Sherlock Holmes and Science Fiction

It seems almost natural today for Sherlock Holmes to be linked to science fiction. Holmes is such a real character, yet somehow he is real in any sort of iteration. There are many, many adaptations of books that I have merely to glance at, and my reaction is instantly: “No. Oh…no. That is no so-and-so.” I am hard to please with my adaptations.

Yet, as I said, Holmes seems to be an exception. (Watson? Not so much….) I have seen probably a dozen or more actors or various “incarnations” of the character, from Basil Rathbone to Benedict Cumberbatch, The Great Mouse Detective to Sherlock Gnomes. Of course, some portrayals are better than others. Most interpretations of the character emphasize certain Holmesian characteristics unevenly; for instance, in the movies with Robert Downey, Jr., they highlight Holmes’ pugilistic talents (I remember hearing people complain, “Sherlock Holmes doesn’t fight!”).

The fact remains that Holmes isn’t not most of these interpretations. He’s a combination of all of them.

815...and counting...

There is a great upheaval happening in our family. My mother’s library, after many years of accumulation and stacking and double-shelving and stacking on top of the double-shelving, is being rearranged.

Like most people, normally I am not fond of change.

However, when it involves touching a great deal of books and reacquainting myself with long-lost or nigh-forgotten friends, that’s another story altogether.

You know you’re a bibliophile when, after all the heavy lifting of bookcases and sniffle-inducing work of dusting shelves is complete, you are excited to make every book at home in its new place on the shelf.*

Some people like to sort by size. Starting with the tallest and ending with the shortest covers, it gives a shelf a lovely crescendo look. 

Others shelve their books by color, not only for aesthetic reasons (the ombre look is so in) but also because they tend to remember a book’s color more than the author’s name or title. This has led to a fairly popular book display fad in libraries and bookstores, where they place a ton of random, unrelated books from various areas of their collection on a table together with a sign that says something along the lines of, “I don’t remember the title, but the cover was blue.”

"The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" and how it changed my life

My first exposure to Sherlock Holmes was probably like most children’s: I watched the Disney movie The Great Mouse Detective. Then my dad—who never read the original stories—introduced me to his favorite adaptation, starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. And of course I saw the Wishbone episode about A Scandal in Bohemia and The Hound of the Baskervilles. I’ve always been the type of person, however, who had to read the original stories any movie was based upon, and so when I found an audiobook (specifically “old school” cassettes) of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes at my library, I immediately checked it out. 

"The Hound of the Baskervilles": A Review

It seems hardly necessary to summarize Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s best-known Sherlock Holmes novel.  Not only is it so familiar that even those who haven’t read the book can give an adequate outline of the plot, the plot itself is not the most complex of the Holmes adventures. 

The beginning of The Hound of the Baskervilles takes place, not with Holmes and Watson ‘round their hearth at 221b Baker Street, but actually outside.  I mean outside the book itself.  See, prior to writing Baskervilles Doyle had committed the perfect crime: he had murdered Sherlock Holmes in front of the entire world, right there, plain in black and white.  And there was nothing anyone could do about it.  Doyle got away, scot-free (which, since he was a Scot, explains how he knew how to do it in the first place…).

Doyle was faced with a Frankensteinian issue some authors encounter when they achieve the popularity they’ve desired for so long: their characters come to life, the public loves them more than the author, and the author can’t get on with other projects because their audience is always clamoring for more of their old characters. Fellow mystery writer Agatha Christie had the same problem with Poirot. L.M. Montgomery got stuck writing an entire series about Anne Shirley. And A.C. Doyle thought his historical novels were his best works, but they were constantly being overshadowed by Holmes! So what was he to do but to kill him off to make room for Sir Nigel and the White Company?*

Unfortunately for him, Holmes adventures meant big bucks, and he needed the money.  He didn’t want to resurrect Holmes from the dead (just yet). So, in order to capitalize on Holmes’ name, Doyle wrote a novel set before the incident at Reichenbach Falls.  Using a story and setting that were too good to pass up, Baskervilles is set in Dartmoor, in the southern county of Devon. 

