Review: Silo Shows the Perils of Authoritarian Hierarchies

Leaders depicted in the Apple TV+ series outlaw "relics" of the past, even including PEZ dispensers.

Ten thousand people living in a primitive 144-floor underground silo believe they are the last people on Earth. For over 100 years, they have been told by the powers that be that outside all is desolate and poisonous. They even have proof, thanks to cafeteria windows showing the surface wasteland. Apple TV+'s Silo, based on Hugh Howey's Wool book series, is a classic tale of the dangers of blindly trusting authority.

The first episode shows that the mayor, the head of I.T., and the head of the judiciary know more about the backstory of the silo than previously revealed. They enforce a mysterious pact—one that stifles communication by not allowing mechanized transportation within the silo and outlaws "relics" from the past such as books, watches, and even PEZ dispensers.

Many residents have never traveled farther than a few levels from the one they were born on. The authorities are secretly surveilling everyone and controlling who can reproduce. When someone shows doubt or suspicion, they are sent to "clean"—wiping the cafeteria window from the outside. Cleanings are a spectacle meant to remind every resident to fall in line and not ask questions. In such rigid hierarchies, the narrative shows, one courageous person can be enough to break the system.

Comments

[SRG2]

FWIW it's a very good series, and Season 1 had the perfect ending.

[tracerv]

I liked the books. I'm sure they will fuck up the show somehow. Just like they did to Foundation.

[SRG2]

I don’t think they did.

Foundation…once you accept that the “adaptation” was “inspired by some names and ideas in the Asimov trilogy” rather than an actual, you know, adaptation, it became more enjoyable, and S2 was better than S1,

FWIW many years ago I chutzpa'd my way into visiting Asimov in his CPW duplex. The days when authors had their names in the telephone directory and you could call them up 🙂

[Stuck in California]

Haven't watched the tv show. Or the one of Foundation, though I can just assume they fucked that one up good, too. Modern tv writers generally can't do classic sci-fi, they only trade in a scant few overworked tropes and themes. I don't even think they understand the source material.

Wool is worth a read, though, if anyone wants an interesting cautionary tale. Originally self published as a short story, too, which kind of tickles my root-for-the-underdog fancy. But it's a good, well written little mystery about a small post apocalyptic society.

[Jimbo BTR]

This article is bizarrely short; it’s like the author only read someone else’s synopsis of the show or they just watched the first episode before writing this. The plot is actually a lot more convoluted than the author makes out.

Having said that, Silo and Foundation are both terribly woke. The women are the only ones allowed to be heroic, while the men are all evil, incompetent or both. It just ruins what might otherwise be good shows.

I’ve never read the book(s) on which the Silo TV series is based so, I can’t comment on how much the story has been bastardized. However, I have read all the Foundation books and I can say that the TV series completely bastardized that story.

The TV show appropriated the names from the books but, then proceeded to use them in a completely different story – a story where only women can be heroic while all the men are evil, incompetent or both. Of course, the woke writers had to gender-swap a significant number of characters to make this possible (the race-swapping is less significant and I don’t think Asimov would have cared about it, to be honest). Worst of all, they changed some of the characters into the opposite of what they were in the books. Salvor Hardin was a paragon of reason and logic in the books but, in the show she’s all emotion and irrationality, imbued with the mystical power of prescience.

The funny thing is, the story they’ve written is actually interesting. An empire ruled by a genetic dynasty of clones fighting against a rebellion led by a man who has digitized his consciousness as a means to combat the emperor’s essential immortality – this truly would have made a good story on its own. Instead, the writers chose to use Foundation as a skinsuit for this idea and, in doing so, debased both stories.

If I had been making the show, I would have based it on the book Prelude To Foundation, one of the last books written in the series and one which doesn’t have significant time jumps in the story. On its own, Prelude To Foundation is a cracking story, much better suited to adaptation to TV.

But, then the wokies wouldn’t have been able to destroy another IP cherished by normal people so, we got another shitshow instead.

[Johnathan Galt]

A cautionary tale of what life will be like if Demunists succeed.