The Rise of the AI Sherlockian

 Perhaps I just stayed up too late last night and I'm cranky this morning. But then again, no.

When the first thing you see on the internet for your morning look-see is an AI generated ad for what is surely an AI-assisted book by someone who has already published an AI-assisted book THAT YOU BOUGHT. You tend to go -- and excuse the language, but here it is well deserved -- "Well, fuck that guy."

We all know driven Sherlockians. Those who love Sherlock Holmes so much that they just can't stop the Sherlocking. Once upon a time, that meant someone who read the Canon and read the Canon and read the Canon, taking copious notes, developing a specialty for a time,  then moving to another area of Sherlockian interest or just remaining the expert in that field. That was every Sherlockian of a certain level, once upon a time.

But it's 2026 and the devil runs on servers now. It's in our searches, in our emails, listening in on meetings, actually moderating meetings, working with doctors, making movies, acting in movies . . . well, I could go on all day.

And that devil LOVES a driven fan-boy. Well, all the devils love a driven fan-boy, because we're easy to tempt into bad things since the bait is pretty obvious.

It's too easy to go "just this once." 

Last fall, I was looking for a December activity for the John H. Watson Society and went "just this once" to see if Google's AI could produce a reader's theater adaptation of "Blue Carbuncle." And it did. And I was open about it, immediately AFTER I had folks read it, which made the actors feel a bit tainted, like they'd just found out their date was a prostitute. A bland and boring prostitute, too. 

Because here's the thing. When AI is your co-author, it's not your work. You can claim "Oh, I had the idea!" but your work is going to look the same as everyone else that used your co-author, the same way we all know that not-quite-painted art of that certain style that AI uses. And chances are, a hundred Sherlockians have had that same idea that you had, because there are only sixty stories and thousands of us, so anyone else could have done that same thing. Except that the real champion on that topic did the actual work and actually wrote the book using their actual words in their own actual voice.

Everybody's got ideas. Everyone. Even the AI has ideas. 

But if you're not going to take the time to actually do the work, why should I waste my own precious time on your non-work? If it takes me longer to read something than it took you to write it, that's just sad. I'm sorry you didn't learn the skills needed to do the thing. The problem is that we've just gone from the information age into the slop age, and we don't need you to create slop. The AI can and will do it without you. Maybe we'll invite it to the BSI dinner for being such a great Sherlockian.

Learn a skill. Check your sources. Be an actual human.

End of rant.

Just living in Doyle, Indiana with a tulpa . . .

 In honor of the 80th anniversary of the Illustrious Clients of Indianapolis, I decided this month to read a novel by their founder, J.N. Williamson, author of a whole bunch of horror novels. As the founder of our local Peoria scion was also a genre author (Philip José Farmer), we have a little sort of kinship to our neighbors down I-74, and as I'd heard a particular novel of Williamson's, The Tulpa, had Sherlockian bits in it, I grabbed the last copy Amazon had to offer.

It was an old used copy, with a duct-taped corner and pricing on the inside cover that was stamped "3 FOR $100" and with a newer sticker opposite that said "15¢," I knew that I was very late to the party, having paid $17.59 for the thing. But it arrived four days sooner than predicted, an I was going to have plenty of time to get it read before the Clients' anniversary dinner.

(WARNING! THERE WILL BE SPOILERS AHEAD!)

Diving right in, the book starts with a Rod Serling-like prologue before a first chapter about at old man at his wife's funeral who has a senile-seeming outburst that turns out to be prophetic. Nothing Sherlockian there, but then we come to Chapter 2 and the old man's son-in-law, a sportswriter named Steve Neal who lives in Doyle, Indiana. Seeing "Steve" and "Doyle" in such close proximity makes you wonder if Williamson might not have been a bit prophetic himself, but such thoughts are pushed aside as one reads this:

"Doyle, Indiana had been founded about a quarter of a century ago by a successful and wealthy favorite Hoosier son, who belonged to the Baker Street Irregulars, that group of tongue-in-cheek devotees of Sherlock Holmes. Despite the fact that the Irregulars claimed that Dr. John H. Watson, Holmes's loyal "biographer," was really the author and simply reporting the facts, Jay Finley Smith had named the town after the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle."

Somehow this 25-year-old town has a bus station named "Charing Cross Station," a small hospital called "St. Bart's," a grocery store named "Covent Garden Market," fifteen Canonical streets, and an invitation only bar called "the Carlton Club," among other references. I was good when that all started with a life-sized statue of Conan Doyle in a town called Doyle, but at some point, you're just going "How rich and powerful was Jay Finley Smith?" and trying to calculate how one finances, builds, and then populates that whole situation in under 25 years. (I left out the Canonically named theater, jail, and police station the guy built, too.)

And things immediately get worse.

There's a BSI scion society called "the Master's Clients" that was founded by a fifteen-year-old who became "a Nobel prize winning author" who "thought the current group, for the most part, was composed of stuffed shirts who used the democratic sweep of Sherlockiana for social contacts."

Bravo, Mr. Williamson! This cranky aging Sherlockian salutes your full public display of cranky aging Sherlockian-ness! 

