Book Review > Wool - Hugh Howey

Wool by Hugh Howey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

** Warning Contains Spoilers ** After initially seeing this book advertised as the next Hunger Games and seeing that it was part of a trilogy, I decided to read it as it sounded intriguing. This was a really good book and I wasn’t disappointed. I thought it would take a while to get into this book as most of the action takes place underground in a silo but once the main protagonists were established then I soon got into it. The main character Juliette works in mechanical and has a knack of fixing things. She soon rises to Sheriff but soon finds out things are not as they seem as she learns about the secrets of the silo. She is promoted thanks to Mayor Jahns and against the advice of Bernard who runs the silo and IT. She meets Lukas who works in IT and has a hobby of star gazing through the screens outside. During her time up top she meets Scottie who points out that the views outside are doctored and he dies in a suspected suicide. Bernard soon becomes her nemesis when she starts to delve into the secrets of IT and is demoted back to mechanical. Eventually she goes too far and shares the fate of previous cleaners and has to go outside the silo. But she has help from Walker in mechanical so that she can survive a bit longer.

Juliette finds another silo and its sole occupant, a frightened boy who calls himself Silo. He has been on his own too long and has no real knowledge of how things working taking it for granted that there is power and water of a kind. She finds a way of communicating with Lukas and then another uprising starts when people learn that she has survived. Lukas has meanwhile been encouraged to read the book of orders that govern the organization of the people who live in the silo. He is being prepared to be a leader by Bernard but he wants to know what happened before the air was toxic outside and the people had to live underground in the silo. He soon becomes disillusioned when he finds out the truth and it looks as though he may share the same fate as Juliette.

I enjoyed the theme of the book about people living below ground and viewing the world through screens but is what they are seeing the truth? As the author says “it asks whether we can know he world by staring at a single screen or if we’re better off going for a look see”. There is a kind of class system here with the people in IT having knowledge that they don’t or cannot share with the people below in mechanical as that would lead to social breakdown. It’s partly science fiction and a thriller. The version I had had the first chapter from the next book ‘Shift’ so hope to read that soon.



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WWW: Wonder - Robert J Sawyer - Review (Good Reads)

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After reading the first two books in the trilogy I wasn’t sure how the story of Webmind and Caitlin Decker who discovered him would finish. I was worried that I might be disappointed by the outcome. Webmind is an artificial intelligence that evolved from the internet. Caitlin Decker is a young girl who was once blind until she was given sight by a device that she calls an EYE pad. The device was originally meant to fix problem with her sight that she had had from birth, giving her vision back in one eye but Caitlin discovers that she can actually see the internet itself.

These books ask the question of what would happen if there was a form of artificial intelligence running the internet? The US government security services do their best to shut it down after failing once before to close it down. Colonel Peyton Hume cannot see that Webmind is a force for good and uses all means necessary to eliminate it. China has already raised a firewall once before to cover up the outbreak of a virus and the killings of those infected to control the spread of the virus. They are seeking to make the firewall permanent again but they have a hacker in their midst who has already opened up holes in the firewall.

These series of books have some interesting ideas. There are many examples of the benefits of crowd sourcing: people coming together to write open source software, seek help in building new devices from off the shelf electrical parts and scientists sharing ideas. This book seeks to take it further by the idea of people making decisions instead of government. However, sometimes I think that Sawyer is rather too positive about the benefits of technology. Social networks have been growing stronger but can we rely on groups of people making decisions on important subjects that affect us all? E-democracy has been used to seek individual’s opinions in focus groups before but it doesn’t meant that everyone’s voice is heard as their representatives may just be interpreting the results to achieve their own ends. The recent Egyptian revolt in 2010 used social media to challenge the government and has been a positive force for change. On the other hand only those who have access to this technology can participate. Equally popular polls could end in controversial decisions such as capital punishment being re-instituted after years of informed debate and legal precedent outlawing it in most western democracies.

What would also happen if an artificial intelligence could find a cure for Cancer and other complex issues through the co-operation of scientists, doctors and experts? This could be a positive thing but I could also see there being a backlash by the multinationals that manufacture and control the supply of drugs and products in a capitalist free market. Software companies would equally be upset if an artificial intelligences started putting 'verified by Webmind' on safe searches instead of their own security software.

Robert Sawyer continues to speak about technology subjects across the world and has consulted for companies like Google and Motorola. He has managed to keep my attention over this series of books through the interesting characters he has created and I hope he continues to write more thought provoking future science fiction stories.

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