Christopher Rowe

Helix

A group of well-known sf/fantasy professionals headed by Lawrence Watt-Evans and William Sanders have just launched a new venture called Helix. It looks to be funded on a donation model similar to that pioneered by Strange Horizons. Note that they apparently solicit their fiction; this is a place to read stories,  not send them.

The most interesting thing about this to most UnCommonwealth readers, probably, is that the first issue contains a new story by Rick Bowes. (Mama, it also contains a story by Janis Ian.)

The editorials are worth a read (that links to one by Sanders, scroll down for another by Watt-Evans). Everybody loves subtext.

TTT

Cycling is the most beautiful sport in the world. This is mostly true because the "pitch" for road cycling consists largely of the countryside of six continents. It's also true because the machines themselves are so elegant and because of the colors and designs of the various team and championship jerseys. The action of the race itself is beautiful; the tactics, the effort.

Nothing brings all those elements together quite like the team time trial. I won't go into detail about the rules and definitions of a TTT (this Wiki article does a pretty good job of that); suffice it to say that the teams race as tightly drilled units, against the clock, instead of the entire peloton being on the road in one great mass.

I encourage all of you to watch this year's ProTour Team Time Trial in the lovely city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. The race will be broadcast Sunday afternoon (eastern U.S. time) for free on cycling.tv, so anyplace you can score a broadband connection is a place you can watch the race.

If you haven't seen one before, you'll definitely be in for a treat. Seriously, they look really damned cool.

Dream a little dream for me...

I guess I should actually title this "dream a troubled dream for me."

One of the various stories I owe to various editors is a piece for Aegri Somnia, a limited edition original anthology with contributions from the various people who have been guest writers at Apex Online. (Signed by all contributors, available for preorder as a hardcover or a trade paperback, etc etc. Y'all know the drill.)

I think the idea is that we're supposed to do something at least tangentially related to dreams: write about them, riff on them, take inspiration from them. I actually don't often remember my dreams, and when I do they tend to be more wacky than troubled (though I sometimes have falling dreams, most of which involve ill-considered dream-choices made by my dream-self while riding my dream-bicycle; the most memorable one concerned dream-Bridge Day).

So, who wants to give me a weird image from a dream? Or failing that, who can recommend a food to eat right before bed that'll help me roll my own?

Let's give a big hand to the Ditty Bops!

Some reasons the fabulous Ditty Bops are my new favorite band:

• The have cartoon images of themselves as lady pirates on their website.
• They play groovy tunes.
• One of which is "Walk or Ride."
• They're touring the USA via bicycle, and posting a detailed diary about the journey as they go.
• The slogan for their tour is We Shall Ride Under a Black Flag and Call the Streets Our Empire.

I'm melting!

Okay, I'm not melting, but it sure looks like the dude on that cover is. Apex Digest's Jason Sizemore sent that along to let me know that, by the skin no longer covering melting dude's teeth, it's actually the Summer issue of Apex, not the August F&SF, that will mark the first time my name's made a cover.

This magazine contains a reprint of my short story "Whether to Go Through," which originally appeared in the Fall 2004 issue (#7) of Electric Velocipede, which, now that I look at it, has my name right there on the cover next to Liz Williams, big as life, so you know what? Forget all this "first time name on cover" stuff because clearly I have no idea when, where and whether my name has shown up.

"Whether to Go Through" garnered an honorable mention in the 22nd annual Year's Best Science Fiction collection, edited by Gardner Dozois. Science fiction fans will be happy to learn that it references a spaceship called The Onager, which is both a type of medieval siege engine and a type of ass, a rare twofer indeed.

Jason says that the the issue will be available via Apex's online store this coming Friday, June 16th. A more astute bidnessman than myself would probably wait until then to talk about this, but Friday is the 233 kilometer stage from St. Moritz to Ascona in the Tour de Suisse, so like most of you, I'll be busy watching to see how Jan Ullrich handles the two categorized climbs over Julierpass and Lukmanierpass. Right?

Ah, and via Matt Cheney, that New York Times Book Review that mentions me and Ben Rosenbaum is now online. Also, complete contents of that issue of Apex are below the cut (just click on "click for more" or whatever it says).

Man, this is one content-rich post. I'm going to have to take a couple days off.

Rhymes With Glover, Hover, Lover

And now Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Editor & Publisher Gordon Van Gelder has sent along the cover of the upcoming August issue.

Pretty swirly colors!

This is the first time (I think) that my name's been on the cover of a magazine, so that's very cool.

Remember, you can subscribe, order this issue singly and/or read a preview of my story if you electro-jump to the previous entry.

