofficial corner: the busy brain, the weird, neurohappiness, burnout, and anything that doesn’t fit into Hush Halo. Be kind, own your glitch.
Circulta Circle
Circulta Circle is my newsletter about turning poetry, writing, art and music into new products and income, so a creative archive can live a longer life. It’s practical, honest and mostly for people who make things and want to earn from them without giving up the work itself.
Instagram
@thehushhalo has random visuals and sneak peeks from the project. @samiaoldman is my own account.
Connect and support
The best way to reach me is a direct message here on Substack. Comments are good too, and tagging me helps me find them.
If you’d like to support Hush Halo, a review means a lot, whether on Amazon, on Goodreads or in the Reader’s Corner. So does sharing a poem with someone, subscribing, or buying me a coffee. It’s a small, independent project, and every bit of it helps. You can also find my books on my Amazon author page.
I love the approach and the intent. It’s long been a dream to world build dystopian scifi, I must read these!