Marking the day

Black poet Dudley Randall (1914–2000) founded Broadside Press at Detroit in 1965. It quickly became one of the leading publishers in the Black Arts Movement. As is suggested by its name, the publisher famously produced a series of broadsides, the first of which, featuring Randall’s own work, is shown here.

Citation

Randall, Dudley. “Ballad of Birmingham.” Broadside Press Broadside Series. Broadside Press, Detroit. Special Collections, University of Delaware Library. Accessed 19 January 2026.

"The Means"

A bit over a week ago, I was at my desk, leaned back with my feet propped up, as is my habit, Taters asleep on my lap, as is his. I was suddenly prompted to stretch out and pull an ink pen and an envelope closer (those are shown here), and scribbled the start of a story. Once Taters finished his nap, I sat up, transcribed what I’d written (it continues on the back, there), added some stuff, moved some stuff around, did a bit of tinkering. Then I emailed it off. Yesterday afternoon came the news that the first new and complete thing I’ve written in 2026, a short story titled “The Means,” will be in a forthcoming issue of LIghtspeed Magazine.

If you're of a mind too, click here to leave me a tip (or not) under my "Pay What You Want But You Don't Gotta Pay Nothin!' policy.

Dress Code

Here is the dress code from my syllabus for Writing 520: Place as Idea and Identity. 

(eta there is no such dress code, y'all settle down)

Click here to tip under my “Pay What You Want But You Don’t Gotta Pay Nothin!’” policy! 

"The Stars So Green and Bright" (part 1) by Christopher Rowe

 

This is the first part of a science fiction short story I'm writing that I will post in brief sections as they are completed. Please consider reading this on my ko-fi page, click here to get there, where you can leave me a tip if you feel like it. But remember, my model is always "Pay What You Want, But You Don't Gotta Pay Nothin.'"

I will continue to work on this story and post it as I go, here and elsewhere, whether anyone tips me or not. Please let me know what you think! Are you intrigued? Spot any infelicities? 

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"The Stars So Green and Bright" (part 1)

by Christopher Rowe

Many years ago, before this last, great war began, I spent a week at the University of Montana studying basic concepts of astronomy as part of a government-funded program promoting better understanding of the sciences among artists. My cohort—there were a dozen of us—numbered mostly writers of fiction, like me, but there was a screenwriter there, and a cartoonist. There was a dour man who told us he was a comedian. His humor was such that everything thing he said was wickedly funny, but you didn’t realize so until hours, sometimes months after he’d spoken.

 

That was the world in those days. Tax money spent so that a cartoonist might learn to properly plot a star on the main sequence, something every surviving human now knows how to do. I have told my stepdaughters about this and they indulge me with their usual eye rolling smiles. They do not know how much I love what they think of as their indulging me, just as they do not know how much I love them in general.

 

I am no longer a writer, of course, just as you are no longer a grocer, or a homemaker, or an educator. Like you, like my stepdaughters, I am a soldier.

 

I mean, they did ask what I thought of the "help" I was given...

The full text of what I typed into the provided box of the survey response form (see image below) I was sent after using the "Chat With A Representative" feature on HBO Max's help page read:

Okay, listen up. My one star rating not withstanding, THE GUY HIMSELF DID GREAT. Or the robot, if he was a robot. He's probably a robot. If he was a robot, he probably performed precisely to your specifications. I imagine, probably being a robot yourself, that your specifications are pretty precise. My question was, "Where can I find a schedule listing the dates and times of all these hundreds of bicycle races y'all say you're streaming?" His answer was, in its substance, "No such information exists." Now, I don't actually believe that, but, precision in no way being the same thing as accuracy, y'all are most likely delighted with his performance. Please don't send fake nude photos. Don't send any nude photos, actually. Tell you what, just no photos, full stop.

 You can send me a tip by clicking here if you liked this enough to send a tip!

 

Pay What You Want 'Cause You Don't Gotta Pay Nothin'

As eventually all men must, I have decided to become a cross-platform multi-media internet “content creating” millionaire.

The "tip page all this is about can be found by following this link:

https://ko-fi.com/christopherrowe

That, like much of what I post here and elsewhere, cannot strictly be said to be true. 

