From Diamonds in the Garbage to a World Where It Is Always 1999

 Wayyyyy back in 1975, I read a comic book where the hero was on a world where clowns were digging through rubbish and occasionally finding diamonds. The writer Jim Starlin was, I seem to remember, doing a parody of the comics industry, but today that story (from Strange Tales #181) came to mind as I scrolled through Twitter and saw all the nice Sherlockian bits in stark contrast to the general garbage that flows more freely there these days. It made me a little sad that my friends had to rely on what has so quickly become the lesser choice among social media channels.

Sherlockians have always made the best of whatever channels were available to us, be it mimeograph machines or Prodigy message boards. The amount of Sherlockiana that has come out of "publish on demand" technology is a flood that I don't think we fully see the depth of yet . . . or the effect it is having upon the hobby as a whole. Sherlockians may not always leap to the forefront of new technologies, but once we understand it's out there, Sherlock Holmes is going to be all over that medium.

So, while we're not quite there with Threads, the newest spin on mass communication, we'll get there. (Never fully leaving the other thing behind for quite a while, if ever. Welcome Holmes may have finally vacated Yahoo!, but the Hounds-L listserver still runs.

Virtual environments have always been a tougher terrain for Sherlockians to invade, with our numbers not quite legion enough, nor abilities appropriate enough. We tend to be people of words, and sometimes art, but virtual reality communities . . . well, maybe one day when the AIs provide such things for us. (Was there a corner of the Matrix re-creating Sherlock Holmes's London to keep the human batteries in the pods with fans happy? Or did they just have to live as Sherlockians in that constant 1999 world that the Matrix used as its optimum human environment?

Think about that constant 1999 Sherlockian world for a moment: Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century is constantly on TV in the Matrix. Les Klinger would forever be one of the last new members of the Baker Street Irregulars. Angelica Pickles in a deerstalker would be a mainstay at your local Toys R Us. Laurie King's fifth Mary Russell novel, O Jerusalem, would be in hardcover on the shelves at Walden Books. There's no BSI Manuscript series, but at least there's the published manuscripts of "Dying Detective" and "Lion's Mane" from Calabash Press. You could go to St. Louis for "Holmes Under the Arch: Weekend at Baskerville Hall" in September, even if Holmes was never actually under the St. Louis Arch. And Michael Caine would be the last big screen Sherlock Holmes you remembered seeing in a theater over ten years before.

I don't think we want the machines taking over just yet, if they think that 1999 was the optimum environment for human satisfaction. Still, they might do better than tech billionaires at such things.

Sherlockians will adapt, though. We always do.