Sportwriter Steve from Doyle drives a car brand called Granada, which for a book published in 1980, is again, pretty psychic. Steve wants his rapidly failing father-in-law to come live with his family, though his wife Ellen isn't too thrilled about it. They move the old man in, and it's another thirty pages and a brief sex scene before we get another Sherlock Holmes reference: "Even more than Sherlock Holmes, his passionate avocation was the study of the unexplained, the unknown, wherever he might encounter it."

J.N. Williamson, to his credit, is a pretty readable writer. As the story goes on, delving into the old man's psychic predictions in a 1980 "ESP, telekinesis, UFOs" kind of way, I really did find it readable enough to plow through in a couple nights. Ah, for the good old days of gatekeeping editors at publishing houses! (Yeah, I said it. Have you read some of the stuff that sees print?) But back to the Sherlockian notes, as on page 117, I get:

"A mile away, William W. MacDonald, the bank vice president, patiently dusted his prized collection of Sherlockiana and then spoke with a fellow Holmes devotee on the phone, discussing an upcoming meeting of the Master's Clients."

And that's all that is said about that. It's part of a kind of a verbal camera pan across Doyle, Indiana.

Thirty pages later, a full 147 pages in, we finally get the titular tulpa. If you want to read up on tulpas on Wikipedia, I'll wait. They're not nearly as exciting as a whole Sherlockian-built town, which we immediately get back to as the next chapter starts. That crazy rich Irregular also had a tobbacco shop named "Bradley's" put in, a "Lomax London Library," a Northumberland Hotel, and a St. Paul's church. 

We then get to meet William W. McDonald, bank vice president and second-term president of the Master's Clients scion society. "He'd wandered into the society on the basis of twenty percent interest in the subject, eighty percent interest awareness of the opportunity to advance himself." In a Sherlock Holmes town like Doyle, Indiana, hell yes, you want to belong to that local scion society! McDonald is described as a hypocrite who hates the sort of riff-raff a Sherlock Holmes society attracts, being very in favor of limiting the membership. (Insert me making an angry cat sound and making claw hands here -- because J. N. Williamson is being very catty about someone, and I'd love to know whom, because gatekeeper Sherlockians didn't just exist in fiction in 1980!)

The annual meeting of the Master's Clients of Doyle, Indiana is coming up, and "Vincent Christopher Smith was flying in from the New York parent society, the money-loaded Baker Street Irregulars." (More money-loaded than the guy who built this whole Sherlockian town?) Smith can somehow nominate William McDonald for a third term as president of his local scion, over "Teddy Gerald, an idiosyncratic and overweight writer who fancied himself the soul of the Clients." (Dear me, Mr. Williamson, dear me!) Of course, McDonald puts on a deerstalker to think about all of this while he smokes a cigarette from Bradley's, but takes it off when our hero, Steve the sportswriter shows up to tell him that the psychic old man has predicted a bank robbery at McDonald's very bank.

McDonald pretty much blows the warning off, goes back to thinking about who will give the toasts to Irene Adler and Mrs. Hudson at his society banquet, puts his deerstalker back on and goes, "Deeper and deeper, Watson, deeper and deeper." (Which demonstrates what a fraud of a Sherlockian he must be if that's the closest thing to a line from the Canon he can imagine! Subtle, Mr. Williamson! Subtle!)

The bank robbery happens, and something about it makes the tulpa mad at McDonald, who is about to have his Master's Clients banquet at the Bagatelle Club. (Yes, that rich BSI built one of those in Doyle, Indiana, too!) The banquet at that fanciest of clubs costs $25, which McDonald thinks will keep the Sherlockian riff-raff from attending. (That's $101.31 in today's money, according to Google.) And Vincent Smith comes to the banquet. Who is Vincent Smith?

"A founder of the national Baker Street Irregulars but originally a native of Chicago, Vincent Smith was both a novelist and a book critic whose severest reproach tended to be a comment that the writer 'might try a jot harder, next time."

Smith wore a deerstalker, like a lot of the people attending the banquet -- a banquet with six tables, so .... something like forty-eight attendees? There's also a dais, so lets say fifty-some. Vincent Smith toasts with a cup of coffee, saying "To the best and wisest man I have ever known," which the members of the Master's Clients all follow with "To Sherlock Holmes!" The Master's Class plainly isn't a society where five minute essays are called toasts, as the next guy (McDonald's rival, Teddy Gerard) just goes "To the woman!" and the members go "To Irene Adler!" Why?

Because according to the author, "Meetings of the Irregulars and their diverse scion societies were sometimes known, on a good wet night, to toast half the characters in the the 'Sacred Writings' before getting down to the slightly alcoholic proceedings." (Word on the street is that there are like 800 characters in the Canon. "Slightly alcoholic?") The Master's Clients limit themselves to just five toasts, though, and banker McDonald gets up to read his paper on Moriarty actually being Satan. He's expecting Indiana University professor Ruthoffer to come in dressed as Moriarty and have some words with him as a dramatic surprise, but it isn't Ruthoffer/Moriarty that busts into the banquet . . .

It's the tulpa.

