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Christopher Rowe

@christopherrowe.bsky.social
1.4K followers 364 following 900 posts

Writer, reader, cyclist, cook, traveller. THE NAVIGATING FOX, starred review in Publishers Weekly, out now from Tordotcom Publishing.

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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
American Brandon McNulty just won the world elite men's road cycling championship in Canada! Woohoo! I've had my eye on that guy since he won the Tour of Sicily in 2019!
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Writing is dissonant right now. My ambition, as usual, exceeds my imagination.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Thomsen's comment was quoted in a letter to William Donovan written by Malcolm R. Lovell. Lovell was attempting to secure the cooperation of Thomsen, who was then serving as Germany's ambassador to the USA. I found this in Anthony Cave Brown's 1982 biography of Donovan, _The Last Hero_.
A Reading from
the Commonplace Book

With the invention of the typewriter all secrets became public.

		—Dr. Hans Thomsen
		—11 September 1941
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
There’s a website maintained by Roll Call you can find by looking up the president’s name and adding the term “social media posts.” These are posts the president made this afternoon.
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Reposted by Christopher Rowe
Once Upon A Time On The Internet @newgroundsdoc.newgrounds.com · 01/09/2026
23 YEARS AGO TODAY, @mrweebl.bsky.social posted BADGERS to @Newgrounds.com
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Reposted by Christopher Rowe
Reactor Magazine @reactorsff.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
This poem also inspired the title for @christopherrowe.bsky.social's short story "The Day-Blind Stars"
reactormag.com
The Day-Blind Stars - Reactor
An Earth explorer in search of something new and strange in the up and out ends up traveling through space with a small god over millennia.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Wendell Berry has passed. He was a formative influence on me. He wrote this. "Be Still in Haste" How quietly I begin again from this moment looking at the clock, I start over so much time has passed, and is equaled by whatever split-second is present from this moment this moment is the first
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
This is from Christianity Today's Facebook feed. I read it as saying that the game's theological dimensions can be spiritually "formulaic" and thought, yeah, that's for damned sure.
An image from the periodical Christianity Today (their "CT" logo is at bottom right) shows a figure resembling a gaming miniature standing on what is presumably an open Bible swinging a morning star at a rampaging dragon. The accompanying text reads: "The Gospel According to Dungeons and Dragons" and "The fantasy role-playing game's theological dimensions can be spiritually formative."
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
That’s me in green texting with my friend Tom the night before La Vuelta Ciclista a España started. As Tom said, “I hope we didn’t jinx anybody.” (For those who don’t follow cycling, Tadej Pogacar crashed out of the race yesterday and Enric Mas won today’s stage and is in the leader’s jersey.)
A text exchange between Tom and Christopher (me):

Tom: And more important news. Who's your pick for the vuelta?

Christopher: Man, I haven’t even looked. The Tour just bored me and then the stuff with the women’s coverage. I haven’t even renewed my Peacock subscription yet, when does it start?

Christopher: I did see Julian retired. 

Christopher: Wait, Tadej is riding?

Christopher: Blah.

Christopher:  Fuck it. Enric Mas for three stages and the overall. 

