Wool by Hugh Howey

What a curious novel this is. Built on the premise that humanity dwells in a 'silo', a vast underground bunker that's spread out over 150 floors, Wool presents a dystopian society that in someways innovative and in others curiously dull. Reading like a cross between The Amtrack Wars and 1984, Wool tracks a rebellion in the making as the protagonist is sentenced to 'cleaning', being forced into the hostile outside environment ostensibly to clean the cameras that keep track of the world beyound the silo. A punishment detail, nobody survives this experience, though obviously this is about to change, and secrets are about to be revealed.

Openly post apocalytic, Howey, has made some interesting choices, some of which served to throw me out of the novel. For example this terrifying world has email and enough food that people can become fat, but no lifts and reproduction is done according to a lottery. It's a minor niggle but at the same time I found it did little to draw me into the story as I kept wondering why and how the society would actually work (perhaps the indication that there have been multiple uprisings is an indication that it doesn't, and serves a commentary on the brutality of authoritarianism, I don't know - it just feels as if it hasn't been thought through properly).

The story itself is fairly well done, with strong characterisation, though the swift escalation to revolt felt a little contrived. Hinging purely on one event, there feels as if there's no real reason for it, aside from a perceived injustice, and consequently feels like there's nothing behind it aside from the author's will. Admittedly the other revelations, do confirm how unjust the system is but their impact is rather curtailed by the fact that, as of the end of Wool, only one character knows about them.

Wool is obviously setting up a larger story, one that feels too familiar; of revolt and overthrowing the system. As a consequence I won't be along for the ride.

Welcome

Welcome to Fallen Worlds, my blog devoted to Post Apocalypse fiction, television, film and games. Along the way you'll find reviews, thoughts and general pieces about the end of the world and the way our ideas about it reflect what's going on in society, politics, economics and so on. There'll be pieces about zombies, Triffids, alien invasions, and mutants as well as the more mundane likes of nuclear wars, epidemics, famines and other things. I hope to even throw in some field trip reports as I start wandering about looking at things like British nuclear bunkers, and tracking down information about some of my favourite Post Apocalypse authors. In addition I may be putting together some pieces about politics and economics and how they affect our perceptions of the end of the world.

So who am I?

I'm Steve Cotterill and I find all this stuff fascinating... even the zombies, though I do like to keep them at the back of the property (they have such sloppy table manners). I am particularly interested in the British Apocalypse, from Mary Shelley's The Last Man, through the War of the Worlds and onto the Cosy Catastrophes of the 1950s and 1960s, and into the modern day with our increasingly fragile sense of what's real. I really believe that the British stories have a different timbre to those written in the USA or elsewhere, one that is uniquely based on class and which reflects the UK's nature. Generally these are less about lone gunmen or the terrifying nature of mutation, and more about communities and horror.

But why do I like these stories? The apocalypse has become something of a monster mash over the years, and I suppose you could argue it always has been. The focus is on the strange things that arise from the apocalypse, be they the undead, mutants or something else.  The heart of these stories is people though and how we react to the huge upheavals that any form of apocalypse would bring.

I find that fascinating and often intensely hopeful.

Speaking of hope, I hope you'll find the pieces I put up interesting, and come with me on this long journey through the Fallen Worlds.