The Darkest Golden Age of Sherlockiana?

Man, I hope I don't die soon.

Too dark? Hey, being over sixty in the age of pandemic really puts a tinge of existential threat on things. I mean, even that silly phrase, "existential threat" is just a way of fancy-word sugar-coating "HEY, THIS THING COULD KILL US!" Not like all life isn't about just staying alive. Whether you're a brother, or whether you're a mother, you're stayin' alive, stayin' alive . . .

Because, HEY! Once you get past all the disease, death, unemployment, ignorance, et cetera, et cetera, ET FRIGGIN' CETERA, there's a lot of really good stuff going on in the Sherlockian world right now. The sheer number of cool ideas spinning around our mental planet like an asteroid belt of gifts from Santa's sleigh since the cosmos shook our cage has been a real teaser for better things ahead.

Too many metaphors at once? Maybe. But that's kind of where I am.

The wave of "Hey, I can attend Sherlock Holmes society meetings anywhere!" is just one part of it. To combat the stresses of everything else, I think our brains are just naturally coming up with beautiful little trail markers to try to distract us. "Oh, look, here's a path you haven't explored!" And when one of us goes down that path, others notice, start that way, and diverge onto their own sideroads. It started before the pandemic hit, but the pressure of an "existential threat" seems to be adding a quiet push of "USE IT OR LOSE IT!" behind it all.

Thanos is snapping his fingers, time to find your Avengers, to borrow from what may be the last blockbuster ever, if the theaters close down for good. (See, there's a thought we never used to have even come up. Existential threats!)

I've written before, I think, about how Sherlockiana didn't really come into being while Doyle was churning out stories, killing Sherlock, bringing Sherlock back, etc., when life was good. No, it took a Great Depression, a World War, a pandemic, and all the other crap the early twentieth century had to throw at humankind to spin a few folks into birthing Sherlock Holmes fandom. Sherlock was there, fun to read and all, but that next step . . . that thing that turns the raw material into a diamond . . . is the pressure. Doyle provided the vein of minerals to mine. The times created the miners to dig it.

Waking up in the morning to a genius take on Holmes and Watson from one of our better prospectors is starting to be a regular thing. And things that didn't used to have "Sherlock Holmes" written all over them are now getting red glowing letters with that name appearing on them like a targeting laser.

Things to do. Research to look into. Words to write. People to see? Well, that one's a little harder, but we'll get there. Hope you're finding bright spots in all this, because they seem to be there.

Man, I hope I don't die soon.