Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wool | 2011 | Hugh Howey | Buy |
| 2 | Shift | 2013 | Hugh Howey | Buy |
| 3 | Dust | 2013 | Hugh Howey | Buy |
People live in a silo buried underground. It goes down 144 floors. No one remembers why they’re there. The outside world is toxic, visible only through sensors on the surface. Anyone who says they want to go outside is sent to clean the sensors, exposed to the poisoned air. They always clean. They always die. The silo has rules, and the first rule is that you don’t talk about the outside.
Hugh Howey self-published Wool as a short story on Amazon in 2011. He priced it at 99 cents. It sold so well that he wrote four more installments and collected them into a single novel. Simon & Schuster eventually acquired the print rights, but Howey kept his digital rights, an arrangement that was unusual at the time and influenced how other self-published authors negotiated their deals.
Shift moves backward in time to explain how the silos were built and who made the decision to put humanity underground. It’s a prequel that reframes everything in Wool. Dust brings both timelines together for the conclusion. Howey wrote the entire trilogy between 2011 and 2013.
The books became a phenomenon in self-publishing circles and crossed over to mainstream success. Apple TV+ adapted the series as Silo in 2023, starring Rebecca Ferguson as Juliette Nichols. The show follows the books’ central mystery: what’s really outside, and who’s keeping the truth from the people underground.