Silo, a TV show on Apple TV+, based on Hugh Howey’s Wool book series, is one of my favorite types of science fiction. One where the characters find themselves in a world very different from ours, which they, and us, don’t understand the nature of. Typically as the story unfolds, we learn that the world isn’t really what it seems.
In many ways, this mirrors the discovery we as a species went through in understanding our own world. Initially we thought it was a flat surface. The original cosmology in the Old Testament, for instance, had it as a flat platform held up by pillars, with Sheol, the land of the dead, underground, and a solid firmament in the sky holding up the water above from the water down below.
The ancient Greeks figured out that we actually live on a sphere. Some even speculated that this sphere wasn’t the center of everything, but it was a fringe idea. Copernicus resurrected the idea in 1543, but it remained fringe until the invention of the telescope. We then subsequently learned that not only is the earth not the center of everything, but neither is the sun, our galaxy, or anything else as far as anyone can tell, and that we actually exist in an unimaginably vast and mostly empty void.
The sci-fi sub-genre basically takes this kind of discovery and compresses it into a dramatic story as the characters learn the nature of their world. In Silo, that world is an underground silo with over a hundred levels and a circular stair in the center for moving between levels. The upper levels are for administration and leadership, and the lower ones take care of the mechanics of keeping the silo running, with other functions like “IT” in the levels between.
There is an outside surface world, which can be viewed through monitors. It shows a surface that appears desolate, but only the immediate surroundings of the silo’s exit can be seen. To leave the silo appears to be a death sentence, due to something toxic about the outside environment.
The culture inside the silo, which houses about ten thousand people, discourages asking too many questions about the situation, to the extent that people with a disposition to ask questions are often denied the sparse opportunities to have children. And there is an enforcement division, “Judicial”, tasked with ensuring that certain information doesn’t get around, as well as securing any “relics”, artifacts from early in the silo’s history, or even before its construction, which could provide information about the nature of the world.
Anyone who wishes to leave the silo can. In fact, stating that you wish to leave is an irrevocable request. Once uttered, it cannot be retracted. Such people are clothed in an environmental suit and sent outside with cleaning wool. The cleaning wool is meant to be used to clean the lens of the exterior camera which the society inside the silo uses to view the surface. Such a person can’t be forced to clean, but apparently everyone who goes outside does in fact clean, in the few minutes before whatever is in the atmosphere gets through their suit, and they die.
Naturally the story focuses on characters that do question their situation. We start off seeing the story of the sheriff, Holston, and his wife. His wife, upset about not being able to have children, digs into why, and ends up requesting to go outside. Holston investigates what led to her decision, with the result that he too eventually asks to go outside. His final act is to make a surprise recommendation for his successor, Juliette Nichols, a star mechanic from the lower levels.
Juliette initially isn’t interested, until she realizes that as sheriff, she would be in a position to investigate the death of her lover, another questioner who died under mysterious circumstances. In the process of doing so, she puts herself in great danger, and begins to understand the nature of the world she lives in.
And that’s about as far as I can go without getting into spoilers. It’s a seriously good show, which I highly recommend. I’ve never gotten into Howey’s book series, but might have to give it a try now.
Have you seen it? Or read the books? If so, what did you think?
SelfAwarePatterns 
I’ve read the books, and enjoyed them. From memory, what you describe sounds pretty much the same setup as the books. It’s good twisty character-based SF.
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Thanks. Good to know. I read the first story several years ago, which I think ends with Holston’s cleaning. I probably need to add the rest of the series to my reading list.
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I must have watched the first installment as I recall the request to leave resulting in imprisonment and expulsion. But, I never followed up. 1/2 Raised by Wolves & A Boy & His Dog, kind of thing. I may have to dust it off to see if it’s more than just Lord of Flies in an underground city. So often such plots revolve around interpersonal conflict such that one could take the story, stick it in any confined (trapped) situation, and the audience wouldn’t even notice the switch. Yeah, every story is about people (animal, alien or human) but soap operas are not my gig.
We’re watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which takes a season to get going, but the mouth on this chick, when she gets wound up — woof! Withering. The script obviously comes from some clever writers (who were not on strike).
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I’d say it’s more than just soap opera. It’s not just about who is doing what to who this week. I agree, those get boring very fast. It’s why I soured so quickly on House of the Dragon. I don’t really care which of those assholes come out on top. But this one has the overall arc of figuring out why they’re there, and why they’re not allowed to know.
Haven’t seen that show, although I think I’ve heard the name before. Based on a skim of the description, not sure it’s my kind of thing, although maybe I’d feel different after watching the first episode.
