Wool (1-5) by Hugh Howey

This stuff is sci-fi at it's best. Hugh Howey takes some seemingly ordinary characters-a sheriff, a mayor, and a mechanic-and alters everything you already can already assume about them and flips it in a way you would never expect.

What if just talking about leaving the community you live in was a crime punishable by death? This is the world the citizens of the silo live in. The mere words "I want to go outside," just might get you what you want.

This series is an incredible study on the human condition. With an intense focuses on individual cause and effect. There is a mystery here that continually unfolds as you flip (scroll) through the pages of Wool.

What will happen to us if we continue on the power, fuel hungry path we as Americans live today. Are the choices we are making now to curb our consumption and abuse of the earth's natural resources enough? What if it's not? Is a world like the one portrayed in Wool what we have to look forward to? Do we as mere citizens have any real control over our future? These are not necessarily questions discussed in Wool but were certainly questions I contemplated on completion of the series.

Wool takes it's name from the piece of cloth the convicted "criminals" use to perform their final duty to the silo during their sentence of cleaning the lenses to the cameras that allow the citizens a view to the outside world. But the un-asked and un-answered question is, what drives them to do it? Why do they always go through with the cleaning?