The short version is that, going forward, I’m going to keep doing exactly what I’m doing now (plus maybe a little more) and post stuff on social media and at other places online and y’all can read it or watch it or listen to it exactly as you do now, wherever you do now. Which is probably on Facebook, for I walk the old roads. And that’s pretty much it. Below this paragraph, I have, with my usual brevity, written about this thing I’m trying to set up that’s like a tip jar.

Since I basically scrabble together such a living as I have from working on the farm, writing fiction, and teaching classes at colleges and workshops, I can always use some cash. People seem to and probably mostly don’t make cash putting stuff on the internet. What I’ve done (I think, I’m not actually all that good at the internet) is made a way for anyone so inclined to tip me for stuff I put up if they want to.

I’m using what I’m calling the “Pay What You Want ‘Cause You Don’t Gotta Pay Nothin’” model. I’m not launching a Patreon, I’m not starting a newsletter you can pay to read, and I’m not providing “premium content” for anybody by any means. I’m just gonna put up stuff like I do now, where I put it up now. The only difference you will notice is that on a lot of stuff I put up here and elsewhere, I’ll add a link to this thing called a Ko-Fi page, where the exact same thing you just read for free is reproduced, also for free. But there’s, I don’t know, a button or something you can push if you want send a tip. 

If you don’t like the idea of paying for any of this stuff, be of good cheer! Just ignore the link if you’re reading it here or the button (if it’s a button) if you’re reading it there. Which, I guess, is actually here, if you’re there. Man, this crossposting thing is gonna take me a minute.

The first “tipable” thing I’m putting up is this right here you’re reading right now. This is on my Facebook page, on my blog (UnCommonwealth), and on the Ko-Fi site. Future stuff will read less like instructions for one of those games with a thousand counters, a hundred figurines you have to paint yourself, and eleven decks of cards for each player.

Here are my promises.

(1) Everything stays free.

(2) Anything available at the place where you can tip will also be available at places you can’t. 

(This seems a shaky business model, good thing this isn’t a business. Unless it is? I’m not filling out any paperwork, government officials, so back off! But see point 4. about taxes, below.)

(3) You don’t have to click through to read anything someplace else if you don’t want to. It’s the same stuff. It’s just that (I think?) you have to go to the Ko-fi version to hit the button.

(4) If anybody actually sends me any money, I will pay all taxes due on it.

(5) I sometimes post stuff of a political bent on Facebook and Instagram and Bluesky. I will not share those on the Ko-Fi page or include a Ko-Fi link on those because I think my dad will report me to the Federal Election Commission if I do.

Okay, if I’ve done this right, there should be a link here somewhere or in the comments maybe to the Ko-Fi version of this post.

Wow. 23 Years...

I received an email stating that this blog was about to be scrubbed if I didn't "migrate" it, so I guess I"ve migrated it. Could be a handy thing to have, I suppose. 

Again with the address changing!

Two things, y'all. First of all, if you're one of the people who call us on telephone machines, please start using our cel phone numbers. We're trying to wean ourselves off the landline. If you're somebody who calls us on telephone machines that doesn't have our cel phone numbers, then send me an e-mail.

Second, I guess this is my last entry here at Blogger, because Gwenda's set me up with a Typepad account, on account it has powerful web authoring tools that I will someday look at.

The all new all new UnCommonwealth is linked off this sentence.

The Secret School of Chicken Hauling

So, I was having a looksee at the message boards over at oilburners.net, as you do ("as you do" is Australian for "I'm not going to tell you why I was looking at the message boards at oilburners.net). And I came across this essay, which you really should read. As enticement, I repeat here the excited reaction to the piece that one reader had:

For All the Chicken Haulers AKA Poultry Relocation Specialists:

AIN'T NO FEELIN' LIKE CHICKEN MOBILIN'!!!!! WHOOP WHOOP!!!

That other obsession of mine...

Besides the sci fi, I mean.

So, this week the World Road Cycling Championships are being run in Madrid. A brief primer: there are basically two different types of races run by three different groups of people. The race types are the road race (basically what you'd expect, a bunch of people all trying to get to the finish line as quickly as possible) and the time trial (which is also a bunch of people trying to get to the finish line as quickly as possible except in this case they race one at a time "against the clock," over shorter distances and with wacky aero helmets and disc wheels and stuff). The three groups of people are the "Elite Women" (basically pro bike racers from around the world), the "Elite Men" (same thing but with different chromosomes and inferior tactics), and the "U23 Men" which are the top men under the age of 23. Where are the top women under the age of 23? In the "Elite Women" race, presumably. Don't ask me, ask the UCI.

