Left Coast Sherlockian Symposium: Later Afternoon

It's Nancy Holder time, and her list of credentials as a writer and Sherlockian are long and impressive, and she starts by passing books around to look at and showing her butterfly net of added topics . . . "Sherlock Holmes in Horror and Science Fiction" is the specific topic of her talk, and it's a pretty wide area to run about in.

Nancy starts with Conan Doyle, who wrote a bit of horror and science fiction outside the Canon, as well as a a bit inside the Canon. From there it's a ride across the world of pastiche, television, and movies, including Star Wars and Star Trek actors who have played Holmes. And Data Holmes, of course.

Ah, but we have to get into "Sherlock Holmes and Dinosaurs," our modern classic Asylum Films Sherlock Holmes. (With brother Robert and that robot assassin in addition to the dinosaurs.) How we get from there to Edgar Allen Poe so quickly, I'm not sure, but from Poe we go to Lovecraft, and . . . is everything not touched by Sherlock Holmes these days?

Nancy spares us a visit by Cthulhu by not speaking his invocation . . . but why did she display it on the screen? Why? Hopefully, now that she's shifting to Jack the Ripper, we're not going to see a way to invoke him. But we make it to "Gaslamp" horror without that. I suspect we'll be getting to ghosts tonight. But not premature burials, which she's moved on to.

Hard to capture the personality that comes through in Nancy Holder's talk, with finger-wagging pronouncements of Sherlock Holmes's premature burial in the waters of Reichenbach Falls. Her last tidbit is a rolling review of all of the Hound of the Baskervilles adaptations and spinoffs, "The Brotherhood of the Wolf?"

It seemed to be getting colder and colder in the conference room as the afternoon went on, so I ran up to my room following Nancy's talk to warm up and get a jacket . . . having a hotel room handy is the best part of these conferences, so you can freshen up or recharge when needed. More to come.