Chicago's own Vincent Smith knows an otherworldly critter when he sees it and books out of there, but William W. McDonald remembers the old man's psychic warning from earlier being like a quote from The Valley of Fear, and that The Valley of Fear had a police inspector with a name like his . . . and while McDonald is thinking all that instead of running for his life, the tulpa lifts McDonald up with psychic energy and . . .

[CONTENT WARNING: A guy is about to have his head removed from his body in a violent manner.]

Oh . . . well, I guess the cat is out of the bag on that. One of the members thought he was watching a Reichenbach Falls reenactment until that point. Some Sherlockians try to fight the tulpa, and really bad things happen to them. Picture the movie Carrie ending with a Sherlockian banquet. Yeah.

Sportwriter Steve hears about the tragedy, almost immediately has unsatisfying sex with his wife, then sets about trying to solve the mystery of the tulpa. He learns what he can about the Master's Clients bloodbath from an old nudist Sherlockian who was there, then calls Chicago's own Vincent Smith, who tells him, "If you're going after the monster, Neal, let me commend to your attention a few words from The Hound of the Baskervilles, possibly the finest Sherlock Holmes book. First, 'The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?' And these words of Mr. Holmes himself: 'It's dead, whatever it is!'"

Plainly, asking a Chicago Sherlockian for monster-hunting advice is not your best course in a tulpa situation. A movie theater screen and a policeman both take serious damage before sportswriter Steve's psychic father-in-law, whose stroke-brain created the psychic Frankenstein, decides to die and the tulpa disappears. No more Sherlockians are harmed, and the book ends without any more tours of Doyle, Indiana and its Sherlockian businesses.

J.N. Williamson's The Tulpa is a pretty readable book, as I've said, but definitely of its time. It's that kind of cheap paperback novel that is disappearing today, and it will be harder and harder to find a copy as the decades pass. The guy was definitely cranky about a lot of Sherlockian goings-on in the late 1970s, and I'm looking forward to going to the Master's Clients . . . excuse me . . . the Illustrious Clients' 80th Anniversary celebration to hear more about Williamson and the history of the club he founded as a teen.

I just hope no one loses their head at that banquet.

Ronald Howard's Final Problem

 Sometimes, even a complete fool can point you to facts you never saw where there . . .

I don't know if you listen to a podcast called Sherlock Holmes Is Real, being the sort of Sherlockian with a level of intelligence that are the typical readers of this blog, but their latest episode "The Footage of the Tyrant's Daughter," called my attention to something I had never realized before. And maybe you hadn't noticed it either.

I was never a tremendous fan of the Ronald Howard TV series, Sherlock Holmes, that ran from October 16, 1954 to October 17, 1955, with thirty-nine half-hour episodes. The show was as much comedy as drama, with Watson and Lestrade played for laughs, as well as a lot of Holmes's clients. Like all shows of the time, there wasn't much continuity, and Sherlock Holmes featured more original scripts than adaptations and a whole lot of pretending France was England.

The final episode The Case of the Tyrant's Daughter was the focus of the Sherlock Holmes Is Real "experts" this week, and I think there was something that they missed completely as they became distracted by the show's end credits and some lower case letters there. And that was that they were dealing with the final time that viewers saw Ronald Howard's version of Sherlock Holmes.

One might even say it was that Holmes's "Final Problem."

For the very last time TV audiences saw that Sherlock Holmes, he was sitting looking sick to his stomach after accidentally drinking tea mixed with a rare Egyptian poison.

He has poisoned himself, and the last thing we see on screen, the last image from the whole TV run of the show is Watson's panic.

Was this season cliffhanger, which was never resolved, this Sherlock's "Final Problem?" Was "The Case of the Tyrant's Daughter" secretly the "Dying Detective," only this time he really dies?

Perhaps the tone of the show was just wacky enough that audiences took Holmes's self-poisoning as just another comic riff to get Watson over-excited, but Holmes doesn't seem to be faking internal issues from the poison. There's not Professor Moriarty in this TV series. No arch-villain other than Sherlock Holmes himself, who seems to have done himself in. With no second season to rectify matters, Sherlock Holmes leaves us like this year's CBS Watson -- with the thought that the main character may now just be dead, and no official assurance that things were otherwise.

I hope the folks on the Sherlock Holmes Is Real podcast take up this issue, though I shudder to think what nonsense they'll be coming up with to pile on it. But I do have to thank them for pointing out Sherlock Holmes's self-poisoning end to that series, which I certainly hadn't noticed before.

Sherlockian Writings: Our Limits

 I stumbled across an old letter from 2010 in some cleaning this morning, in which a Sherlockian friend was writing to me about some recent doings and what they enjoyed about it all. I'm going to keep them anonymous, but something written fit so well into some other current thoughts I've had that I have to quote them here, from their thoughts sixteen years ago:

"It seems that we drift more and more into BSI history, tributes to Sherlockians, bibliographic inventorying, collection analysis, library overviews, etc. All of that is fine and interesting, but I perceive that there is less and less of the old-fashioned Sherlockian 'scholarship' and the whimsical fun that makes it all worthwhile."

