Once described as a “rural fabulist,” science fiction and fantasy writer Christopher Rowe is having a bit of a “renaissance” lately.
Rowe takes up a somewhat unique role in the science fiction world — he doesn’t write so much about space exploration or urban life. He often imagines the future (dystopian or otherwise) in rural settings.
“The future happens everywhere. The future does not happen exclusively in outer space. The future sure as hell does not happen exclusively in Los Angeles, in New York City,” Rowe said. “We live in the same time as everyone else in the world. We have as much talent, we have as much verve, we have as much we have as much to say.”
After a publishing hiatus, the Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated author came out with a short story collection in 2017 and more recently with two novellas.
His latest novella, “The Navigating Fox,” is set in a world when some animals have gained intelligence and the ability to speak. Published in 2022, “These Prisoning Hills” is a post-apocalyptic novella set in Appalachia as a sequel to one of Rowe’s most well-known short stories, “The Voluntary State,” in which a band of Kentucky resistance fighters try to free the citizens of the state of Tennessee from a coercive, tyrannical artificial intelligence.