Anyway, hate to be provincial and all, but the women's time trial has been run and Team USA placed all three of their TT riders in the top eight! And Kristin "No Relation" Armstrong is on the podium at third!

You can check the results and see pictures and maps and stuff here. And if you've got the bandwidth, you can watch the elite men's TT (tomorrow) and road race (Saturday) on the net at cycling.tv.

I love Worlds for some of the same reasons that I love the Olympics. For one thing, they're not raced (theoretically) based on the structure of the trade teams the riders work for through the season but instead based on national teams, so you get to see tons of cyclists from all over the world that you've never heard of, wearing much cooler kits than the logo laden billboard style kits of the regular teams. What makes them better than the Olympics is that its all bicycle racing!

I believe I've sent everybody who asked for one an "answer sheet" to the quotes from last week. If anybody else still wants one, please let me know. And I know I haven't fixed the typos in the Link and Delany quotes yet (I'm talking to J.S. and N.H. here) but will soonest.

Oh, and in tonight's class we'll be discussing plot and talking about Ian McDonald's "The Little Goddess," a novella from the June issue of Asimov's that provides a great foretaste of his award winning novel River of Gods for those of you who are waiting for the Pyr edition to come out here in the states. Here's an excerpt of the story.

No googling!

Been way busy since the semester started. Like the girl said when she was still the girl we loved, "School hard."

Tomorrow is the first meeting of the sf/fantasy short fiction class I've mentioned a couple of times. If anybody reading this is one of the students, then here's a bit of a sneak preview.

Part of my approach in teaching this class is formed by a question Terry Bisson asked us (I think I've mentioned this, too) on the first day of Clarion West 1996. "How can you expect to write this stuff if you don't read it?"

To that end, we're going to learn about writing science fiction and fantasy short stories, to begin with anyway, by reading a bunch of 'em. I'm going to ask the students to read Strange Horizons and SCI FICTION weekly, as well as distribute the copies of F&SF, Asimov's, Analog, Realms of Fantasy and Weird Tales that the editors and publishers of those magazines have so generously provided for the class.

And on the first night, stealing another trick from Terry, I'm going to get a feeling for how well read in the genre the folks in the class are by reading some of the following openings to them to see who can identify what. How many stories can you identify by title and author from these lines? (Order--and inclusion for that matter--determined by arbitrary whim.) (I know some of 'em are dead easy.)

----

"Fashion, nothing but fashion. Virus X having in the medical zodiac its course half i-run, the physician (I refuse to say 'doctor' and, indeed, am tempted to use the more correct “apothecary”)--the physician, I say, tells me I have Virus Y."

"Two pieces of yesterday were in Captain Davidson's mind when he woke, and he lay looking at them in the darkness for awhile."

"Here is a story about a man who had too much power, and a man who took too much, but don't worry; I'm not going political on you."

"It is a Sunday morning in summer and a small brown chimpanzee named Rachel sits on the living room floor of a remote ranch house on the edge of the Painted Desert."

"It is three thousand light years from the Vatican."

"I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia."

"The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green."

"It was the time of the Sun Dance and the Big Tractor Pull."

"The strange stars of the World of Newhon glinted thickly above the black-roofed city of Lankhmar, where swords clink almost as often as coins."

"I used to go the thrift stores with my friends."

"And came down to Paris: Where we raced along the Rue de Médicis with Bo and Lou and Muse inside the fence, Kelly and me outside, making faces through the bars, making noise, making the Luxembourg Gardens roar at two in the morning, then climbed out, and down to the square in front of St. Sulpice where Bo tried to knock me into the fountain."

"Steena of the Spaceways--that sounds just like a corny title for one of the Stellar-Vedo spreads."

"Were the tower to be laid down across the plain of Shinar, it would be two days' journey to walk from one end to the other."

"He awoke--and wanted Mars."

"Whatever your gravity is when you get to the door, remember--the enemy’s gate is down."

"I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think you’re crude, go technical; if they think you’re technical, go crude. I’m a very technical boy."

"With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea."

"Dr. Strauss says I shud rite down what I think and evrey thing that happins to me from now on."

"Everybody else got off the train at Hell, but I figured, it's a free country."

"He doesn’t know which one of us I am these days, but they know one truth."