Sir Charles Baskerville has died of a heart attack, but the local doctor James Mortimer suspects some sort of foul play, partly due to a story of an ancient curse on the Baskerville clan: that a giant hound roams the moors around Baskerville Hall, seeking revenge on the entire clan for an act of violence done by one of their forefathers. Dr. Mortimer hires Holmes to protect the new Baskerville heir from an untimely death. Holmes sends Dr. Watson as bodyguard for Henry Baskerville as they journey into the eerie moors of his estate. 

Because Holmes is absent—working behind the scenes, as it were—for most of the narrative, Doyle allowed himself some distance from his over-popular creation. Instead, it is almost a spin-off novel, starring Watson as the bemused and wary protector of clueless and reckless young man.  It is Watson who gathers the clues, thought Holmes puts them together in the end.  And in the end, as in every self-respecting Holmes adventure, the solution is not so much mystical as it is methodical.

 

*Doyle was wrong, by the way.  I’ve read a few of his historical fiction and, while they’re not bad, they don’t ring with the same quality prose or endearing characters as in Holmes. His Challenger books, The Lost World and The Poison Belt, however, could have done with a few more entries, in my humbly biased opinion.

How to Survive if You're in a Mystery Novel

How to Survive if You’re a Character in a Sherlock Holmes Adventure:

1.      Hire Sherlock Holmes. 

2.      OR hire Scotland Yard. They will then go to Sherlock Holmes.

3.      Hide in the Diogenes Club until case is solved.

 

When the Sidekicks Tell the Story: The Watson that Started It All

Okay, so maybe the title exaggerates. I’m not sure Dr. Watson is the first sidekick-narrator in all of fiction. I’m pretty sure the narrator of Edgar Allan Poe’s mysteries is the sidekick of Dupin, and that was written before the Holmes stories. However, the narrator of those stories has no name. Not very sidekick of him. Any self-respecting sidekick would at least have a name, if not a catchphrase like “Holy morgue-murdering apes, Dupin!”  or “Great perniciously purloined letters!”

But I digress.  

My point is whether Watson was the first or not, he is the one who people will think about first when you say to a random passerby, “Hey, what literary character is a sidekick who tells the stories of an awesome hero?” He even has his own trope. 

Watson may not be the brilliant mind, avid detective or raving eccentric that makes Holmes one of the most iconic characters in literature, but Holmes owes a TON to Watson. Without Watson’s character describing the “lumbering” and emotional details of a case, the Holmes adventures would be sterile and boring.  

It is Watson who takes note of the beauty of the damsel in distress, or the malicious expression on the villain’s face when Holmes thwarts his dastardly scheme. If Holmes narrated his own stories (and he does in two of them, but it’s just not the same!!!) the brilliant deductions would be treated as obvious, if Holmes took the time to describe them at all. With Watson as narrator, however, every deduction is treated as stupendous and awe-inspiring. 

The other characters of the Holmes adventures are more important because of Watson, too. With Holmes, it’s the mystery itself, not his clients, who interest him in his cases. But Watson adds heart.  

This isn’t just a mystery to be solved for the good doctor, it’s a matter of saving lives, or putting them back together, or setting someone’s mind at ease, or helping a girl with no other protectors. The people who come to 221b are desperate enough to seek out a private detective rather than go to the police, and because Watson tells the story they are given some and humanity. 

Holmes might be a genius about the different soil types or cigar ash, but Watson is a genius at making the Holmes cases about the people as well as the puzzle.

An ironic post about Thoreau's "Life without Principle"

"I am astonished to observe how willing men are to lumber their minds with such rubbish,-- to permit idle rumors and incidents of the most insignificant kind to intrude on ground which should be sacred to thought." 

~ Henry David Thoreau, Life without Principle

I'm blogging about this...see the irony?

Now normally I am not a huge Thoreau fan--(I mean, really? Who really cares about the temperature of Walden Pond in the dead of winter? It's not like we're gonna be swimming in that any time soon...)--so I will immediately turn the topic of conversation to my default topic of conversation, Sherlock Holmes.