Author Hugh Howey

Mosquitos kill millions of humans a year. They have killed more humans than all wars combined. No other animal on Earth comes close to their murdering prowess. Which is why serious efforts are underway to drive the worst offenders to extinction. There are hundreds of species of mosquito, but only a handful that bear most of the diseases and do the majority of the damage. The method for driving these species extinct is more banal than you might expect. It doesn’t involve mosquito zapping lasers (though these do exist and…

Over two and a half billion years ago, a simple photosynthesizing bacterium emerged on planet Earth. Having stumbled upon a way to convert sunlight and CO2 into energy, it began releasing oxygen into the atmosphere. So much oxygen that anaerobic life was utterly destroyed. This mass extinction is known as the Great Oxygenation Event. It is also called the Oxygen Holocaust. It is quite possibly the most destructive thing that ever happened to life here on planet Earth. As distant benefactors of this development, we might look back on the…

I’ve lost count of how many times someone has told me that they have a great idea for a book, would I like to write it and we’ll split the money? It never ceases to make me laugh. The idea is the easy part, I tell them. Execution is everything. Ideas come in a flash, a bolt of inspiration. Writing it all out requires an effort that strains even the most prolific of writers. Every writer I know has more ideas than they’ll ever get to. When we die, a…

My thoughts about work took a dramatic shift as I sailed around Fiji. On practically every island I visited, there was a sharp divide between the native Fijians and the populations from India who had settled over the past seventy years. Almost without exception, all the small shops and businesses were run by enterprising Indian families who made tidy profits and lived in modern homes. The Fijians, meanwhile, could be found lounging in the shade. To the far south, at the most remote of Fijian islands, I found the nearest…

The SILO trailer dropped yesterday, and oh my gosh people are having reactions! Some of my favorite websites for culture news have picked this up. Highlights: AV Club: “Apple TV+ gets their Westworld on in trailer for new series Silo“ Bloody Disgusting: The new trailer teases just how intense the search for truth might get for the protagonists amidst a post-apocalyptic setting. It also highlights an all-star cast at the center of this dystopian thriller. TV Fanatic: “[Rebecca] Ferguson plays Juliette, an engineer, who seeks answers about a loved one’s murder and tumbles…