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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Let’s Talk About The Dying Detective

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Let’s Talk About The Dying Detective

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Dying_ConreyLast week I wrote about the season four opener of BBC’s Sherlock, which was an improvement on season three and the abysmal Abominable Bride. But the second episode was yet another huge disappointment, so I’m not going to bother with a negative post about it. However, I’m going to talk about the Canonical story it was based on.

It’s no huge surprise that The Lying Detective was based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s tale, “The Dying Detective.” As far as that goes, The Lying Detective was actually a decent adaptation of the original story. That’s damning with faint praise, however, as I consider “The Dying Detective” to be one of the weakest stories in the Canon.

Appearing in December of 1913, it was the forty-sixth Holmes story to be published. It was one of just eight stories included in His Last Bow.

THE STORY

SPOILERS – I’m going to talk about a story that’s been out there for over one hundred years. And it features the most popular fictional character of all time. If you REALLY don’t want to be tipped off, jump over here and spend fifteen minutes reading it. You have been warned!

Holmes starves himself, looks ghastly, lays in bed, insults Watson, the villain comes over, helpfully confesses, is arrested and Holmes reveals that the was faking it. Yep, that’s the whole thing. Holmes lies in bed for all but a few seconds of the story (he jumps up to lock Watson in the room). No deducing, no finding clues, no nothing. His work in trying to pin a murder on Culverton Smith all happens beforehand.

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Modular: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About The Temple of Elemental Evil

Modular: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About The Temple of Elemental Evil

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Chainmail re-enactment of T1: The Village of Hommlet
at Garycon II, 2010 (click for bigger version)

Okay — maybe a bit of hyperbole there. About a month ago, I wrote about my favorite AD&D module, T1 – The Village of Hommlet. I mentioned that its follow-up, The Temple of Elemental Evil, was delayed for several years before Frank Mentzer completed it. Read on to learn about how Gary Gygax developed Hommlet and the Temple through play sessions and my deduction of why Temple was delayed for a few years.

Gygax and Rob Kuntz were constantly adding new levels and different environments to the dungeons under Castle Greyhawk as the players continued to eat up new content, always wanting more. Gygax began focusing his attention on developing a new region, with a campaign focusing on Hommlet and the Temple of Elemental Evil. With his game simply growing too big, Gygax split it, giving Greyhawk and its dungeons to Kuntz while he continued to work on Hommlet and the Temple.

Gygax’ son and a friend were starting to play, so Gary used the Hommlet campaign as a new, low level adventure for them, distinguishing it from the high level Greyhawk play. Gygax was busy developing TSR products and the Greyhawk Supplement (I) had come out for the Original Rules.

The Hommlet campaign was different than the Greyhawk dungeon delves. There was a village, with a smithy, an inn, a local elder, set in a rural environment. The party could role play in the village then move on to the dungeons of the Temple. It’s possible that Gygax ran players through some iterations of Hommlet and the Temple in late 1975 and into 1976.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: George Mann’s Holmes

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: George Mann’s Holmes

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holmes_associatesLast week I wrote about two Titan Books novels from James Lovegrove. I mentioned that there are two distinct lines of Holmes pastiches from Titan (actually, there are other books that don’t fall in either category, such as Kareem Abdul Jabaar’s Mycroft Holmes novel). The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes started as reprints and added new books into the mix and are generally more traditional stories.

The other features more elements of horror, steampunk and/or the supernatural and George Mann’s two novels are part of this line. He has also edited three anthologies for Titan, including a neat little book called The Associates of Sherlock Holmes.

Associates includes thirteen stories; all focusing on a character found in one of Doyle’s sixty original Holmes tales. It’s a neat idea and there are some interesting and creative stories in the mix. The aforementioned Lovegrove’s “Pure Swank” tells us the real story about Barker, Holmes’ ‘hated rival upon the Surrey shore,’ going back to when he was an Irregular.

Hugo Award winner Tim Pratt’s “Heavy Game of the Pacific Northwest” takes Colonel Sebastian Moran to the state of Washington in 1892 to hunt what seems to be Big Foot. It’s a good hunting story that paints quite a portrait of the amoral Moran.

Ian Edington’s “The Case of the Previous Tenant” brings the best of the official force, Surry’s Inspector Baynes, to London. A Viking sword and some borrowing from “The Devil’s Foot” make for a fun read.

