Wool by Hugh Howey

This is the first book by a self-published author that I have truly loved. I have read a lot that I enjoyed, but Hugh Howey grabbed me with this book in a way that made me compulsively buy the rest of the series.

The book is in my weakness genre: apocalypse scenarios and the civilizations that emerge in their aftermath. Nevertheless, Hugh Howey has such a unique approach to the genre that justifies his immense success with this book.

The idea is relatively simple. People now live in small collectives buried under the ground in silos. The society is highly segregated by occupation and people live in fear of breaking one of the rules that will result in them being sent outside to 'clean' the lens of the camera that shows them the decaying outside world. You are thrown into this world and immediately begin to question what is 'known' about the outside and the history of the world. The highly constrained world you are presented with is perfect for creating suspense and mystery. You learn more about the world as the daring characters of the world challenge the authorities. It is well crafted, believable and enjoyable to read.

I highly recommend Wool by Hugh Howey to anyone with a penchant for post-apocalypse scenarios.

A diet of science fiction

I grew up on a diet of science fiction.

That may sound unhealthy to you. Of all the essential genre groups I have focused on only one, to the exclusion of others. Perhaps it has resulted in a distortion of my world view. I don't have the perspective to say. What I can say is that I still think that science fiction, of all the genres that fit under the trendy new label speculative fiction, is something incredibly important for human society. It is an artistic embodiment of what are perhaps the most defining aspects of humans and the ecological niche they occupy: tool use, invention and the modification of the world to suit us.

Science fiction embodies our capacity to understand the world, and invent new things to change our relationship with the world. No other form of fiction engages so deeply with this aspect of humanity. This aspect of humanity defines the way we live and die, it both creates and solves the majority of the problems we face. For this reason I am proud to say I live on a diet of science fiction.