Could the upcoming “Silo” series become a sci-fi classic?

American author Hugh Howey wrote what would become the first seven chapters of the dystopian novel Wool in the wake of his beloved dog Jolie’s death back in 2011. He called the original self-published post-apocalypse story a “novelette,” as it was not long enough to be a novella, but too long to be a short story. That story caught fire and sold like gangbusters as an e-book on Amazon. The demand was so high that Howey put everything else on hold and went on to complete what would become the rest of the book, self-publishing each new section, in the months that followed.

Fast forward to February of 2023 and Howey has written three novels in the Silo series. Wool was followed by Shift, and then Dust. A television adaptation of the book and its sequels is coming to Apple TV+ reportedly in the next few months. Talk about a modern entertainment success story.

My answer is: absolutely. In Silo — as the series will reportedly be titled on Apple TV+ — there are no brain-eating creatures, no roving bands of cannibals, nor raging fungi or viruses making people lose their minds. No, it is a story about the remnants of humanity confined to a silo hundreds of floors deep in the ground, prohibited by deadly conditions on the surface from emerging from their subterranean home.

This might sound like a concept completely confined in its scope for intriguing plot development. I mean, how much can really happen down there in a silo housing some 10,000 human survivors of a mysterious apocalypse. Turns out, quite a lot.

Keeping the last remaining survivors of humanity alive and functioning as a society inside the confines of an underground silo is a Herculean task. Imagine the potential for crippling psychological breakdown, and for spasms of political violence brought about by social pressures inside the vertical cement tomb. What kinds of compromises must be made? What sorts of lies must be told to insure the continuation of civilization? To what lengths will the political leaders go to maintain social cohesion?

Howey explores all of these questions in the first book, as well as what happens when free-thinking Juliette (the heroine of Wool) takes it upon herself to question just about everything underpinning the silo’s socio-political framework. If it sounds like a book about politics and the human condition, it absolutely is. Howey uses the milieu of humanity forced into a silo in a post-apocalyptic dystopia to explore how it is that humans organize themselves into a functioning society. The main dramatic developments then develop from the breakdown of that society.

Juliette, the protagonist, (reportedly to be played by Rebecca Ferguson in the television series) questions why some people are banished from the silo, what really happens to them when they are forced outside, and why they are all in the silo in the first place. These questions are all heretical within the society of the silo, and the rules are ruthlessly enforced by a small leadership class with varying degrees of political legitimacy. Not only that, but by the time of the events of Wool, humanity has been down there for hundreds of years. It is great stuff.

I won’t spoil the plot by giving away too much, but suffice it to say that Juliette discovers the answers to most of her questions throughout the course of Wool. In Shift, the reader discovers how humanity ended up in its predicament in the first place. It is claustrophobic and dark stuff, but also imbued with hope and enough mystery to keep the pages turning through the night. There are twists and turns, and action, and it is all very gripping throughout.

There is little information available on the scope of the first television season of Silo. If made well, the show has the potential to be a blockbuster. It is, after all, a story about humanity and what it takes for all of us to not only survive, but thrive in a cohesive, functioning society. In other words, it is science fiction at its best.

Feature Image: Silo teaser poster. (Apple TV+)