Author | Lightnews

Christopher Rowe

@christopherrowe.bsky.social

1.3K followers 360 following 750 posts

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

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · Apr 13

Sunday selfie.

A black and white photograph of a bald, clean-shaven white man from the upper chest up. He’s wearing a black t-shirt, and there’s a hint of a smile on his face.

2 6

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 1d

attn: DC Comics. 120 page graphic novel. Kid Psycho in the 21st Century. It's obviously past time. Contact me via my agent.

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 3d

If you don’t know why this is such a perfect thing to do (and I suspect many of you do know exactly why) look up “Gondal” and/or “the Glasstown Confederacy” and associate your search with the Brontës.

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 3d

I’m picking points along the millennia-long timeline of that world for, and also signature “‘mechs” (big stompy robots that shoot missiles and lasers, which are piloted by humans) for, each of the four Brontë siblings.

1 1

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 3d

I am taking my afternoon off indulging myself in a game of sorts, one of my own invention, which I am calling BrontëTech. Riffing off something I mentioned in an Amazon review of the special “Gothic” issue of Shrapnel, the magazine devoted to the vast BattleTech fiction and gaming shared universe...

1 1

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 5d

When you pull your on hoodie backwards, don't fret. Just kind of shrug it around. But be careful of your glasses, which you forgot to take off first.

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 6d

The bovine mind is a mysterious thing.

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 12d

I’m introducing a new internet acronym. OAL;TY. Of appropriate length; thank you.

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 13d

Some days your biggest accomplishment is going to be getting a chain wrapped too tautly around a gate unstuck. That’s not a metaphor.

Related: It is always easier to chain a gate than to unchain a gate. You can use that one as a metaphor, I guess.

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 15d

Wow, thanks! "Minotaur the Robot" is a killer title and that is a killer cover.

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 15d

Make of this what you will. I hate to be pessimistic; perhaps it simply indicates that the new owners are going to handle their own electronic subscriptions. From Weightless Books:

A screen shot from the Weightless Books webpage that reads, in part: "New subscriptions to F&SF at Weightless have been placed on a temporary hold at the request of the publisher."

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 15d

A title, byline, and editorial blurb for a story in the November 1934 issue of Weird Tales Magazine. Sure, time and Freud’s cigar must be taken into account but it makes me wonder about editor Farnsworth Wright’s sense of humor. And of self-awareness.

Text on a yellowed page reading:

Nude With a Dagger

By John Flanders

The old moneylender bumped into a weird problem that all his hardness could not penetrate

2 9 36

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 15d

Way to go!

1 1

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 16d

In that spirit, I say that LLMs are like player pianos. They only make the music a human hand has inscribed on the rolls they’re loaded with. And they never sound as good.

1 4

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 16d

A friend once told me that the closest parallel to NFTs —a previous “inevitable” thing foisted on a world that deserves better—was those certificates you can order that give you “ownership” of a star.

1 7

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 19d

Bow to your partner.
Bow to the lady across the hall.

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 20d

I must admit that the practice illustrated in the attached images both irritates and concerns me. The pictures are the cover and first page of Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars as it first appeared in book form in 1917, and then the cover and first page of the same book as published in 2024.

The striking cover of the first publication (in book form) of Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel, A Princess of Mars. The illustrator was Frank E. Schoonover.

The first page of the 1917 edition of A Princess of Mars. A highlighted sentence reads: "We all loved him, and our slaves fairly worshipped the ground he trod."

Joe Jusko's exciting cover of A Princess of Mars as published in the Edgar Rice Burroughs Authorize Library line by ERB, Inc.

The first page of the 2024 estate-authorized edition of A Princess of Mars. A highlighted sentence reads: "We all loved him, and our servants fairly worshipped the ground he trod."

1 1 3

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 20d

A commonplace conversation once often heard around here that you don’t hear anymore:

“Are you not gonna lock the door?”

“Nah. Somebody might need to get in.”

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 22d

Lean on me!

A farmer leaning against a large black steer’s rump.

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 25d

Robert E. Howard fans be advised.

1 4

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 25d

God bless Jane Goodall, Ambassador to Our Cousins. Her work helped us better understand ourselves.

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 25d

No, but it does have to do with water.

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 25d

Should have said it’s about a foot long.

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 26d

Who knows what this is? Don’t be tacky and no fun by looking this up with a search engine or whatever.

2 1

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · 26d

I need just 12 more followers to hit 1300. I will recruit whoever those 12 are as disciples and send them out into the world to preach peace, love, and resistance to Empire. Warning: some of you will probably be martyred.

1 2

Christopher Rowe @christopherrowe.bsky.social · Sep 24

I am really digging the outfits, wizards! Especially the hats!

From "Death and 7 Wizards," written by Roy Thomas with pencils by John Buscema under Ernie Chua's inks in the Marvel comic, Conan the Barbarian #33, cover-dated December 1973.