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Vintage Treasures: Watership Down by Richard Adams

Vintage Treasures: Watership Down by Richard Adams

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watershipdown“I announce,” read the Times of London’s review in 1972, “with trembling pleasure, the appearance of a great story.”

This is not the typical language of a contemporary book review, but then the book in question, Watership Down, was not a typical book. It was and is a fantasy with wide crossover appeal, a mythic adventure with rabbits as the principal characters. That’s right, rabbits: those long-eared good-for-nothings whom we humans largely dismiss as being dumber than a box of rabbit-sized rocks.

Having read and adored the book in my early teens, I determined it was time to share it with my twelve-year-old son, who still craves his daily dose of bedtime story. And why not? I’d get to read a tale I had not revisited for more than thirty-five years, and I’d get to gauge my son’s reactions every step of the way.

To say he was impressed would be an understatement. As we approached the closing chapters, he wanted extra, before-bed reading time, but in the same breath kept exclaiming how he didn’t want to finish. “Are there more books about Hazel and Bigwig?” he asked. “Are there?”

Spoilers follow. If by some terrible chance you, gentle reader, have not read Watership Down for yourself, then please, close this page. Go do something else. Purchase a copy of Watership Down, for example. You can always return here once you’ve read to “The End.”

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Casebooks & Nightmares

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Casebooks & Nightmares

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lovegrove_shadwellIn the early 1900’s, Maurice Leblanc had his French detective, Arsene Lupin, face off with Herlock Sholmes. I think you know who he’s battling – spelling disregarded. 1965’s A Study in Terror sent Holmes after Jack the Ripper on movie screens and in 1988, and Sax Rohmer biographer Clay Van Ash brought Holmes and Fu Manchu together in Ten Years Beyond Baker Street. Crossovers have become more and more popular over the years. James Lovegrove currently has Holmes interacting with the Cthulhu mythos.

I don’t do a lot of book reviews here at The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes because I generally don’t like to reveal spoilers. And it can be tough to talk about the strong points of a book without giving away key elements. But sometimes, especially with older books, that’s part of the price of the post. So, I’ll try to limit revelations in this one, but be warned: There be spoilers here!

Lovegrove, who has written several non-Holmes books, is part of Titan’s stable of new Holmes authors. Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows is the first of a trilogy, with Sherlock Holmes & The Miskatonic Monstrosities due out in Fall of 2017 and Sherlock Holmes and the Sussex Sea Devils to wrap things up in November of 2018.

The basic premise of the book (yea, the trilogy) is that Watson made up the sixty stories in the Canon. He did so to cover up the real truth behind Holmes’ work. And that’s because the truth is too horrible to reveal. In a nutshell, Watson has written three journals, each covering events fifteen years apart, to try and get some of the darkness out of his soul.

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The First Blade Runner 2 Trailer is Out!

The First Blade Runner 2 Trailer is Out!

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Blade Runner is my favorite science fiction movie and it’s probably in my Top 10 Movies of All Time as well. It’s scifi, hard boiled noir with great cinematography. I have the 4-disc Director’s Cut DVD set and a couple soundtrack CDs. I played the PC game through twice and I even have D.K. Jeter’s two not-so-great sequel novels (thank goodness they didn’t turn to those for the sequel!).

I am optimistic that Blade Runner 2049, the sequel out next year, over two decades after the original, will be a good movie. Hampton Fancher, who co-wrote the original Blade Runner script, co-wrote this one as well. And Harrison Ford is back as Rick Deckard. Now, I think that Ridley Scott played a pivotal role in the look and feel of Blade Runner. He is listed as an Executive Producer on the new film, but he is not directing. So, I’m a bit concerned.

In the new film, Ryan Gosling plays Agent K, a young blade runner who discovers a secret which could destroy society. So, he seeks out former blade runner Rick Deckard (Ford), who seems to have been missing for thirty years, for help. Visually, this has the Blade Runner feel. And I can’t stress enough how important that’s going to be. If watching this new film doesn’t take you back to the original, it’s going to be a failure.

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Five Reasons Why a Writer Should Stay On Social Media!

Five Reasons Why a Writer Should Stay On Social Media!

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...you have to avoid falling into the rabbit hole of long debates where you can't let something stand
…you have to avoid falling into the rabbit hole of long debates where you can’t let something stand

Me: I’m stuck. What kind of sentries would the bad guys set up?

DS Baker (a former soldier): Hang on…

Two minutes later we’re talking face-to-face across the Atlantic. I love the 21st century!