Tom: Blah indeed. But hopefully there will be some excitement out of wow and Cara Paz. I would personally love to see primos pull a surprise upset and get his Bull Durham record and then retire this year.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
I just got to spend a very pleasant time having coffee and chatting with my Cousin Sarah, who lives in one of those square states out west but is home for a visit. If you have a cousin you don’t get to see very often, my experience suggests you might benefit from giving them a call this evening.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
If you encounter a link on social media to an article in a publication that requires a subscription to read, I invite you to consider not posting a comment that reads, in essence, “I can’t read this because it’s behind a paywall.” Because that’s a pretty boneheaded thing to say.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Over the weekend, I watched one movie and one television episode in which characters sang along to “Drift Away" by Dobie Gray.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
I used to like the internet more than I like it now.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Taters inspecting my twenty-dollar farmer’s market haul.
A gray cat sniffs an array of peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers spread atop a table with a melon, a loaf of bread, and a glass of lemonade.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
New spectacles.
The poster wearing a black tshirt against a background of brilliant Walmart blue (tm). The glasses are round and kind of bronze. The hair (such as remains) and closely trimmed beard are white.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
I am deeply saddened by the passing of the extraordinary novelist, John Crowley.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Going through last week’s entries in my carrying-around notebook. On the second night of the workshop where I was teaching, a woman came up to me and said, “One of my ancestors was murdered by one of yours.”
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
The Warhammer 40K app won't run on my iPad Pro because I don't have a new enough operating system and I can't upload a newer operating system because my iPad Pro was manufactured in 2012. This idly vexes me.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Strongly seconding this.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Look, this is just something I do. I no longer use the Google search engine much but even when I do I try not to say, “I googled it,” I try and say, “I looked it up.” Thus is just something I think, but I don’t think you should commodify your curiosity.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
My voice is shot, which makes me realize how much I engaged in the actual physical act of utterance last week, which in turn makes me realize that most weeks I probably read more books by the dead than I have conversations with the quick.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
An idea I’ll almost certainly never act on. Publish a one-shot zine of original sf stories about “ai” titled Holograph. Submissions open to anyone but they must be handwritten and sent by post. Each selected story is accompanied by an image of a page from the original submission.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Last night at the Appalachian Writers Workshop at the Hindman Settlement School in Knott County, Kentucky. Everybody appears to have had a big old time.
A photograph of the poster.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
On each of the past 8 or 9 mornings, I have, from the second day of her life, attempted to catch a red heifer for tagging. It does not bother me that she exhibits greater speed and agility than I do. It does bother me that she exhibits a superior sense of tactics.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Tomorrow, I go teach at the annual Appalachian Writers Workshop at the Hindman Settlement School on Troublesome Creek. I’ve been there once, 40 years ago, for James Still’s 80th birthday party (I was 16). I took a line from his great poem, “Heritage,” as the title for one of my books. Here it is.
A broadside reads:

HERITAGE


I shall not leave these prisoning hills
Though they topple their barren heads to level earth
And the forests slide uprooted out of the sky.
Though the waters of Troublesome, of Trace Fork,
Of Sand Lick rise in a single body to glean the valleys,
To drown lush pennyroyal, to unravel rail fences;
Though the sun-ball breaks the ridges into dust
And burns its strength into the blistered rock
I cannot leave. I cannot go away.
Being of these hills, being one with the fox
Stealing into the shadows, one with the new-born foal,
The lumbering ox drawing green beech logs to mill,
One with the destined feet of man climbing and descending,
And one with death rising to bloom again, I cannot go.
Being of these hills I cannot pass beyond.

James Still
1968
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Here's something I believe. All writers of substance are better readers than they are writers.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
This is a passage from a story in the latest issue of Asimov's. The story is set in 212 AD, the setting is the Italian peninsula, and the characters are specifically said to be speaking Greek. Is there anything about it that throws you out? I was, but suspect I might just be being precious.
Text reading: 

“You’re lucky to be here, then,” I said. It had been an inauspicious start to
Hannibal’s campaign, but I couldn’t say that to his face. He’d kept both legs, and I wasn’t about to ask where he lost the eye.

He fixed me with the one that remained. “My point: sieges are costly.
And boring.”

A joke came to mind about sapping, undermining. In the sense of boring . . . under a wall. [ellipsis in original] However, since I had already established that Hannibal had no sense of humor, I kept it to myself.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Text reading: 

A Reading from
the Commonplace Book

With Tantor, the elephant, he made friends. How? Ask not.

		—Edgar Rice Burroughs
		—Tarzan of the Apes
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
In my secluded laboratory here on the farm, I have constructed a device that will concentrate the cosmic rays falling on this part of the earth into a crystal chamber. I plan to bombard myself with those rays and evolutionarily advance myself 50 million years. I need two witnesses. Enquire by post.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Is anyone aware of a Discord or other forum dedicated to discussing the contents of the full range of contemporary speculative fiction periodicals? Such as those listed here? www.trollbreath.com/sff-magazine...
trollbreath.com
Speculative Fiction Magazine Subscription Database - Jeff Reynolds
Listing of Genre Magazines with links to Subscription pages
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
I highly recommend today’s episode if The Cycling Podcast, from which I learned that there was an anti fascist counter-Olympics scheduled in Barcelona in 1936 that was interrupted by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. The whole episode is fascinating.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
"Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
First produce of 2026.
A large radish.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Except without the bread.
A photograph of the White House in Washington DC, taken in late May, 2026, shows the mansion behind the ongoing construction of a mixed martial arts "fighting cage" stadium. Superimposed over the photo is text reading as follows:

….that same crowd in a moment would have hailed
Their new Augustus. They shed their sense of responsibility
Long ago, when they lost their votes, and the bribes; the mob
That used to grant power, high office, the legions, everything,
Curtails its desires, and reveals its anxiety for two things only,
Bread and circuses…

