Review: Samizdat
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 11, 2013
In the ever-growing family of writers expanding Hugh Howey's Wooliverse, Michael Bunker could be the Teacher, the Prophet, the Revolutionary, or the Historian. At any rate, a strong-minded individual with a deep respect for books and a real belief in their power. If we were living in the silo, he would probably be like his heroine Leah and continue to  fight against a mind-numbing system by writing meaningful, therefore dangerous and forbidden, stories.Bunker loves words and their multiple meanings. I like the title, Refuse. Leah, along with a few other insubordinates, collects discarded paper (one form of "refuse") to write forbidden books. The Silo more than frowns on this activity, it actually wholly "refuses" it and offenders can be sent out to clean if they are caught. Yet these illegal activists continue to make their own paper and books because they "refuse" a world that has made thinking illegal so as to better control its population:"You could draw and paint - even write - if (and only if) whatever you drew, painted, or wrote was acceptable and was in conformity to the laws of the silo. It had to be pre-approved. As a result, almost no one wrote books, other than the handful of officially sanctioned writers who wrote lukewarm, un-challenging tripe for the widest possible audience. There was no room in the literature of the silo for metaphor, or irony, or for a bracing, cold waltz with the truth."I called Bunker the Teacher, or Historian, because I see in his story a kind of homage paid to such greats as George Orwell's 1984, or Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: books are banned, people are controlled and censorship is omnipresent in all these books. To my knowledge, no writer extending the Wool universe had explored this direction before Bunker, and it is quite fascinating, as it ties Hugh Howey's more recent work with that of illustrious predecessors, while creating something new.What is also fascinating is that Refuse is essentially a book about writing books, in which people mention their own and each other's books. This kind of metafictional element represents one of my favourite literary devices. Wikipedia defines "metafiction" in those words:"'Metafiction' is the literary term describing fictional writing that self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually using irony and self-reflection."I'm not saying Michael Bunker's story is wholly metafictional. But it is thought-provoking, and one could read its title in yet a fourth, different way: as a kind of direct order to us readers telling us to REFUSE any form of thought police.Bottom line: Michael Bunker's message is as deep as the silo itself.