Monday, November 23, 2015

"Shift" in Time and Ideas


A Review of Shift, 2nd book in the Shift Series by Hugh Howey

If you like a novel that pulls your attention into the drama and the characters, you’ll love Hugh Howey’s Shift Omnibus. I read it in my car during every half-hour lunch break, often still reading it as I walked back into the building. For those of you who haven’t read the first book in the series, Wool, STOP! Read it first, so events are clearer. Plus there are spoilers in this review. For those of you who read have Wool, the second book, Shift is even better.

Shift is aptly named for its contents. It follows one man, Donald, through different work shifts with increasing tension and dangerous outcomes. These outcomes effect the people living securely away in other silos, safe from a toxic environment filled with certain death. It also answers some of the questions which remained after reading Wool. Shift is divided into three novellas which follow Donald through his shifts. “First Shift – Legacy” jumps between 2049, when plans begin that lead to a world which can’t support humanity, and 2110, when Donald is awaken for his shift in Silo 1, the command center of 50 silos. “Second Shift – Order” happens in 2212 and jumps back and forth between Silo 1 and Silo 18 during the year of an uprising. “Third Shift - Pact” takes place in 2345, and involves Silos 1, where Donald is mistakenly identified as the man in charge, and Silo 17 as another rebellion is in progress.

The Prologue to “First Shift – Legacy,” has the same contrasting imagery of life and death as Wool contained. “Troy [a.k.a. Donald] returned to the living and found himself inside of a tomb.” He is, in fact, inside a cryonic chamber and has just been reanimated. Howey fills us with Troy’s sensations of the frosted glass through which he can see dark shapes hovering, the weakness of his muscles surrounded by a paper gown and the horrible taste in his mouth. He is given water and pills that “stung his throat… [and made’] memories fade like dreams upon waking.” He must forget his past life so he can work his shift in the here, beneath the hills of Georgia, and now, 2110. He emerges with “the feeling of deep time and yesterdays mingled.” This is the cycle of Donald’s life: waking, trying to remember what the pills make him forget then being refrozen in a “coffin” to dream of his past life.

In these dreams of his past life, we learn that he was once Congressman Donald Keene, who originally majored in architecture and is recruited by Senator Thurman for a special project. Donald has a keen eye for details, and one that pertains to Senator Thurman is his waiting room, which is “stripped of its obligatory law books until only a handful remained. These tomes sat silently in the dim corners of the glass cabinets.” There are also pictures on the wall of Thurman shaking hands with the last four presidents, in which Thurman hardly seems to change, as if “unfazed by the passing decades.” We have to wonder if this isn’t some hint the Thurman as already been using the cryogenics we read about in the Prologue. Donald also notes, “The two arrangements spoke volumes: the uniform from the past and the coins from those currently deployed, bookends on a pair of wars. One that the Senator had fought in as a youth. The other, a war he had batted to prevent as an older and wiser man.”

It is these minute details that create the Silo world. Details about the people like the Mission Jones in Silo 18, where “Deathdays were birthdays. … An old man dies and a lottery is won. Children weep while hopeful parents cry tears of joy.” As we saw in Wool, population is staunchly controlled in the silos. Of course, it would have to be. Resources and space is limited. Hence the continual paradox of death meaning life. And just as we grow to dislike the cold and memoryless people manning Silo 1, we grow to care about the people in the other silos who live out their daily lives, rather than sleeping through enormous periods of time. The people who work as their daily jobs as porters delivering heavy packages up dozens of flights of stairs, or mechanics in the “down deep” who keep the vital equipment running for producing energy and oxygen. They are real people with families and dreams and hopes. So that when a silo is threatened with a “shut down” during a rebellion, we know it means death to the elderly and children alike. We know it means letting the outside in and an end to lives that never saw the sun.

Shutting down silos is not what Donald wants to do from his secure location in Silo 1. His dream was to save lives, not destroy them. That’s why he worked with Senator Thurman to build the silos, which were supposed to be storage for toxic waste to bring in revenue for Georgia. Even as Donald designed the plans according to Thurman’s specks, he questioned their true purpose. Thurman’s no fool, though. He has Donald working with his daughter, Anna Thurman, with whom Donald had an ex-martial affair. Anna distracts and redirects Donald from the true purpose of the silos.

By Donald’s third shift, we are back at Silo 17 and another paradox: “The Loud came before the quiet. That was a Rule of the World, for the bangs and shouts need somewhere to echo, just as bodies need space in which to fall.” We meet Jimmy Parker, who is still in school, and Mrs. Peterson, his wizened teacher. We also encounter Solo again, who fell in love with Juliette “Jules” Nichols in Wool: Casting Off. Jules is major of Silo 17 now and making more threats. This time to Silo 1, where she’s going to get them, too.

But telling you more would mean ruining many of the twists and turns that Silo contains. What you really need to know is that the book it spell-binding and the silo worlds are built with incredible detail and depth. So much depth that I also read the third book, Dust. I haven’t read all three volumes of a trilogy since Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. It’s that good!