Yes, there are good reasons for a writer to stay on social media.

Well not all the time — and yes you have to avoid falling into the rabbit hole of long debates where you can’t let something stand. However, if you are a writer, then my experience is that properly curated social media is your friend.

I’m not talking about marketing, though it does help to have a wide circle of friendly people who are on your wavelength so might — not that you are entitled to this in any way — give your books a try.

No, I’m talking about more basic stuff.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Field Bazaar

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Field Bazaar

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field_doyleIn December of 1893, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle rather unceremoniously tossed Sherlock Holmes off of a ledge at the Reichenbach Falls, stunning (and angering) the great detective’s legion of fans. Doyle, who famously said that Holmes “kept him from better things” (meaning, the more important, much less popular works that Doyle really wanted to write), insisted that he was done with Holmes and that was that.

Of course, from August 1901 through September of 1902, The Strand Magazine serialized the most famous of all the Holmes tales, The Hound of the Baskervilles. But Doyle let fans know that this was a tale from before Reichenbach and the great detective was still D-E-A-D dead.

However, the temptation of big and easy money was too much for the author to resist and he was lured into writing the short stories that made up The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

However, most casual fans do not know that Doyle actually gave Holmes a return appearance in 1896: yes, five years before Watson travelled to Dartmoor with Sir Henry. Read on…

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Truth in Historical Fiction

Truth in Historical Fiction

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Writerly boots on the ground in 12th century France (this illustration is a test, by the way).

Anet, Northern France, AD 1176
The summer breeze rustled the oaks where the tournament company of King Henry the Younger waited in ambush. It carried with it the sound of hooves, jingling harness and men chatting.
Sir William Marshal suppressed a grin. “Here they come, messers.” (*)

I was frankly terrified when I first put my writerly boots on the ground in 12th century France and perched on the shoulder of a 30-something William the Marshal as he lay in ambush with his lord, the bratty Henry the Younger.

In a sense, everything in my life had prepared me for this moment. I’d always been obsessed by Medieval History, spent my childhood dragging family around castles, read Malory at 11, Froissart at 12, and could recite the deeds of the Marshal when I was younger than that. I studied the subject to postgraduate level. I even have a sword scar and can teach you how to use a longsword.

Despite all this, writing that first line was terrifying.

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Unempathic Bipeds of Failure: The Relationship Between Stories and Politics

Unempathic Bipeds of Failure: The Relationship Between Stories and Politics

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The Axis trilogy (published in the US as the first three novels of The Wayfarer Redemption)

Owing to recent political developments, I’ve been thinking a lot recently about politics in SFF, not just as a general concept, but in relation to my own history with the genre. So often when we talk about politics in SFF, it’s in the context of authors – rightly or wrongly, consciously or unconsciously, skilfully or unskilfully – conveying their personal views and biases through the text, the whens and hows of doing so and why it matters, depending on the context. As a corollary conversation, we also talk a great deal in personal terms about the importance to readers, and particularly young readers, of representation; the power of seeing yourself, or someone like you, in multiple sorts of narrative. These are all vital conversations to have, and to continue having as both culture and genre evolve. Yet for all its similar importance, I haven’t often seen discussions about the ways that SFF informs our concept of politics in the more institutional sense: the presentation of different systems of government, cultures and social systems within narratives, and the lessons we take from them.

Which is, to me, surprising, because as far back as I can remember, I was always aware of the role of politics in genre stories, even if I couldn’t always articulate that knowledge at the time. At the very start of high school, Sara Douglass’s Axis trilogy became my entry point to the world of adult (as opposed to YA or middle grade) fantasy. In hindsight, there’s a great deal in that series – and in the sequel trilogy, The Wayfarer Redemption – that I now find deeply unsettling, but which, as a tween, I absorbed uncritically. But at the same time, I also recognized the predatory, insular monotheism of Artor the Ploughman as a deliberate analogue to certain toxic expressions of Christianity, its displacement of and propagandising about the Icarii and the Avar reminiscent of lies told about various native populations by white invaders. I wasn’t yet literate enough to identify the racial stereotypes underpinning the Avar in particular – a dark-skinned race who claimed to “abhor” violence, yet were externally said to “exude” it – but something in that description still unsettled me; I remember feeling strongly that it was an unfair characterization in a way that went beyond the story, but couldn’t explain it any more than that.

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