Is Apple's Silo Series a By-The-Book Adaptation? Here's How the Show Compares Plot-Wise

Unfortunately for many viewers who have fallen in love with Silo over the month and a half since its release, the Apple TV+ series has only two episodes left to air. Following the inhabitants of an underground bunker, Silo tells a tale of humanity's vulnerability as the apocalypse and its aftermath the show depicts are of human creation.

This compelling narrative is based on the Wool book series by Hugh Howey. Silo stays true to a lot of the source material, but there are also some notable differences that only avid fans of the novels will have noticed. Here's our blow-by-blow comparison of the novels and the series.

First and foremost, Silo and the Wool novels share the same premise. As we've mentioned above, the story is centred on the survivors of some kind of a cataclysmic, extinction-level event who are now surviving in a huge underground structure because humans can no longer survive outside. Both the Apple TV+ series and the books examine society inside the silo and its political and economic organisation through the personal stories of specific characters.

However, this is where the differences begin to emerge. While Wool focuses on a handful of main characters like Juliette Nichols and Holston Becker, the Apple TV+ series includes a far larger number of story arcs, many of which are barely mentioned in the source material.

Furthermore, the first major deviation from the source narrative occurs as early as episode 3. A wealth of new ideas are introduced, and significantly more attention is paid to a number of supporting characters, with their stories being explored in much greater detail than in the books. Remarkably, no significant detail from the original story has been omitted. The series has mostly added more detail to the original story.

Most crucially, Silo's overall ambience is perfectly aligned with that of Wool. The sense of doom and gloom is exactly the same in the series as in the novels. Perhaps Hugh Howey's close collaboration with the showrunners is why Silo retains all the critical elements that make Wool such a compelling read.

Now, it should be noted that so far, the Apple TV+ show has only gone through about fifty pages of the first book, so a lot can yet happen, and, potentially, the series can still boldly go where the novels have never gone before. We trust, though, that any divergences from the source material will only be introduced to keep fans captivated and encourage them to both keep watching the series and read the books.

Silo's next episode premieres on 23 June.