Book Summary — Wool Trilogy
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1 paragraph summary:
Captivating trilogy of humanity destroying itself to preserve select knowledge and start anew by incubating siloes of clueless new seeds for civilisation. A fascinating tale of preservation, politics, control, systems and freedom. The book sucked me in with elements of humans most primal psychology and obedience to rules that is counterbalanced with the need for freedom.
Wool
A project to pull the wool back from everyone’s eyes, a favour to the next fool who slipped up or dared to hope aloud.
Hope
No, Jahns told herself, it wasn’t simply the taboo of the cleaning, the fear of the outside. It was the hope. There was this unspoken, deadly hope in every member of the silo. A ridiculous, fantastical hope. That maybe not for them, but perhaps for their children, or their children’s children, life on the outside would be possible once again, and that it would be the work of IT and the bulky suits that emerged from their labs that would make it all possible.
What We Know
It was the same as colour. You could describe a new colour only in terms of hues previously seen. You could mix the known, but you couldn’t create the strange out of nothing.
Control
‘We can’t control where we are right now,’ he mumbled, ‘just what we do going forward.’
Man-Made Disaster
Imagine the first discovery that one of these epidemics was man-made — the panic, the violence that would ensue. That’s where the end would come. A typhoon kills a few hundred people, does a few billion in damage, and what do we do?’ Erskine interlocked his fingers. ‘We come together. We put the pieces back. But a terrorist’s bomb.’ He frowned. ‘A terrorist’s bomb does the same damage, and it throws the world into turmoil.’
‘When there’s only God to blame, we forgive him. When it’s our fellow man, we destroy him.’
Life
LIFE AT ITS essence, Jimmy learned, was a series of meals and bowel movements. There was some sleep mixed in as well, but little effort was required for that. He didn’t learn this great Rule of the World until the water stopped flushing. Nobody thinks about their bowel movements until the water stops flushing. And then it’s all one thinks about.
Heroes
Donald coughed, and thought of all the hero sagas of old, of men and women struggling for righteousness, always with a happy ending, always against impossible odds, always bullshit. Heroes didn’t win. The heroes were whoever happened to win. History told their story — the dead didn’t say a word. All of it was bullshit.