The fine Sherlockian scholar who wrote those words was quite right about that drift . . . the last few Sherlockian books I've purchased fall completely into those "drift" categories. I've even written a Sherlockian history book myself, as has my friend who wrote those words. And there are very good reasons for that . . . if you're a writer and you love writing about Sherlock Holmes and all the fruit falling from that great tree, and you keep writing, you tend to wind up in places you never thought you'd go. Because eventually, walking around the same part of that orchard gets so familiar that you want to branch out.

Just before discovering the letter I mentioned, I sent the draft of another issue of Sherlockian Chronology Timelines off to associate editor Rob Nunn for his pre-publication scrutiny. Now in our sixth year of filling a mostly-monthly newsletter with chronology articles, I'm starting to wonder if we've hit the outer limits of that topic. It the opening editorial, I even started to cross a line that most seem hesitant to cross.

The "old-fashioned Sherlockian 'scholarship' and whimsical fun" in the quote above is that great old game of working from the premise that Watson's records of Sherlock Holmes are real historical works. Sherlockian chronology has its feet firmly planted in that chosen delusion. But if we start to use our own historical calendar, and the notion that Watson was publishing his stories in the Strand Magazine, with the assistance of a literary agent named Conan Doyle, suddenly Conan Doyle's personal history comes into play. 

Is that out of bounds in playing the game? Off limits? Is pairing Watson and Doyle together, even without changing facts in Doyle's life, disrespectful to the latter author? Or to Watson himself, in suggesting that Conan Doyle had to rewrite so much of Watson's words that he got the writing credit?

Those rare listeners to the Watsonian Weekly podcast know that an occasional feature of the podcast over the years has been "The Literary Agent's Ten Percent" where Conan Doyle's history and Watson's history intertwine, so they know I'm definite not afraid to go there. Not many do, though, choosing to stay either on the "fact" side of writing or the "fancy" side of writing. 

The limits in our Sherlockian hobby are completely based on your personal choices. A specific editor or publisher might have different limits, but in a hobby where so many have just written and privately published for their friends from day one, you can definitely do what you want to do. And your own version of "the fun that makes it all worthwhile" is yours to choose as well.

Just try to clean up after yourself, which is what I have to get back to doing!

Cleaning Up A Sherlockian Life Spent In Paper

 After having a few Sherlockian friends at the house a while back, I have a very tidy Sherlock Holmes room. Call it a library, call it a study, call it a personal archive, it's the room where this little hobby took up residence from the day we moved into this house. And it took a bit of cleaning to prep for guests.

Cleaning, at this point in our house, typically involves moving things from the location being made to look presentable to a location whose door will be closed to visitors, or basement storage. Which means, when the guests have left, one is left with a room that has a lot of odd things in it, things that don't really fit in with the rest but, for whatever reason, seem like they can't be thrown away or donated to some charity. And so much of those things, at this point, are paper.

Not books. Books fit on shelves. Books are easy.

Letters. Newsletters. Pamphlets. Flyers. Monographs. Quizzes. Presentations that were handed out on paper before or after they were spoken. And every bit of it, about Sherlock Holmes.

The literal paper trail of a life as a Sherlock Holmes fan well spent. History, one might say.

But does all history need to be preserved? When a guy named Tom Simpson wrote a quiz on "The Lion's Mane" for the March 1979 meeting of a Peoria, Illinois scion society and another person who didn't put their name on the quiz paper scored a 72 out of 80 questions . . . does that need to be placed in a library archive and preserved for all eternity? Or even scanned and kept somewhere digitally?

So much of the joy of Sherlockiana is the doing. Concocting a quiz on "The Lion's Mane" is much more fun than taking a quiz on "The Lion's Mane," and future Sherlockians should have that joy. If there was ever only one quiz on "The Lion's Mane" that we kept passing around, in all Sherlockian venues, whenever the tale came up, what a dull place the world would be!

Because here's the hard question about culture, history, and humans that becomes more pertinent in the later years of one's life: Does everything need to be preserved? Sometimes we aren't losing a thing -- we're gaining the opportunity for some future person to do a thing. Because doing that thing is fun. And maybe, without hurting anyone's feelings here, that earlier version of a thing might not have been the best attempt at it. That's life. Each generation replaces the last and takes up a mantle that has been patched, re-sewn, darned, replaced in places, and wears it anew.

 So what do we do with all of the by-products of a Sherlockian life? How much is just waste that needs to be disposed of? How much should be handed off to the next generation?

Tough questions, but ones that must be dealt with.

Doctor Watson's Xanadu

 Long have Sherlockians puzzled and conjectured over Watson's marital situation, and the wife who is there, but not there, proposed to as "Mary Morstan" and never spoken of by name again. Such mysteries live on for years, decades even, in our minds . . . until some little thing, just one little innocent thing, triggers the answers that were there all along.

I have Max Magee to thank for this. During a recent film festival game of collecting four Sherlock Holmes movies to create a Sherlockian film festival, Max decided to make his film fest be:

1. Hound of the Baskervilles
2. Sherlock Gnomes
3. Xanadu
4. Heaven's Gate

The last two may seem plainly due to Max's roller skating fetish and his desire to make "Prince's Skating Club" from "The Adventure of the Red Circle" of Canonical importance. However the movie Heaven's Gate takes place in 1890, and features Ellen Watson, a Wyoming bordello manager who very well have been a cousin of Doctor Watson's should one remember certain authoritative treatises in The Baker Street Journal on Watson's American origins. But Xanadu, a 1980 musical filled with the fashion and music of the day?

