Exploring Retrofuturism and Dystopian Worlds in “Silo”

VALENCIA. In the process of building personality and imagination that are childhood and adolescence, what falls on us falls on each of us. I don’t know if there is much choice. Personally, I come from the slipstream of Star Wars and the rise of science fiction comics in the 80s. The covers and cartoons of CIMOC or Zona 84 represented the worlds where I escaped to have adventures instead of attending class. That drill lasts a lifetime. I imagine that among the older generations it would be World War II or the cowboys. I also took that drug, but my favorite was space.

That does not mean that I was worth any proposal. Retrofuturism, the old future, had a special charm for me. But not the one from the 60s, which had too many curves, but a sadder one with a rationalist design, the one from the 70s and early 80s. And there was a day that marked a before and after for me, the day they were cast on the TV Zero Atmosphere of Peter Hyamsof which I have to say that to me his 2010: Odyssey Two I like more than 2001: A Space Odyssey. The proposal in Zero Atmosphere was fantastic, it consisted of taking the script of alone in the face of dangertake it to space and put a serious guy like Sean Connery to execute it as the canons dictate.

The future in space that they posed was extremely attractive. Everything was shit, the workers, miners, were exploited and only thought about getting drunk and taking drugs. The worker colonies on Jupiter were serious business, all corruption and pecking order, but anything counted because “production must go on,” they sang Aviator Droa music group very much in line with the science fiction expressions of this time.

I fell in love and still love this movie, but with a bittersweet taste. No one gave to continue exploiting the genre and go and that there were no westerns and film noir to take to space colonies. A famous Barcelona writer used this trick bringing detective novels to the Transition and later 80s and is considered a genius. I had no luck, but now with SiloIn a way, I think it has changed.

Silo, of Apple TV, takes place in one of those ancient futures. It is a series of novels Hugh Lowey that I have not read Silo Chronicles, published in Spain as a trilogy by Minotauro. A dystopia in which the air in the atmosphere has supposedly become toxic and society can only survive in a multi-tiered fortification called Silo.

There are 140 floors linked by a large spiral staircase. The social ladder is obvious, with the ruling elite at the top, white-collar workers in the middle, and blue-collar workers at the bottom. As in current life, the mobility from top to bottom is so reduced that in the series it is reflected with the prohibition of building an elevator. It is mandated by a kind of Constitution that, to the delight of those who question ours and the process that led to its approval, is called The pact. There is a mayor who apparently governs, but the real power is in the person in charge of information technology and the place and in charge of justice. The latter has some curious helpers who are called “hawks” and are not listed as citizens.

in a way Well, go to Cuba Textually, when someone questions the status quo, they are invited to get out of there. Going out and breathing the toxic air is lethal and all the inhabitants crowd in front of a window to see how those who come out die, however, from the first chapters a doubt arises. Is it the air that kills them?

The metaphors about the social strata and their interaction are the most characteristic of the premise. The entire script is wrapped in that conspiratorial idea that the elites govern the destinies of the people by distracting and manipulating them, basically like someone who manages a farm. With the chapters that I have, the leitmotif of the series, the great deception, I don’t care a bit, what I like is the role of sheriff fed up with the life of Rebecca Ferguson.

Remember the mentioned Sean Connery of Zero Atmospherebut also to Harrison Ford of Blade Runner. It is pure film noir following the myths of Lew Archer o Philip Marlowebut instead of showing us the underworld of familiar places, scenarios of marginality mixed with corruption in high places that as wealthy and fearful bourgeois we love to discover in fiction, it takes us to a completely new, non-existent world, a post-apocalyptic hypothesis.

I don’t know what the outcome of this season will be, but so far what I’ve done is immerse myself in that suffocating atmosphere, in which slowly, through investigations, it seems that they are getting closer to the truth about when everything became despotism . There are many houses and general plans that are reminiscent of the sheets of Syd Mead. There is no doubt that the experience of Graham York It has played a great role in that regard. There is much of his successful The Justifiedabout a wild detective who was sent to Kentucky to get rid of him, in the Silo.

Apple apparently generously opened up the portfolio so that it could afford a film set with a gigantic staircase and 42 different apartments or rooms within the Silo in which the story takes place. The rest comes from the choice of the soundtrack, from the Icelandic Atli Örvarsson, who, honoring all the clichés, composes “icy” music with the rhythms typical of American action movies underneath. Finally, cite the metastory. The author of the book began by self-publishing on Kindle for 99 cents. Ole him, that’s why so many resources have been mobilized for a story about which the only thing I’m clear about is that I’m going to be able to see it no matter what happens in the plot just for the pleasure of watching it.