Juvenal
Satire X
2nd Century BC
(translation by A.S. Kline, copyright 2011)
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Kittens in the hen house!
One kitten napping and one stalking in the sun drenched straw of a hutch, with four hen eggs in the foreground.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Posited. If you are a science fiction writer of any description, these, the first two pages of Edmond Hamilton's novelette, "The Star-Stealers," as they appeared on first publication in the February 1929 issue of Weird Tales, have had a profound influence on your creative life. (Art by Hugh Rankin.)
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
I was just leaving the sandwich shop where I had lunch and the teen girl working the counter called, “I hope you enjoy your book!” as I went out the door. (Banks, Consider Phlebas.)
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Got asked by a literary/cultural journal to review a book this morning. They didn't mention pay, so I asked. They said they don't normally pay for reviews. I said I don't write for free. They said, well, how much? I said, principle of the thing & y'all are cool, so 5 bucks? They countered with $50.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
I could of course check this but my curiosity is about it is idle at most. Does Uncanny publish more stories written in the present tense (as a percentage of the fiction they publish) than Clarkesworld and Lightspeed? Just came to mind as I was reading the current issues.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
I fancy myself a fairly skilled writer but it is beyond my abilities to adequately describe the expression on my brother’s face when I told him I couldn’t take a gardening suggestion of his because doing so would subvert my color story.
A man in farming clothes (me) stands in an early spring garden holding an open notebook in one hand and gesturing with the other.
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Reposted by Christopher Rowe
Robin Bradford @tuphlos.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
Every day that I can buy a book for the library by one of my friends is a good day. Today, it is @christopherrowe.bsky.social
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Reposted by Christopher Rowe
Reactor Magazine @reactorsff.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
An Earth explorer in search of something new and strange in the up and out ends up traveling through space with a small god over millennia... "The Day-Blind Stars" by @christopherrowe.bsky.social is out to read at Reactor now! Art by Hwarim Lee Edited by @jonathanstrahan.bsky.social
reactormag.com
The Day-Blind Stars - Reactor
An Earth explorer in search of something new and strange in the up and out ends up traveling through space with a small god over millennia.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
This took longer than it should have but I’m out of practice.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
I have finalized my roster and chosen my paint scheme. Pondering a name for this 32nd century mercenary giant robot force. Don’t tell me I don’t know how to spend a Saturday night.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
That time I unknowingly inspired one of the finest uses of government resources with which I am familiar.
A topographical map of Kentucky, with its many counties outlined, has three labels.

Label #1: High Points of Kentucky’s
120 Counties

Label #2: https://kgs.uky.edu/kyhighpts/

Label #3: From the Kentucky Geological Survey website: Kentucky writer and cyclist Christopher Rowe was using the 1978 KGS report “Topography of Kentucky” to find high points in each county with the idea of bicycling to as many as possible. When we learned about his efforts, we immediately realized we could use the statewide LiDAR DEM to determine each county’s highest point far more accurately than could be done with old topographic maps. So, we did that, calculated the distance from each high point the nearest road, and are sharing the results via this interactive map. 
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
My story, “The Day-Blind Stars,” will appear at Tor’s REACTOR site in April. It was edited by Jonathan Strahan & illustrated by Hwarim Lee. The tag line reads: An Earth explorer in search of something new and strange in the up and out, ends up traveling through space with a small god over millennia.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
I really, really like the HBO show Rooster. I have watched the two episodes released so far twice and am mad they didn’t do that thing they do sometimes where they release all the episodes at once. I’m now thinking maybe they don’t do that anymore, but I wish they did. I would watch them all today.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
Things this woman has said to me today include “You should buy chickpeas every time you go to the grocery” and “Do you like Chet Baker?”
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
Yesterday, my mother sent me the greatest text message I’ve ever received.
Text reads:

Homemakers homemade homemade yeah yeah I signed up on Tuesday for the pay plan and what both days OK I’ll signed up for the pen on Tuesday and the flag of the flower on Wednesday. Well, we put it on there to see which one we got if we get one or the other one might not get either one OK what else did you do for this one? Are we gonna do the supporting the breast-feeding? Well, you know it’s like that. Oh that’s great. That’s great color of the mountains. That’s dies natural dies I did sign up for that and it did say pay for your first choice. If there’s a fee well that one has a fee and then the block party it’s it is recording what I’m saying look at that.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
A Reading from
the Commonplace Book

The way I figure it, every man’s entitled to
a door he can close against the world.

		—Ed McBain
		—Lady, Lady, I Did It!
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