Xanadu is the tale of a pretty blonde woman that skates into a man's life and inspires him to follow his creative dreams. And, it turns out she's a full on daughter-of-Zeus muse, who appears on Earth to with the sole purpose of doing that inspiration, something she's done throughout time.

So let's stop for a moment and think. John H. Watson met Sherlock Holmes in 1881, and worked with him for six years before he thought of writing and publishing his adventures with Holmes. No, that didn't happen until 1887. And what else happened to John Watson in 1887, according to so many notable Sherlockian chronologists?

He met a pretty blonde woman, whom even inspired Holmes as someone "who might have been most useful in such work as we have been doing."

There is a vision in the movie Xanadu of the muse Kira, in another era inspiring another artist four decades before. It makes it very easy to imagine yet another scene missing from the movie of Olivia Newton John in 1887, showing up in Baker Street with some pearls and a fever-dream of a case for Holmes and Watson. A pygmy with poison darts, a one-legged escaped prisoner, a treasure lost in a maritime (well, river maritime) battle . . . why wouldn't anyone start thinking of writing such things down?

But muses do not stay around forever, being magical creatures with a job to do. And after Watson seems to lose his writing spark in the mid 1890s, what is it that brings him back to taking pen in hand? 

"The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I can recall in our association. I was alone."

Technically, one always has to wonder over those words "only selfish action," as Watson seems to have deserted Holmes for a wife twice. With a long gap in between which makes it hard to see as a gap in a single marriage to a normal woman in that era. But a muse, who would return to Mount Olympus and then one day return to inspire Watson again when the need seemed dire?

Mary Morstan . . . perhaps not the Terpsichore of Xanadu, but her sister who appears in the opening muse dance, Melpomene, whose name also features the double "M"s . . . the muse of tragedy. For isn't so much of Watson's work inspired tragedy? Murder, loss, love gone wrong?

Sherlockian chronologists have long watched Max Magee try to inspire Sherlockians to mix Back to the Future into the Sherlockian mythos somehow. Perhaps this time, however, he has hit upon the real vein of gold and the movie Xanadu finds ties to the Watson works that really do work . . .

Your Top Five Sherlock Holmes Movies

Before and after our weekly recording of The Watsonian Weekly podcast, Madeline Quinones, Heather Hinson and I always have some other Sherlockian gossip and chat that goes unrecorded. An occasionally there's some chat that might have been worth putting on the podcast. Tonight it just occurred to me to ask a simple question: "What are your top five Sherlock Holmes movies?"

Fifty years ago, there were nearly the smorgasbord of Sherlock Holmes movie choices we have today, and we've all had the pleasure of seeing the right movie at the right time in our lives, which might give a particular choice more meaning to us that to our friends. And there are generational favorites at this point, as well. The Great Mouse Detective would definitely be on the list of one Sherlockian we know, while another would point to The Seven-Per-Cent Solution . . . and neither of those made it to any of our top five lists.

So, without further adieu, here are the top five Sherlock Holmes movies of the Watsonian Weekly podcast crew:

Heather's Top Five:

• Young Sherlock Holmes
• The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
• The Return of the World's Greatest Detective (Larry Hagman as Holmes)
• Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Junior as Holmes)
• Sherlock Holmes (and Dinosaurs)

Madeline's Top Five:

• Game of Shadows
• Without A Clue
• Murder By Decree
• Enola Holmes 2
• Her imagined unreleased pro-shot of the Ken Ludwig Moriarty premiere.

Brad's Top Five:

• The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
• Holmes & Watson
• Sherlock Holmes in New York
• Sherlock Holmes (Downey)
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Rathbone)

There you have it. Make of it what you will. And, you know, there is a comment section below this for your own top five, should you feel so inclined! (And our comment moderator will try to remember to check the approved comment list this week to make sure they get added ... at some point.)

Holmes in the Heartland 2026: Sherlock Haunts!

 This weekend, I left my laptop at home.

Being on the committee for a weekend conference requires a little more attention than my usual "time to tippy-tap on the laptop" reporting as it goes, and this one definitely did. St. Louis's "Holmes in the Heartland 2026: Sherlock Haunts!" definitely deserved all of one's attention this past weekend.

I was weary when I arrived, having entertained a handful of out of town guests in Peoria the night before, which coincided with our monthly Thursday night library discussion group. That meant missing the screening of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes in a theater near the conference, as well as the Friday morning maneuvers of the 221st Southumberland Waffleers, but sometimes Sherlockiana demands sacrifice.

The Cheshire hotel in St. Louis is a charming place, one that seems like it's been there a long time, but that works well with the "ye olde British" ambiance. Each room is dedicated to some literary figure, and upon check-in you get a bookmark with the name of your room, in addition to the usual number card folder. Mine was "William Makepeace Thackeray," 

One lucky raffle winner, Elaine Litzenich, won a special VIP attendee package, which included staying in the hotel's Sherlock Holmes suite, a custom name badge and lanyard, a choice door prize, private vendor shopping, and extra attention from the conference staff . . . though she was very sweet about that last part and did not demand too much of our service.