"I was driving with my brother, the preacher, and my nephew, the preacher's son, on I-65 just north of Bowling Green when we got a flat."

"I saw Archibald Murray's obituary in the Tribune the other day."

"Somehow the idea was brought up by Mom that perhaps the whole family would enjoy a fishing trip."

"If you only see Dry Bone: one meager man, with arms and leg thin so like matches stick, and what a way the man face just a-hang down till it favour jackass when him sick!"

"Are you familiar with the scent of extinguished birthday candles?"

This one's for all the cops in the doughnut shops...

And it reads...Dear Kasey,

The so lovely so talented Nalo has posted a meme-theng about pop music. Way it works is, you go plug the year you graduated high school into the search box at top right on this page. The first link on the page that pops up will be to a list of the Top 100 (not to be confused with the Hot 100) songs of that year.

You can read Nalo's entry if you want to follow the instructions about highlighting and circling and arrowing which songs did it and which songs didn't for you. I'm not going to do that because I gotta go follow Eurosport's online coverage of today's stage of the Tour of Germany (Allez, Levi!) but suffice it say, reading the 1987 list sure made me smile a lot.

Funny how strongly I associate the videos with the song titles. Maybe I should have dedicated this entry to Tawny Kitaen.

Please

Go read this. Then spread it far and wide.

Via Patrick Samphire.

Joe College

I'm all registered for classes up at college now. I'm taking four courses totalling 13 hours to kind of ease my way in. Here's how all the undergrad goodness is looking for yours truly:

Elementary French I: MTWR (R is college for Thursday) 11:00-11:50.
History of Kentucky: MW 2:00-3:15
Cultural Diversity in the Modern World: TR 8:00-9:15
Literature & Genre, Special Topic: Kentucky Masters of the Short Story: TR 9:30-10:45

I did manage to hit two of my three scheduling goals (done by 4:00 pm, no classes on Fridays) and missing the third (nothing before 9) isn't really that big a deal now that I'm no longer nineteen years old.

Next up, finding a part time job downtown somewhere.

Just a link

Strange Horizons has an excellent interview with Kim Stanley Robinson, a good man and a great writer.

Classified

Tomorrow I'm off to college to sign up for college classes. It'll mostly be exciting 200 level coursework, foundational "gotta know algebra before you can study Elizabethan drama" type stuff. If anything interesting comes out of it I'll let y'all know.

Perhaps of more interest to you, my core audience, is that the details have been finalized on the class I'm teaching. You'll remember this from an earlier post, I'm sure:

Introduction to Writing Science Fiction & Fantasy Short Stories

Christopher Rowe, a 2005 finalist for the Hugo, Nebula and Theodore Sturgeon Awards, will lead a workshop that addresses the unique challenges and opportunities associated with writing science fiction and fantasy short stories. We'll begin with group discussions of recently published stories; the later stage of the class is a full-fledged workshop where you'll write a story and also critique the work of other students. Heavy reading load! The 12 week workshop meets Wednesday nights from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm and is limited to 12 participants aged 18 and above. First meeting, September 14th. Cost: $100

The class will be here in Lexington at The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. I'm going to be working up some fliers to put up at local colleges and libraries, as well as in the comics and gaming shops. And of course, as you can see, I'm using the limitless marketing potential of the internet. I'd like to fill up the class if at all possible so that the folks at the Center might have me back for future sessions. If anybody has additional ideas for getting the word out, I'd appreciate it if you jumped on the comment button or dropped me an e-mail. If you live in Lexington and are interested in attending the class, you can contact the Carnegie Center through the website above or via telephone at 859-254-4175.

All the News that Fits

While we were "travelling" last week (it's hard for me to use such an evocative word to describe such a banal experience--maybe "to travel" should be reserved for journeys on foot or by bicycle) I had a couple of opportunities to flip through USA Today. For those of you who don't live in the states, USA Today is kind of like a newspaper.

There was one feature in the paper that I thought was kind of interesting. It was sort of a state by state headline roundup, where many of the fifty remaining states of the former hegemony were listed by name, followed by a brief precis of the big news story in that state.

My question is this. Is there a comparable thing anywhere out there in the electrical universe for the whole wide world? Google News is close to what I have in mind, but they only list the top five or six stories in a handful of categories. I'm not looking for categories, I'm looking for geography--and of course I don't just want a bullet point version of the item, I want to be able to drill down through a link to more detailed stuff.

