Interview: Michael Betts on Midwestern Chrome
Back in the summer Michael Betts released Midwestern Chrome, a collection of cyberpunk stories set in America’s Heartland. I caught up with him recently to chat about the book, cyberpunk, weird horror, and Midwest sensibilities.
Before we start, can you share the premise of Midwestern Chrome?
Absolutely! Midwestern Chrome is a collection of stories that share a setting—the near-future Nebraska my brain cooked up. The cornerstone piece in Midwestern Chrome is a novella titled, “Our Bird Trills Mechanical,” which follows Harlan, a burned-out detective who is called to a scene and presented with a bag that contains a severed android head who speaks to him in his dead wife’s voice. Other stories revolve around a body-augment addicted prizefighter who wants to quit the habit, a love-struck henchman, and a therapist who isn’t quite who they seem to be.
I’m glad you mentioned “Our Bird Trills Mechanical.” It’s one of my favorite stories in the collection. What would you say are themes you’re exploring? From my perspective, the themes are overcoming loneliness and nihilism in a sad-sack world.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. Loneliness in an overwhelmingly connected world. Nihilism, although sometimes hopeful despite it all. I think there is also a throughline of finding authenticity in the collection. So many of the characters yearn for things to be real, whether it’s people making real art, developing real relationships, working real jobs. They’re tired of a disingenuous world.
Your first book, Trve Cvlt, was a choose-your-own-path story about a small town metal band. Was it difficult for you to shift gears to write cyberpunk? What can readers of Trve Cvlt expect in Chrome?
Kind of the opposite, really! I had actually started writing stories that would find their way into Midwestern Chrome before I wrote Cvlt. I’ve always gravitated toward crime in my writing…and reading/viewing preferences. I love a brooding sad sack. It’s sort of a natural voice for me to slip into, so incorporating sci-fi and cyberpunk elements was an organic fit for me. I think readers of Cvlt can still expect existentialism and characters who are often bumbling around and get roped into shit they may not want to be roped into. Coincidence is a huge aspect of the crime genre…you know, folks just being in the wrong place at the wrong time; and I think both books include that. Oh, and violence. There is violence.
While we’re on the topic of cyberpunk, I want to ask the big question on my mind, and what I suspect is also on a lot of readers’ minds. Most, if not all, cyberpunk media takes place in large cityscapes. You set your collection in the Midwest. What made you choose this setting? How did the setting influence the story?
Simply put—it’s home. For that reason, it was both a matter of practicality and pride. I know the region, specifically the near-future Nebraska I envisioned, very well, so it made writing that much easier. Writing the descriptions of the city and landscape and so on is just that much easier without having to research. Not that I don’t like/want to research, but you know how it goes. There’s also pride. You’re also from the Midwest, so you know the wrap we get. We’re flyover states. ‘You’re from where?’ ‘Do you have electricity there?’ ‘What do you even do there?’ and on and on. I wanted to set this book in Nebraska because I think we deserve a spot in the sci-fi/cyberpunk/whatever zeitgeist. I’m doing my part to represent my home.
I’ve lived in both San Francisco and New York City, but I was born and raised in Ohio. Most media I see set in the area fails to grasp the complexities of the region's culture. What parts of the culture did you incorporate into the book? What do you wish people understood about the region?
This is difficult to answer because I’m not sure how to explain it. It’s a weird mix of being a super hardworking group of people who are also terribly stubborn, yet laid-back, also nice-but-not-really…It’s not just opes and you betchas.
The way I saw the Midwest show up in your books is that your characters have a chip on their shoulders. There is a feeling in the Midwest that we’re overlooked. I mean, we’re chatting about it now. People also practice Midwest Nice—when someone goes out of their way to be polite even if they don’t like you. I can only speak for myself, but this leads to a sense of paranoia because you’re never sure if someone is being genuinely kind. Do you ever feel the same way? If so, do you think these thoughts influenced your character’s actions?
Yeah, I see what you mean, and it goes back to what I touched on a little earlier about these characters wanting authenticity. In many ways I think this concept permeates the collection and my characters, although perhaps a bit subconsciously. I’ve always sought authenticity in life, sometimes to a fault, but it’s relatable and certainly informed these character’s actions. You’re absolutely right about these characters having chips on their shoulders, too. It does feel like a very Midwestern trait. Always out to prove ourselves.
A question I’ve been dying to ask since reading Chrome is, why cyberpunk? What draws you to the subgenre and why is now the right time to write it?