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With the dearth of good content, I’ll give Silo another go. (Have to watch it alone, SF is not my wife’s cuppa.)
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Watching now…
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Hope you enjoy it!
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That was fun. Quite the setup, now. She reminded me of another blonde actress – in a movie called The Hunt (Hillary Swank = bad guy). The hero in that one, Betty Gilpin, and the one in Silo could be sisters, kick-ass sisters.
Where are all the other bodies of those who had to clean? I’d figure there’d be a pile of them out there.
I was hoping she’d take a rock and break the camera. Now she has to go over and say hi to all the other cameras. Or walk to that blown out city on 10 minutes of oxygen.
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I haven’t seen The Hunt. Horror is usually not my thing, at least unless there’s something to it besides just horror.
I wondered the same thing about the bodies. Feels like a clue?
It looked like she has a choice of nearby destinations. The question is what she’ll find in them.
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The Hunt is worth watching.
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I started this book, didn’t continue reading, though. May pick it up again in the future. And there are so many interesting shows which are only accessibly though subscription sites. If I subscribed to all of them my monthly bill would be enormous! (So, I do not. My basic cable service comes with Netflix, and we are Amazon.com Prime subscribers (for the shipping benefits) but that is where I draw the line. I have seen some series, like Star Trek: Strange New Worlds become available on Prime, that were previously only available on Paramount+. So, I am back o the summer reruns pattern of being able to see things you missed some time later.
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Yeah, I know what you mean. I didn’t subscribe to Apple until it started having shows I wanted to watch. And I can definitely understand not wanting to pay for a whole bunch of subscriptions. I know some people who cycle through the major services, spending a month or two on each service, then canceling and moving on to the next one, then returning back later to catch up again. But that seems like a lot of work, and I can understand just not bothering.
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Yeah, if I were motivated by money, I never would have become a teacher (the fatal flaw in every Teacher Incentive Program).
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No. Sounds like a re-hash of Plato’s cave. Postmodern? Or is there more to it? I.e. why do you recommend it?
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Well, if you don’t like stories of people trying to understand the nature of their world, I might not recommend it. But if you do, it’s worth checking out.
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It’s good to hear that this is a good one! We’ve had Apple TV for several months now, after a brother said we need to watch Ted Lasso and a sister recommended Severance. So I’ve seen the promo shot for this featuring the actress who played the mother on Dune. That gets me right there because I think they all did such a great job, and certainly her. This series sounds like fairly standard sci-fi, with strange circumstances to figure out. I’m good with that.
Any mind control here Mike? Is there a modern day China type government cultivating these people into unquestioning servants of the state? Even if this strange silo structure in the ground under a toxic surface may not technically seem all that plausible to me, the politics of a mind control stated itself do seem so.
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I’ve heard interesting things about Severance. Would you recommend it Eric?
No outright mind control in Silo. At least not obviously, and not so far. But there is a sort of social credit system, with authorities judging people for deciding whether they should be allowed to have children. Something that actually would have to be closely regulated in a sealed environment.
One thing I didn’t get into in the post is that Juliette’s relationship with her lover was “unsanctioned”. I don’t recall it ever being specified exactly why (it was hetero, so not an issue along those lines), but you get the idea that the authorities are in everyone’s business, with little tolerance for too much independent thought. So if you’re interested in a story in an authoritarian environment, this would fit the bill.
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I think my wife kind of got bored with Severance so I’ve only seen maybe 3 episodes. They didn’t strike me as bad, but more slow, like they were building up to something that might be very good. It’s an interesting concept. Here you essentially choose to sever yourself from any work life each week, and so can enjoy time off perpetually while that “other person” becomes a perpetual slave daily to some strange controlling corporation. We’ll certainly be checking out Silo before we go back to that one however.
Sounds like China might be perfecting the art of mind control better than they do in Silo, but I’ll take it. Sci-fi doesn’t always need to match the strange things which happen in our world for it to still be entertaining.
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I haven’t read the Hugh Howey books. Watching the first few episodes of Silo was slow going for me. But by the end of this first season I was hooked. I hope I’m not disappointed by the end. On the another note, I’m looking forward to the second season of Asimov’s Foundation which starts this Friday.
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On Silo’s eventual end, I know what you mean. So many TV shows don’t live up to the promise of their early seasons. At least in this case, the books are there, so hopefully they wouldn’t be getting adapted if their ending was disappointing. Of course, that doesn’t mean the adaptation won’t mess it up.
Me too on Foundation. I know a lot of purists hate how different it is from the books, but I enjoyed the first season.
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If one is permitted to adapt Shakespeare and Jane Austen, Isaac Asimov is not exempt!
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