In short, I want to know everything that's going on everywhere in the world, but I'd like it packaged in an easy to read, easy to navigate form. Oh, preferably the stories linked to will be in English. But otherwise, no bias or agenda that isn't in line with my own, okay? Finally, if this kind of aggregator doesn't in fact exist, could one of you computer types whip one up? Thanks!

Just so you know

George Rowe the Dog? Big fan of Afro-Celtic synthpop. Don't believe the naysayers! I have the evidence of my eyes!

NoMoFoLiPa

FoLiPa is a sign-off I use sometimes when I write e-mails. It's a shortening of the phrase "Forklift Papers" and I use it to indicate that I need to get off the interweb 'cause I got big deal forklift papers to work on. Important dayjob stuff, y'dig? Richard suggests that I should put some kind of counter on this journal to count down the days until my move to the exciting world of underemployed studentdom. I don't know how to do that, so I'll just tell you that NoMoFoLiPa liftoff is scheduled for around 4:30 pm local time on Friday, August 19th.

Speaking of that dayjob, check out this pic that's one of the entries in this week's VeloNews photo contest.

And while you're just messing around looking at pictures on the internet anyway, check out this fab entry by Susan Marie Groppi and follow the link at the bottom to a great 1865 photo of a famous gray old man snapped (did they snap in 1865? maybe it was fwoomped) before he was famous and gray and old.

Also, there was a big sci fi convention over there in Scotland. I didn't win any big rockets, but some Californians gave me a little one (hopefully it's in the bag that US Airways has managed to find and not the one that Air Canada is denying the existence of) and we had a fabulous time. My reading went pretty well (I read the first chapter and part of the third chapter of my novel-in-progress) and the weird little "meet the 'pro'" thing I had was fun too, with actual people I didn't know there, even people from exotic foreign lands like Holland, Germany and Texas.

I'm not much on the con reports, so just go read this one, which kind of looks like a poem.

You like rambly?

Hmmm, it's all of a sudden been awhile. And boy, are you behind on what's going on around here.

News of various degrees of bigness, most of which y'all probably know. We're off to Scotland in a couple of weeks for the World Science Fiction Convention. My programming schedule is intentionally light--I've got a reading and a "kaffeeklatsch," both on the convention's Friday afternoon--so we'll be taking at least one day trip away from Glasgow. Sunday is the big day, as that's when the Hugos are announced.

Back at home, while the final schedule has yet to be set, I'll definitely be teaching a 12 week course at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning here in Lexington starting in September. Here's the description that will appear in the course catalog:

Introduction to Writing Science Fiction & Fantasy Short Stories

Christopher Rowe, a 2005 finalist for the Hugo, Nebula and Theodore Sturgeon Awards, will lead a workshop that addresses the unique challenges and opportunities associated with writing science fiction and fantasy short stories. We'll begin with group discussions of recently published stories; the later stage of the class is a full-fledged workshop where you'll write a story and also critique the work of other students. Heavy reading load! The 12 week workshop meets [Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday] nights at 6:00 pm and is limited to 12 participants aged 18 and above. First meeting, September X.

The very first question our Clarion West class was asked by our Week One instructor, Terry Bisson, was "How do you expect to write this stuff if you don't read it?" I took that very much to heart, so in this class much sf/fantasy short fiction will be read. Thanks to Gordon van Gelder, Shawna McCarthy and Sheila Williams for arranging donations of course texts in the form of recent issues of the "Big Four" genre print magazines and to Ellen Datlow and the editorial team at Strange Horizons for editing magazines that are, y'know, free and online.

Finally, in the "blogs as group e-mails" department, if you've got my cel phone number (the one with the 494 exchange) please lose it. My cel is a perk of my dayjob, which will be changing after we get back from Scotland. Thanks to the extraordinary generosity and support of Miss G (and, hopefully, the federal government), I'm taking advantage of an unexpected change in life circumstances to go back to school. Higher education and I struck each other a few glancing blows in the years after I graduated high school, to no noticable effect on either side. I'm going in with different expectations this time. Also, less hair. (And a less annoying haircut.)

On the writing front, the two projects on the front of the stove are revisions of the story I took to Sycamore Hill and a new story that's given me the opportunity to make a phone call to a place here in town called the Asphalt Institute.

There's no good transition sentence away from asphalt, so bye-bye.