The next day, Holston is dressed in the special suit meant for cleaners and sent outside to clean the sensors, only to then wait for death as the toxic climate quickly erodes his suit. He locks himself in his own cell and tells the deputy that he ‘ wants to go outside’. At the opening of Wool, Holston purposefully commits the same unforgivable sin that his wife had years before. Three years before, his own wife was sent to clean. In his many years as Sheriff, he’s sent a few people to clean. The ultimate punishment will be swift and severe: a ‘ cleaning’. For if those words are uttered, there won’t be any of the normal reprimands or disciplinarian action there won’t even be a trial or a chance for the accused to be heard. But there is one rule that must never be broken: words that must never be spoken. People have occupations, food is grown and rationed, air is purified, waste is recycled, oil is pumped in from the reserves below, power is generated, population is controlled through strict birth control and a lottery for couples requesting a child, and different levels serve different functions to meet the needs of the people and the needs of the silo as a whole. Life in the silo is civilized and structured. The silo has many rules and regulations to keep peace and order and, for the most part, it works. All they know is that the silo keeps them safe.

Their civilization had been in the silo for so long that the knowledge of what led them there had long since been forgotten. For generations, the people of the silo have lived, worked and died beneath the ground and the current inhabitants have never known another existence. Inside the silo, tech teams constantly monitor the earth’s environment as they have for hundreds of years. Death would be in a matter of minutes, even with protective gear. Up top, the world is a wasteland with toxic air and scorched earth. In Wool, what’s left of humankind lives in an underground silo, drilling over one hundred monstrous floors into the earth’s crust. Hugh’s extreme success as a self-published author is what drew me to investigate, aside from being thoroughly addicted to post-apocalyptic and science-fiction tales of survival. That’s when Simon & Schuster took notice and offered Howey a contract. Although he was self-published, the Wool Omnibus (original title) raced up the charts and landed on the New York Times Best Sellers list. After the first five were published, he compiled them together and released the omnibus edition as a stand-alone novel. When Howey released the first short book, it rapidly traveled via word of mouth and became instantly popular with science-fiction junkies.

Wool is a collection of five novellas which were originally self-published and individually released on Amazon.

Wool by hugh howey