Wool by Hugh Howey

Read for the Not just for Stormtroopers sci-fi challenge & for Carl’s Science Fiction Experience.

For generations people have lived in the silo, the only look at the outside they get is on the screens. But the cameras are outsides, and over time they get dirty, the screens are obscured and blurry. But to go outside is to die. Those who are condemned to death, whether because of something they said or did, must clean the four cameras before they succumb to the poisonous and corrosive fumes.

I first came across Wool on Metafilter^[1] and I am so glad that I bought it. It is a dytopian short story, which has “changed the course of self-published ebooks” or so the interwebs tell me.

Through flashbacks we are told about Holston’s life. How he and his wife won the lottery one year, but never got around to having their child. His wife, an IT specialist, was researching how to retrieve deleted data and stumbled across something.

As it is a short story so you can easily read it in one sitting, I read it over mu lunch break, and I think it works well if you read it like that, without too much speculation as to what his wife discovered, and then, once you find out, whether or not she was right.

I really liked this book, it is smart and engaging, and now I’m off to shell out for the other 4 stories in the series.