Rust Belt Noir

1992, New Bethlehem. "This setting is wasted on gay shit" - Random Redditor Read me do just that on AO3

[supplyside]

the pour

[marisashorror]

Bethlehem Steel Mills 😎

[warsublime]

Steel production and processing.

[yodaprod]

[rustbeltnoir]

The place was thick with people, streaming in the gaps between the buildings.

Well, buildings was a very big word – most of The Yard was assembled from piles upon piles of appropriated containers, that over the years had reached very not OSHA compliant heights.

The buzzed-up dwellers moved from one to the other via tiny woven bridges, network of ropes, boxes, haphazard stepladders.

The streets, if they could be called so, were lined with bookstores, small alcoves cluttered with bootlegs, odd craft shops and clubs where people drank homebrew synth and rakija, occasionally punctuated by stalls selling oily human food.

There were fairy lights in the thick canopy of trees, and the space was loud with music, shouting, and the ever-present flow of the river.

[The Yard is inspired by Christiania, Exarchia and in general European Autonomous Zones. I loved the scene growing up, and I still do. It was complex and chaotic, but full of much needed passion.

My Michigan rendition includes a likely unrealistic use of containers, but I hope that the vibes are there. ]

[rustbeltnoir]

It feels like another world.

[rustbeltnoir]

[rustbeltnoir]

[rustbeltnoir]

This story is basically an agglomerate of the many, many things I loved and was always fascinated by growing up.

This include 1980/1990s hacker culture. I read Deaver's The Blue Nowhere at 9, and it truly stuck with me over the years (don't blame my parents, they could not keep me out of their bookcases - really, I would climb to reach the titles that happened to catch my ravenous eye). To those days, I have yet to find a cyberthriller able to pull me in with the same intensity.

Another book I loved was The Cockoo's Egg. Truly a fascinating piece of an era. It is insane to see how much tech has changed in a lifetime.

I am now listening to the audiobook of Ghost in the Wires, which I know, is a classic for this micro genre and a truly missed gem. What a better excuse to get it, if not this fever dream of a story?

(Photo by Benji Edwards)

[rustbeltnoir]

[rustbeltnoir]

I am writing a weird paranormal uchronia that uses popular fiction tropes to explore the horrors of late stage capitalism and systemic oppression. So fun, right?

There is a three-way power system that sees humans at the top of the chain (with werewolves/vampires at the bottom), but of course the situation is more nuanced than that.

The story starts in 1992, way after everything went to hell, but ads like this one (everywhere in the 1960s) definitely helped reach that breaking point. Who would have thought that mass-creating vampires to provide the labour demanded by the impossible rhythm of production could have ended badly?

You can find it here if you are interested (it's on AO3).