Sumith Prasad
Created by Graham Yost, Apple TV+’s science-fiction series ‘Silo’ revolves around Juliette Nichols, an engineer who replaces Sheriff Holston Becker to investigate the murder of her boyfriend George Wilkins. Juliette dives deep into the power structures and secrets of the silo to unravel the mystery behind her partner’s death. Her efforts to bring out the truth about the silo pave the way for severe consequences as she gets forced to confront potent adversaries. The post-apocalyptic series is based on a highly celebrated novel series. If you want to know more about the novel series and its adaptation, you are at the right place!
Silo: Based on Hugh Howey’s Wool Series
‘Silo’ is based on the eponymous novel series by Hugh Howey. In 2011, Howey published a standalone short story titled ‘Wool,’ which marked the beginning of the ‘Silo’ book series. Creator Graham Yost approached the short story, which revolves around the characters Allison and Holston Becker, as the foundation of the show’s narrative. “It all starts with being supported by Apple to make the hard choice, but I think the right choice, to start the thing with the story that Hugh [Howey] wrote, a thing he posted on Kindle for 99 cents, the story of Holston and Allison,” Yost told Space.com.
Although Allison and Holston aren’t the central characters of the show’s narrative, Yost conceived his show with their story as the base of Juliette’s saga. “Even though those two characters [Allison and Holston] don’t go much beyond that first episode and we don’t meet the person who’s the lead of the show until toward the end of that episode. And that was important for me,” he added. Yost then chose where he wanted to end the first season of the show and filled the rest of the narrative. “[…] we picked an endpoint for the first season and we just had to figure out what was going to go in between, which meant we didn’t have as much story from the book as we needed,” he told Screen Rant.
Yost and his team of writers then decided to focus on the death of George Wilkins and Juliette’s efforts to find his murderer as the essence of the first season. “So, we took this one nugget that he would put in there about how Holston had met Juliette, that there had been the death of a boyfriend that she felt was suspicious. And he investigated. And that’s it. And we said, let’s turn that into something. Let’s make that guy a character. Let’s have that be the thing that’s driving her throughout. She wants to find out what happened to George,” Yost said in the same Screen Rant interview. Even though George’s murder isn’t the lone driving force of Juliette’s journey in the novel series, Yost relied on the murder heavily to conceive the new sheriff’s saga in the show.
Yost constantly kept in touch with Howey, who was very lenient about the show deviating from the narrative of his books. “What we found out very quickly was he [Howey] was not precious with any of this and is far more willing to kill off a character than I am, but would also come up with, ‘Well, we could do this and do that. And I was thinking that maybe the reason that this developed was because of that,’” Yost told ComicBook. There was an openness to it that was very, very helpful. There have been times over the course of shooting the first season when we would reach out to him and say, ‘So we’re thinking about this,’ a lot in terms of the reality of the silo,” he added.
There are nine books in Howey’s ‘Silo’ book series. The first season of the show is expected to cover the events in the first book of the series. If Apple TV+ renews the show for a second season, Yost is expected to adapt the second book in the series, ‘Proper Gauge.’
Read More: Where is Apple TV+’s Silo Filmed?