Gordon posted the complete table of contents to this issue over at the F&SF Message Board. I shamelessly reproduce it here without even asking:

NOVELETS
Penultima Thule -7- Chris Willrich
Okanoggan Falls -124- Carolyn Ives Gillman

SHORT STORIES
Another Word for Map Is Faith -42- Christopher Rowe
Pleased To Meetcha -56- Ken Altabef
Immortal Forms -61- Albert E. Cowdrey
Jack B. Goode and the Neo-Modern Prometheus -81- Robert Loy
Misjudgment Day -100- Robert Reed
Billy and the Spacemen -114- Terry Bisson

DEPARTMENTS
Books to Look For -38- Charles de Lint
Plumage from Pegasus: Changing Teams -96- Paul Di Filippo
Films: Say You Want A Revolution -118- Lucius Shepard
Coming Attractions -160-
Curiosities -162- Thomas Marcinko

CARTOONS: Bill Long (95), Arthur Masear (117), J.P. Rini (123).

COVER BY CORY AND CATSKA ENCH FOR "PENULTIMA THULE"

Another Word For Teaser

In a few weeks, the August issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction will be available. The issue includes my short story, "Another Word For Map is Faith." If you click on the title at the bottom of this entry, you can download a PDF of a bit more than the first half of the story, printed as it will appear in the magazine (thanks for the file, Gordon!).

For those of you who attended my reading at WisCon, this takes the story a couple of scenes further than what you heard.

I hope you enjoy the story at least enough to seek out the second half. F&SF is distributed fairly widely on the magazine racks of major bookstores, and you can also order the August issue by hitting the PayPal button on this web page. Just remember to put "August 2006" in the comments field of your order. Of course, the very best way to ensure you'll get not just my story, but dozens of other stories by a wide variety of wonderful writers it to subscribe to the magazine today. It costs less than a tank of gas, and not just in money.

"Another Word For Map is Faith" extract

Wild Cards

Stories about superheroes!

Since George R.R. Martin let the flying, gamma eye-beam flashing invisible cat out of the bag with an announcement on his website yesterday, I guess it's cool for me to let folks know that I'm one of the four new writers (along with Caroline Spector, Ian Tregillis and Carrie Vaughn) joining the group known as the "Wild Cards Consortium." That means I'll be contributing material to a new trilogy of Wild Cards books. I'll just steal a couple of bits from George's release:

The WILD CARDS series is back in business. We've just signed a contract with Tor Books for a new triad of WILD CARDS mosaic novels, to be titled Inside Straight, Busted Flush, and Suicide Kings. Work on the books has already commenced. Tor hopes to release the first volume in hardcover in 2007, with the subsequent volumes following a year apart.

[...]

The WILD CARDS series made its debut in 1987, during the heydey of the shared world anthology... The series has spawned a comic mini-series from Marvel/ Epic, a role-playing game from Steve Jackson Games, and several film options. WILD CARDS has outlasted all the other shared world anthologies of the 80s to become the longest-running series in the history of our genre... and with a little help from our readers, we hope to run for another twenty years at least.

The Wild Cards anthologies probably represent the first superhero prose fiction I read back in the day (with the obvious exception of Elliot S! Maggin's Last Son of Krypton, which all right thinking people everywhere have read at least once, right?) and I cannot tell you how stoked I was to get an invitation to participate in the series relaunch.

Did I mention that this means I'll be working on stories about superheroes!?

The illustration above is by comics penciller Mike S. Miller. It depicts many of the new characters--listed by name in George's release--but doesn't include the character I created and will be writing about primarily. Probably just as well. He's not quite as attractive as some of those guys. Plus, since he would have had to be the back row, all his swirly bits wouldn't have been visible, and that would have been a shame.
 

The Old Grey Lady, She Ain't What She Used to Be

Big deal New York publishing insider types apparently get the New York Times Book Review way earlier than those of us out here in the middle. One big deal insider in particular (Cheers!) sent along word that David Itzkoff gives the entirety of his Across the Universe column in the upcoming issue over to a review of the Nebula Awards Showcase 2006 anthology edited by Gardner Dozois.

Here's the opening:

The Nebula Awards, bestowed annually by a literary society called the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, don't have a special prize for the speculative work possessing the year's most striking literary imagery. So I hereby invent the category myself, and declare its first winner to be Christopher Rowe for his story "The Voluntary State..."

And then he actually goes on to discuss the story in complimentary terms for the opening two paragraphs of his full page review. At the other end of the piece, Itzkoff gives great big ups to UnCommonwealth fellow traveler Ben Rosenbaum for his story, "Embracing-the-New", which could mean that me and Ben are the beginning and end of contemporary science fiction, except that that reading is supported neither by the text nor by reality.

Anyway, thanks New York Times Book Review. Salut, even.