Back in 2016, right after Trump was elected the first time, his cabinet *also* talked endlessly about bringing electronics manufacturing back to the US, alongside the anti-immigrant and mass deportation rhetoric. At the time, I was the co-editor of Terraform, a speculative fiction outlet at VICE that I’d founded with Claire Evans. So I commissioned a short story from the writer Tim Maughan, asking him to imagine what a future of American-made iPhones might actually look like should it come to pass. What Tim turned in—a vision of a poverty-stricken America where US Foxconn factories have sections for precarious day laborers as well as for detained migrants and “criminals,” all compelled to assemble an endless stream of iPhones—was devastating. The story has lived with me ever since. Now, Tim is not just a friend, but, for my money, one of the very best working speculative fiction writers; his work bridges a raw cyberpunk sensibility with a literary touch in a singular and often brutal way; his futures feel painful, absurd, and lived-in. His novel Infinite Detail is excellent. I have to say all these nice things about him, because he has graciously agreed to let me republish “Flyover Country” in full here.
What a future where iPhones are made in America would really look like.
