How Silo Author Hugh Howey Feels About The Apple TV Series

If you've lost your faith in mystery box TV series after years of lousy "Lost" imitators, then "Silo" might just make you a believer again. Based on Hugh Howey's book trilogy, Apple TV's sci-fi drama stars a tattooed-out Rebecca Ferguson as Juliette Nichols. An engineer who toils on the lowest levels of a colossal underground silo long after an unknown event left the Earth's surface uninhabitable, Juliette is the kind of blue collar worker who prefers to keep her nose to the grindstone. But when her IT specialist boyfriend George Wilkins (Ferdinand Kingsley) turns up dead under suspicious circumstances, Juliette's rebellious streak kicks in, setting her on a path to uncovering the truth behind her post-apocalyptic home.

As you can plainly see, "Silo" is about more than secrets buried within other secrets. It's a series about the power of information and how knowledge is weaponized by authority figures seeking to control the masses. This theme comes directly from Howey's books, yet "Silo" is far from an excessively faithful adaptation. As it's progressed, showrunner Graham Yost (no stranger to re-imagining literary titles for the screen himself, having previously expanded Elmore Leonard's Raylan Givens stories into the neo-Western TV touchstone "Justified") has only proven willing to deviate further and further from the show's source material.

Not that you should expect to hear the author complain. Howey has already gone on the record to voice his satisfaction with the "Silo" TV series from pretty much top to bottom. He also seems aware that whatever creative grievances he may or may not quietly have with the show, they're small potatoes compared to what other writers have gone through with adaptations of their creations.

Addressing questions from Reddit users during an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session after "Silo" Season 1 had drawn to a close, Hugh Howey had the following to offer when asked if he was down with the way the show was approaching his original stories:

"Absolutely. They are pouring heaps of support into the show and promoting the hell out of it. Using top talent throughout the cast and crew. What more could a boy want?"

Much as all that might sound like it should be a given for any sci-fi literary adaptation worth its salt, that's hardly the case. We'll be here all day if we start rattling off the many sci-fi books that deserve better movie adaptations than the ones they got, and the list would probably be just as long when it comes to lauded sci-fi tomes repurposed for TV. Having the might of a tech giant like Apple behind your show is no guarantee it will stand out in our present-day streaming landscape, either. Even after three critically celebrated seasons and counting, "Silo" is arguably still one of Apple TV's more underrated offerings, relatively speaking.

We can also reasonably intuit that whenever "Silo" does make a huge departure from Howey's books, the author appreciates it's in service of a key idea (like how memory can be just as valuable a commodity as cold, hard facts). Without pointing fingers or naming names, let's just say that certain folks would love it if the creatives repurposing their art for the screen were just as considerate about honoring the spirit of their source material whenever they make alterations of their own.

You can stream "Silo" right now on Apple TV.