I just dig genre-blending and crime and sci-fi go together so well, I wanted to write it. Thing is, Midwestern Chrome is certainly cyberpunk, but might also fall into post-cyberpunk, but also leans heavily into tech-noir (we’re really splitting hairs here). My version of cyberpunk has some wildly advanced technology, but it still isn’t quite as shiny as some of the stuff you’d see in larger cityscapes. We’re also seeing an interesting shift in technology where we’re surrounded by highly advanced tech, but it doesn’t feel the same as when I was growing up. The advancements aren’t as fun. They don’t feel as new, almost as if they’re stagnating. For instance, video game consoles. There used to be massive leaps from generation to generation. Now…it feels like, okay the graphics are marginally better? The systems run faster, but do we really notice it as much as they tell us we do? I tend to play retro games, so this may be an Elder Millennial thing, but I could not tell you the difference between playing a game at 30FPS vs. 60 FPS. I don’t give a shit about Hi-def vs 4k vs 8k. Or smart phones. They’ve more or less been the same rectangle in our pockets for the past decade—again, a little faster, more storage, new shiny apps, but more or less the same. No big leap. A folding smartphone doesn’t fucking count. Anyway, I digress…what I mean to say is that due to some of this tech stagnation (at least how I view it) it sets up some really fun potential stories. Everything is connected to the internet now. What if the internet goes down? What if we carved it up? (These ideas have been explored already in some cyberpunk stories) but you see what I mean?
One of the fun parts about reading cyberpunk is seeing the new technology the writer thinks up. Do you have a favorite piece of tech you imagined? Which piece of Chrome tech do you think is mostly likely to be developed.
Oh boy, you’re really making me think here…I’m really not sure. I don’t want to spoil the story because it’s genuinely the crux of the plot, so SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN’T READ MIDWESTERN CHROME: “We Struggle as We Process” was written before I knew what the fuck ChatGPT was or what an LLM was or did. But we have this AI therapist and yeah. Unfortunately that happened. People are seeking mental health advice from chatbots. I also think smart mirrors have become a thing more recently? I don’t know a ton about them, but I wrote those into a few of the stories too and those ended up happening.
Tenebrous, your publisher, is known for releasing weird horror. How does Chrome fit into that space? Was this something you were thinking about while writing the stories?
I can fully and one-hundred-percent thank Koji Dae’s Casual for this, because when I was writing Midwestern Chrome, I didn’t have a publisher in mind. Sure, Tenebrous had already published Trve Cvlt, but I didn’t think Chrome was going to be weird enough or horror enough to fit with their library. Then I read Casual. Then not long after they published Dear Stupid Penpal and I thought, “oh shit, they might like this.” I do think a big part of Chrome fitting into their catalog is because of the spin I took on the genre. It’s both pulpy and a tough literary at times in the presentation, something I think 10p incorporates and appreciates.
Cyberpunk is known for being a mashup of high-tech and grim. It often follows people on the streets trying to survive in a harsh environment. They are often bleak, so are yours, but there is always a bit of hope in them. How do you balance writing about societal collapse and hope? Do you think it’s necessary?
I often think about this in my writing and ultimately, I think this touches on the Midwest aspects of both my approach in Midwestern Chrome, but also just as part of who I am as a Midwesterner—it’s just how we are. I mentioned earlier that we're stubborn people, and I think survival is part of it. We just do what we have to do to get by, end of story. When you wake up with a foot of snow on the ground, you suck it up, scoop it, then drive to work. When rent goes up, you might have to get a second job. Sucks shit, but it’s that or get evicted. Those might be extreme examples, but it’s kind of the attitude around the region (which isn’t always a good thing. Please don’t misunderstand). We should have safety nets and better social programs and whatnot, but I don’t live in a utopia. That also doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight for a better world.
What media do you recommend people read or watch that are similar to Chrome? What’s the connection between the media and Chrome?
I’ve often pitched Chrome as Johnny Mnemonic meets Fargo meets Dashiell Hammett. It’s gritty, scuzzy cyberpunk like Johnny, with the Midwestern sensibilities and weird coincidences common in Fargo, but with the pulpy touches of Hammett, Cain, and Chandler. I also think Philip K. Dick is a good comp, as is Walter Mosley’s Futureland. The structure of Chrome is very similar to Futureland in that it’s a collection set in a shared place. Of course, one of the more contemporary cyberpunk juggernauts is Cyberpunk 2077 and the affiliated world that Mike Pondsmith created. The TTRPG has been around for a long time, but the game, animated series, and new TCG are poppin’ off pretty hard lately. Other video games like Dex, Citizen Sleeper, and Detroit Become Human are also pretty stellar and folks should check them out. Black Mirror, of course. As for more contemporary books, Chris McKinney’s Water City trilogy and Thomas Kendall’s How I Killed the Universal Man are highly recommended.
My last question is a bit of an odd ball. I’ve noticed your writing contains a lot of mentions of coffee. What’s up with that? Is it subconscious? What’s your favorite coffee drink?
I’ve been drinking coffee for a long, long time. Genuinely since I was a kid. As kids, we’d get small amounts of coffee with lots of milk and sugar and as we got older the ratios changed. I would say by 8th/9th grade I was a habitual coffee drinker, for better or worse. Plus I live in a college town and am spoiled with loads of great local haunts so I can avoid the chains. I spent my mid-twenties working and managing one of our local shops. Met some of the coolest people there. We served alcohol, too, so while we weren’t a bar, we kinda had this unique mix of crowds and energy. It was awesome. Met some of my favorite people there. Wouldn’t trade those years for anything. These days, I don’t do anything too fancy. Mostly drip coffee every day. I prefer medium roasts, specifically Central and South American beans. They tend to have more earthy notes, where a lot of African beans have fruity notes to them. However, my go-to drinks when I hit up coffeeshops are typically either Americanos or cortados.
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