At 4:00 P.M. on Friday, early registration started, quickly followed by a lavish cocktail hour with such hearty and well-done hors d'oeurves that few needed to go to dinner after. The conference mascot, Boolock Holmes apparated for the first time at the Haunted Happy Hour, silently handing our spooky trivia for the crowd to test their table-mates with. (Boolock not pictured . . . yet.)

There was a little "Fox and Hound" pub in the main hotel, where many retired after cocktail hour for more chatting, and a good many of us overflowed across the hall onto the outdoor patio, as St. Louis was having a perfectly climated evening for our Friday night. A bag of kettle corn was discovered and passed around, and, well, it was just nice. Sherlockians are pleasant folk to spend time with, which is the real draw for these events.

The next day, folks were eager and ready to storm the upstairs conference room and vendors tables when 8:30 AM rolled around. The program didn't start until 9:30, but that hour was put to good use, especially by those who needed a little more sleep after the night before. Rob Nunn finally took the podium welcoming one and all and introducing the first speaker, noted book columnist Michael Dirda, who spoke on his Sherlockian path through life. Minnesota's own Julie McKuras came next, investigating what it was that must've haunted Sherlock Holmes himself throughout his life. After that firm foundation of a program start there was a 30 minute break to encourage more shopping with the vendors. (Holmes in the Heartland is nothing if not kind to its vendors!) After some door prizes were raffled off to bring everyone back to attention, comics sage Johanna Draper Carlson presented "Zombies, Vampires, and Monsters in Sherlock Holmes Comics," which was a wonderful update and array of the many appearances of Holmes in such comics. And after Johanna . . . a tough act to follow . . . came . . .

If, for any reason, you find yourself on the program at the very last minute, a mere eleven days before a conference, let us all hope you also find yourself merely being straight man to one of your most talented friends whom you've talked into filling a gap in the programming. Sherlockian and puppeteer Mary O'Reilly had done videos of her all-animal Sherlockian society for our annual Montague Street Incorrigibles meetings (one of which I appear in, with all the acting talent of a "Half in the Bag" host), but had never made her animal friends work a live audience before. Since Mary had already volunteered to play Boolock Holmes at the Haunted Happy Hour, it seemed perfect that Boolock could appear again with the animals.

Baskerville the hound, Buncle the goose, the Lion's Mane jellyfish, and Lucinda the swamp adder all appeared, so I could try to get them to talk about Sherlock Holmes, even if they had definite other ideas and tried to sell me fake carbuncles or get human members for their club. It was commented on, more than once, that I kept holding the microphone in front of the puppets when they spoke, but what I was actually doing was holding it in front of the "silent" Boolock, since ventriloquism is something anyone can do with a sheet over their head, and we needed that little assist for the act. But even when the microphone wasn't close, most of the animal voices pierced the ether of the conference room and kept the audience happy (and distracted, since we were the last bit before lunch and people were getting hungry).

Lunch was as excellent as the appetizers the night before, and I wish I had discovered dipping the grilled turky-and-gruyere sandwich in the tomato bisque sooner, as, WOW, was that good. I also piled my plate with arugula lettuce salad, defying the parasite gods that have been spreading fear amongst the fresh veg community this summer. 

Perhaps the most risky part of the program came next, as the sultry tones of podcast king Scott Monty could have easily relaxed the audience into a nice nap, but his survey of Sherlock Holmes in popular culture held the audience (and maybe even tweaked some a bit with his mentions of AI), and I noticed no snoozers. St. Louis Sherlockian Randy Getz followed Scott with an audio tour through the music and composers that appear in the Sherlock Holmes Canon and re-introduced us to many familiar tunes we might have forgotten. (Chopin's "Death March" especially sticks out in my memory, haven't possibly never known that trope of a dirge was Chopin's.) 

One last break for shopping the vendors' tables and we came to our final two acts, Ira Matetsky showing off the poetic side of Conan Doyle (his reading of "The Old Huntsman" was especially memorable), and Bob Sharfman showing off the Sherlockianity of Bob Sharfman. (I dunno, somehow it's just that and it just works.)  

Rob Nunn concluded the day's program and dismissed us for an hour to dress for the cocktail hour and banquet. Some of us are common sluggards who just wear what we were wearing all day, which is something one has to consider as an option in St. Louis in July, but banquet time is always an opportunity for those who like to raise their game for the evening. The Cheshire treated us right once again in the food department, and Scott Monty again took the microphone following a meal. But this time, Scott was stirring up interest in several auction items to raise money for the Beacon Society, and did a fine job of doing just that.

The after-dinner entertainment proper was "A Dinner Conversation with Conan Doyle," but spiritualist Maximillian P. Magee was overcome with the spirit of Sherlock Holmes who pushed Doyle aside to play host to several other spirits appearing out of the ether. Mary Sutherland, Agatha the maid, the King of Bohemia, and others, most of whom looked somewhat like Ashley Polasek or Curtis Armstrong but sounded quite different. It was quite the experience and I was overcome for a short time when it was over, retiring to my hotel room until the vapors passed, then returned to the Chesire's lobby area just outside the Fox and Hounds pub, where many a Sherlockian hung out to chat for the rest of the night.

