Now it’s something that hundreds of people have poured their love and energy into. I went back to the set a dozen times during shooting, and every time I looked at the fifth tread, one that I put in myself, and soaked up the gravity of the moment. The story starts on those stairs, with Holston walking up the silo for the very last time. It was fortuitous timing, being there as the first steps went in. We put treads in on a few of the lower stairs, drilled holes slotting over pegs, raps with wooden mallets to get it snug, each piece rising up from the ground until we had a dozen stairs in place. They didn’t know who I was, and nobody complained about having some help. It was a mix of that guilt and my love of getting my hands dirty that had me jump in and give the carpenters a hand. I feel bad when people do me small favors, and here were two hundred people working long shifts to make something I’d dreamt up a reality. I felt like asking people to ease up a bit. A short story I’d written while working in a bookstore caused ALL THIS? It was a bit much. My dominant emotion besides shock was guilt. With a high-vis jacket and hardhat, I walked around in a stupor. It not only dwarfed the men and women working on the set, it dwarfed the forklifts and other vehicles driving around to erect it all. The first time I walked into the set it was still under construction, but the sheer scale alone took my breath away. Three stories tall and two hundred feet across, the silo is a mountain of steel and concrete inside a giant warehouse outside of London. Not only is the #Silo TV show real and coming out soon, the silo is freaking real.

Hugh howey books in order