Grasping Sherlockiana with One’s Mental Tentacle

 Fellow blogger Rob Nunn likes to ask Sherlockians to define the word “Sherlockian” when he conducts his bloggerviews, and nobody seems to have an issue answering his question. Most of us have an answer to what makes another person Sherlockian in our eyes. But there is a tougher question, one which I’ve seen seriously invested Sherlockians struggle with over the years. Identifying as a Sherlockian is easy. Identifying your current location on the Sherlockian map, however, is something entirely different.

If you go to an amusement park, a zoo, or many another attraction with a landscape, you’ll usually find a map with a “You are here” arrow pointing to your current location. The Sherlockian landscape, the mental amusement park where we spend our fun time, has never had a visual map. It has lands within lands, and those lands have connecting borders. Original Canon land borders Actual History land, Pastiche land, and Literary Academia land. But where does Movie land and its parts and offshoots, like Cast Cottage and Movie Universe Fic Forest, lie? 

And while we might park ourselves in one spot for a time, one can’t help but wander Sherlockiana. People come to be familiar with us along certain paths, other folks in areas we seldom  visit, not so much. And we can get so enthralled with a given attraction in Sherlockiana world that we can even forget, for a time, that there are other people right next to us in our explorations of the lands. Or that people in one area can hear folks in other areas. Folks can get on a Sherlock sort of sugar high and crash into folks as they run through the attractions. Others just quietly do their part in keeping the machinery of the established rides running. A few Sherlockians have such a history with Sherlockiana that they become side attractions themselves when they leave the field. (Jim Hawkins setting up John Bennett Shaw displays comes quickly to mind.)

For a small part of the big outside world, the lands of Sherlockiana are expansive and ever-growing. The “You are here” arrow moves a lot, even if you’re just sitting on a bench. And so we wonder. And wander. And wonder.