- Howey, Hugh. Wool. New York: Simon & Schuster, [2011] 2013. ISBN 978-1-4767-3395-1.
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Wool was originally self-published
as a stand-alone novella. The series grew into a total
of six novellas, collected into three books. This “Omnibus
Edition” contains all three books, now
designated “Volume 1 of the Silo Trilogy”. Two
additional volumes in the series:
Shift and
Dust are respectively a
prequel and sequel to the present work.
The Silo is the universe to its inhabitants. It consists of a
cylinder whose top is level with the surrounding terrain and
extends downward into the Earth for 144 levels, with a central
spiral staircase connecting them. Transport among the levels is
purely by foot traffic on the staircase, and most news and
personal messages are carried by porters who constantly ascend
and descend the stairs. Electronic messages can be sent, but
are costly and rarely used. Levels are divided by
functionality, and those who live in them essentially compose
castes defined by occupation. Population is strictly
controlled and static. Administration is at the top (as is
usually the case), while the bottom levels are dedicated to the
machines which produce power, circulate and purify the air, pump
out ground water which would otherwise flood the structure, and
drill for energy and mine resources required to sustain the
community. Intermediate levels contain farms, hospitals and
nurseries, schools, and the mysterious and secretive IT (never
defined, but one assumes “Information Technology”,
which many suspect is the real power behind the scenes [isn't it
always?]). There is some mobility among levels and occupations,
but many people live most of their lives within a few levels of
where they were born, taking occasional rare (and exhausting)
trips to the top levels for special occasions.
The most special of occasions is a “cleaning”. From
time to time, some resident of the silo demands to leave or,
more often, is deemed a threat to the community due to
challenging the social order, delving too deeply into its
origins, or expressing curiosity about what exists outside, and
is condemned to leave the silo wearing a protective suit against
the forbiddingly hostile environment outside, to clean the
sensors which provide denizens their only view of the
surroundings: a barren landscape with a ruined city in the
distance. The suit invariably fails, and the cleaner's body
joins those of others scattered along the landscape. Why do
those condemned always clean? They always have, and it's
expected they always will.
The silo's chief is the mayor, and order is enforced by the
sheriff, to whom deputies in offices at levels throughout the
silo report. The current sheriff's own wife was sent to
cleaning just three years earlier, after becoming obsessed with
what she believed to be a grand deception by IT and eventually
breaking down in public. Sheriff Holston's own obsession grows
until he confronts the same fate.
This is a claustrophobic, dystopian novel in which the reader
begins as mystified with what is going on and why as are the
residents of the silo, at least those who dare to be curious.
As the story progresses, much of which follows the career of a
new sheriff appointed from the depths of the silo, we piece
together, along with the characters, what is happening and how
it came to be and, with them, glimpse a larger world and
its disturbing history. The writing is superb and evocative of
the curious world in which the characters find themselves.
The Kindle edition is presented in a very unusual format. It is illustrated with drawings, some of which are animated—not full motion, but perspectives change, foregrounds and backgrounds shift, and light sources move around. The drawings do not always correspond to descriptions in the text. The illustrations appear to have been adapted from a graphic novel based upon the book. The Kindle edition is free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers.Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.There are numerous mysteries in this story, many of which are explained as the narrative progresses, but there's one central enigma which is never addressed. I haven't read the prequel nor the sequel, and perhaps they deal with it, but this book was written first as a stand-alone, and read as one, it leaves this reader puzzled. The silo has abundant energy produced from oil wells drilled from the lower levels, sufficient to provide artificial lighting throughout including enough to grow crops on the farm levels. There is heavy machinery: pumps, generators, air circulation and purification systems, advanced computer technology in IT, and the infrastructure to maintain all of this along with a logistics, maintenance, and spares operation to keep it all running. And, despite all of this, there's no elevator! The only way to move people and goods among the levels is to manually carry them up and down the circular staircase. Now, I can understand how important this is to the plot of the novel, but it would really help if the reader were given a clue why this is and how it came to be. My guess is that it was part of the design of the society: to impose a stratification and reinforce its structure like the rule of a monastic community (indeed, we later discover the silo is regulated according to a book of Order). I get it—if there's an elevator, much of the plot goes away, but it would be nice to have a clue why there isn't one, when it would be the first thing anybody with the technology to build something like the silo would design into what amounts to a 144 storey building.Spoilers end here.
