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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 also this one.
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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 · 23/08/2026
I’ve used mules in a lot of my stories.
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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 · 18/08/2026
Yep.
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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
Buckaroo Gump
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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
Hell yeah.
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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
Heck yeah!
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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 · 10/08/2026
Just picked ‘em up and they are game changers!
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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 · 06/08/2026
I ordered my first new glasses in three years yesterday and hope I didn’t order them where you did! More, I hope you get yours soon!
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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
That is a typo. It’s a 2015.
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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
I only point this out for those of you I hope seek out her work but her last name is spelled Taaffe, with two Fs. I only know that because I’m pretty sure I misspelled her name in a zine I edited years ago. The important thing is to seek out her work. (Insert plea for edit function on Bluesky.)
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Strongly seconding this.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Well, she seems nice.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
(I just about guarandamntee that somebody reading this will be moved to find some post or interview or podcast or something where I said “I googled it,” in those words exactly. I will save you the trouble and go ahead and say, “Yeah, man [I know you’re a man], you sure got me.”)
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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 · 03/08/2026
Nah, man, that’s all yours. He who spelt it…
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Why are you trying to force your lifestyle on me, Dallas?
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
My thing is about how, with rare exceptions usually played for laughs, everybody in movies and on tv always immediately finds a great parking spot and never comments on it.
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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
That’s a joke!
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Here you go!
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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 · 03/07/2026
It’s something else.
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Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Almost anything to do with agriculture.
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