In the Silo books, the silo was built without elevators (for reasons that are spoilers.) Messages between folks who may live and work up to 144 levels apart must be carried by porters, are expensive, and easily intercepted.
In the TV show, these restrictions are revealed by Mayor Jahn’s trek from “Up Top” to “Down Deep” to interview Juliet.
But yup, I agree that too often in books and movies, the entire plot falls apart if the viewer/readers wonder, “Why don’t they just talk to each other?”
Which is why one of my favorite tongue-in-cheek murder mystery tropes is the detective or coroner who politely talks to the dead or is haunted by murder victims.
Having not watched Silo yet (I'm not paying for AppleTV so I'll wait until I can get it somewhere else), but having read all of the books, I think this dynamic being set up is because of having to add in characters. For instance Holston and Julia never met each other. Holston was from the Wool short story that spun off the rest of Wool/Shift/Dust (that centered around Julia). So for TV, they have to make some changes so characters not in Holston's story show up early and that will change the original opening story a bit.
The book series is excellent. I considered it an instant Sci-Fi classic as each part was released. But you do have a long way to go (to get to Dust) to find out the reason things are bad on the outside. It works though. In TV... jury is out. Hugh has been posting YT videos after each episode. I think only us book fans are watching them or even know that he wrote them, they don't get a massive amount of views, which is strange.
Sometimes I'll turn on a show and see a warning: "Some scenes reflect the attitude of the times", or something like that. Certainly not Archie Bunker! Dad made us watch that. Oh, right...
‘Silo’: A Three’s Company Story
In the Silo books, the silo was built without elevators (for reasons that are spoilers.) Messages between folks who may live and work up to 144 levels apart must be carried by porters, are expensive, and easily intercepted.
In the TV show, these restrictions are revealed by Mayor Jahn’s trek from “Up Top” to “Down Deep” to interview Juliet.
But yup, I agree that too often in books and movies, the entire plot falls apart if the viewer/readers wonder, “Why don’t they just talk to each other?”
Which is why one of my favorite tongue-in-cheek murder mystery tropes is the detective or coroner who politely talks to the dead or is haunted by murder victims.
Having not watched Silo yet (I'm not paying for AppleTV so I'll wait until I can get it somewhere else), but having read all of the books, I think this dynamic being set up is because of having to add in characters. For instance Holston and Julia never met each other. Holston was from the Wool short story that spun off the rest of Wool/Shift/Dust (that centered around Julia). So for TV, they have to make some changes so characters not in Holston's story show up early and that will change the original opening story a bit.
The book series is excellent. I considered it an instant Sci-Fi classic as each part was released. But you do have a long way to go (to get to Dust) to find out the reason things are bad on the outside. It works though. In TV... jury is out. Hugh has been posting YT videos after each episode. I think only us book fans are watching them or even know that he wrote them, they don't get a massive amount of views, which is strange.
Sometimes I'll turn on a show and see a warning: "Some scenes reflect the attitude of the times", or something like that. Certainly not Archie Bunker! Dad made us watch that. Oh, right...
But at least you woke up in Hawaii.