Sherlock's Cousin Carl

 When you're a lifelong fan of something, you tend to see the world through fan-colored glasses.

When Harry Potter blew up, there was something about the phenomenon that felt very familiar to me, much like when Sherlock Holmes blew up in the late 1800s and early 1900s. 

Sherlock Holmes was helping his readers transition to a new world of using logic and science to solve mysteries. Technology was built on math, physics, chemistry, all those reason-based fields that said, "Hey, if we think about things hard enough, we can solve mystifying problems." Sherlock Holmes foreshadowed a new age rolling in.

Harry Potter helped readers deal with a new age as well. His magic-based reality, to my mind, was a transitional metaphor for a level of technology that was beyond our understanding. Instead of a two-way mirror, we say a magic word like "Siri-call-mom!" into a screen and another person's face can even appear if we're using the proper phone app. We're pretty sure it's not magic, but can most of us build, or even fully explain, all the tech that goes into making that happen? Working in IT, I've seen more and more people become accustomed to having their wishes become true that they think this magic can make anything available to them. And a lot of times, it does.

So, flying to and from 221B Con, I had picked up a very popular book called Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. Well-written, and with the feeling of a Harry Potter level fan favorite, the story of dungeon crawler Carl hit me with one of the feelings of transitional echoes that Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter gave me.

The planet Earth, as we know it, has basically been strip-mined for elements, and the surviving millions of residents are placed in a reality-TV D&D sort of game show of survival, where just getting by through the next day is the best achievement one can hope for. Getting fans, the attention of an TV show host or the patronage of the ultra-wealthy aliens that run the galaxy-wide streaming service is how one best places one's self for survival.

Now, one could see this as Jonathan Swift level parody, and it is, somewhat. But as I read the book, it lowered my stress levels about all those stupid, stupid things we see in the news. Not just due to the escapism, but because, like Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter, I could relate to Carl. And in relating to Carl, it seemed like, yes, there is a way to get through all this. One day at a time. One confrontation at a time. One moment at a time. 

Good fictional characters are there, not just to entertain, but to inspire and to make the day-to-day more manageable. And I was glad to find another one who does the job.