It makes me tired just to think of how tired I was by that point, but morning came eventually, with elevatoring down to the parking basement to load the car up, a bit more lobby socializing, and then a trip to the Missouri History Museum for a look at the 1904 World's Fair, with its almost-ties to the world of Sherlock Holmes.  Sundays at Sherlockian weekends are usually the day when you see people slip away, bit by bit, from the early morning Sunday until sometime Monday. The line at the "Taste of Amighetti's" museum cafe seemed like my time to exit, as it seemed a bit understaffed to deal with an influx of Sherlockians, so I was well out of St. Louis and up the road by the time I would have eaten. And that was a very good thing, because an hour or so after alighting back home in Peoria, I was out for a much needed nap.

Being a part of the group putting on a conference (the Parallel Case of St. Louis, which I'm kind of "the neighbor who drops in now and then" membership-wise), one tends to hear all of the little squeaks in the machinery of the event and see all of the dings in the paint-job, but when all is said and done, we can mark "Holmes in the Heartland 2026: Sherlock Haunts!" as one in the "wins" column for this year. Getting together with Sherlockian friends is the important part, and one to be enjoyed whenever we're lucky enough to find ourselves immersed in a weekend like this one.

Sherlockiana, the Serious, the Silly, and the Self-Actualized

 “Earnest people are often people who habitually look on the serious side of things that have no serious side.”  — Van Wyck Brooks, literary critic

There are folks in our hobby of Sherlockiana that love a footnote. Maybe their high school English teacher was especially comely on the day term papers were explained and their youthful hormones gave the lesson a bump. I dunno. Me, I don't need them unless they're their to make fun of footnotes. One early article I had in The Baker Street Journal did so with completely fake footnotes in it, as the editor asked for footnotes. Because I'm here to play.

A lot of people are here to play too, but their game has more rules than mine. And then there are the people who aren't here to play, those who write about the real lives of the real people who've been touched by a Sherlock Holmes. They get a pass. But I still think they could do without footnotes. End notes are fine, unless you're Baring-Gould or Les Klinger annotating something we've all, hopefully read once already in its raw state.

The point I'm getting at here isn't that one way or the other is wrong. We're all earnest people, we enthusiasts of the Great Detective (a.k.a. "fans," but some of the earnest are so earnest they'd rather not choose that as their . . . you know, we might want to put "fan," "afficionado," "enthusiast," etc. on name badges like they do with pronouns, so people can get their chosen noun). Where was I? Oh, yes, earnest. We're all earnest, dedicated folk, even those of us who are earnestly silly.

How silly is Sherlock Holmes, all in all? A character from an old mystery story who became iconic for detectivery?

Well, he's not serious enough for the bottom tier of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. He isn't food, water, or shelter serious. And he doesn't provide us safety, as in the next tier up. But them it gets a bit serious.

The middle tier of Maslow is the "Love and Belonging" tier. Sherlock Holmes gets us friendship, chosen family, and . . . for a few, I have heard, but not specifically, nor am I naming suspects . . . sex. But, sticking with friendship, that's kind of serious, kind of important. And something we should consider in our approach to Sherlock Holmes. Being a friend is more seriously a part of Sherlock Holmes than writing a pastiche or doing research, I think, unless you're doing those for a friend.

Level up from the friendship tier and you come to "self-esteem." A lot of us get self-esteem from our Sherlockian adventures, and if you try to tell me the desire for a BSI shilling isn't about self-esteem, I might wonder about you a bit. Sherlockiana has some friendly audiences for toast, presentations, writings, and ways to build up your self-esteem as you build your skills. I occasionally get asked to speak in non-Sherlockian venues, and any compliments I get on that ability are built on what this hobby gave me. So while not as serious as friendships, self-esteem can be a serious part of the hobby as well.

So, top of this perhaps arguable pyramid, self-actualization. I love the little graphic on Wikipedia because its top tier is crammed with "morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, acceptance of facts." In other words, "Sherlock Holmes."

Am I being silly? Or self-actualized enough to see Sherlock Holmes for the top of our aspirational pyramid, which is the serious side of a silly fictional character? 

There are a lot of reasons we're in this lovely little Sherlockian hobby. The very silly ones. The very serious ones. And the Sherlock Holmes ones.

So I guess you can have your footnotes. (Especially you chronologists.)

Can the Shaw seminar come back without Shaw?

 A year ago this past April, the Baker Street Irregulars hosted their Canonical Conclave of Scion Societies in Indianapolis, an event intended to inspire. A lot of the Sherlock Holmes societies represented came away with renewed energies, and personally, I came away with an idea. I shared it with a couple of people at that event, who were enthusiastic for it, but ideas are easy. Fleshing them out is the real trick. So let's talk about that idea.

From 1977 to 1993, that grand Sherlockian John Bennett Shaw hosted weekend conferences all over the country, wonderful things during a time when there was no internet to connect us, no Google search to bring Sherlockians together. Most of us knew what we knew, initially, from the Baring-Gould Annotated Sherlock Holmes and its section on the Baker Street Irregulars. Going to one of Shaw's university based weekends was like finding a supercharger for a Sherlock Holmes fans and plugging yourself into it.

