Summary: Hugh Howey has quickly become a well-known figure in fiction, not just for the success of his books, but for the way that they’ve succeeded. After writing a number of other books, including The Bern Saga quartet, some of them published through traditional small publishers, Howey wrote Wool, a novella or novelette, and self-published it through Amazon. The story was a massive success and so he began to expand on the world, writing a series of short novels that have now been condensed into the Wool Omnibus. Major offers from traditional publishers followed in the wake of this success, but Hugh Howey’s central demand was to retain the digital sales rights, something almost unheard of, and something he received. The books themselves are in the mould of dystopian SF, set in a small community in a future world where the city, or Silo, is set deep underground, hidden from the toxins that ravage the world’s surface, and those that commit crimes are sent outside, to clean the sensors that let the Silo have some view of the surface. Over the course of Wool and the very recently published Shift, the follow up book, we find out considerably more about the nature of the silos, their hierarchy and their beginning. It’s a rollicking tale of high adventure that, as with the best of SF, examines what the nature of humanity really is. Hugh joined Sky Kirkham in the studio to talk about dystopia, self-publishing and yachting. Originally broadcast on 18/04/2013. Shift is out now through Random House.