The idea of putting together a new Shaw weekend was intriguing, especially to a couple of fellows who had been in Peoria in 1979, when Shaw's planned Bradley University workshop was cancelled only a month before. (And nobody told a very angry Jack Tracy, who arrived in town thinking it was still happening.) The fiftieth anniversary of that Peoria failure is coming up, to the day, on July 20th, 2029. Peoria's still a decent enough place, with a pretty good airport, and accomodations enough, so the idea of trying to make up for that failure. (The local scion had only been in existence for two years. The local university didn't really know the circles to publicize it in either. And me, I had barely been out of college three months and hadn't met any Sherlockians in Peoria yet.)

Great idea on paper, sure. But how do you have a John Bennett Shaw workshop without John Bennett Shaw? It's not like we have Shaw tribute bands playing his hits. And a full on themed symposium about the Santa Fe collector is more Norwegian Explorer turf at this point, as they've done it before. Truly recreating a John Bennett Shaw workshop isn't about talking about Shaw. It's doing what he would have done, and doing it for the year and the world you were doing it in, and not 1979.

So what did a basic Shaw outline look like?

Friday evening was Shaw's opening talk, "Sherlock Holmes, Then and Now," an overview of Holmes history and the fandom, complete with poetry, important quotes, and stories. After that introduction, we'd all watch They Might Be Giants. Remember that video was only coming about when those took place and the chance to see a modern movie that loved Sherlock Holmes that much was rare. A new version of a Shaw workshop might pick something more current, but still a joy for all.

There might be a slide show of Shaw's collection first thing the next morning, where you could just be amazed at all the things Sherlock Holmes has inspired. The great thing about this is that Shaw's collection still exists, and is even greater now. A similar presentation is possible.

And, oh, we were quiz people back then, and John Bennett Shaw loved to test us with one of his particularly devilish quizzes. A timed quiz on a particular story might follow the first presentation, with another, on a second story later in the weekend. There were some good prizes and young minds often took the wins. Do we like to take tests now, fifty years later? Are we so competitive? You tell me. I'll pass.

Other speakers would come next, depending upon the particular workshop, but the topics tried to cover the important bases: Conan Doyle, parody and pastiche, cocaine, Afghanistan, Dorothy Rowe Shaw's miniature Baker Street, writing a Sherlockian paper, London, and more. Rare short films and cartoons would be shown as well. Shaw would often wind things up after dinner with a talk about the B.S.I. and Sherlockian societies, with stories and sing-alongs.

Sunday morning there might be a final quiz, winners of the short fiction contest announced (prompts were given of Friday evening and short-short stories had to be turned in by 5 PM Saturday), with prizes for the winners. The program of talks and short films continues into Sunday afternoon. You got a full weekend's worth from John Bennett Shaw, more like 221B Con length than most Sherlockian weekends these days.

If you consider what John Bennett Shaw's roadshow brought to so many cities in that long-ago decade, it was basically a full Sherlockian experience, covering everything that was the hobby at that time. We didn't have fanfic back in the 1980s, but if we had there would have been a talk on that. There might have been some short anime films, or other non-American rarities. In 2029, the full Sherlockian experience will be fifty years larger than it was in 1979. Television shows, audio mediums, comics, and commercial pastiches have grown exponentially. Sherlockian journals and newsletters rose and fell. Could you even cover the Sherlockian world as thoroughly as Shaw did in a single weekend now?

We aren't nearly as starved for Sherlockian content as we were back then, and do we have a John Bennett Shaw? Like the old saying says, you can't go home again. But you can move forward with hopes for a new place that's pretty great. The Shaw model, that Johnny Appleseed way of displaying the best of the hobby he loved so much to inspire others, is still useful. All of our current weekend conferences and events are the descendents of those Shaw weekends, after all. The big difference with Shaw was that he didn't settle in a single town and repeat the weekend -- he kept spreading the word.

Something to think about. And by the by . . . weren't some of you other regions hoping to try the Canonical Conclave thing? "Just asking," as those most irritating of trolls say. But you don't see me committing to putting a Shaw weekend on just yet, so I won't push. But we're always curious about what the years ahead will bring, so let's keep our eyes on that horizon.

Napoleon Bust of Crime Gathers Dust

 So, yeah, this will only make sense to . . . oh, wait, it's nonsense!

Editor's Note: It was not a club mix of "Itsy Bitsy Spider."

What Makes A Sherlock Holmes? (2026 reflection)

 Over the years, I've come to discover than any adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, and whether I like it or not, really keys in on the actor and their choices/direction in portraying the character. Scripts can rise or fall, but there's something in the man himself who must no by off-key when playing along with my inner music that is what Sherlock Holmes means to me. The fascinating thing is that I have liked so many widely differing personality of the character.

Rathbone, Cushing, Stephens, and Attwell all come down on my "liked" list, and if you look at them chronologically, you can see Holmes start to change with the times. While his origins in literature are that of a young professional, starting a career of his own as something of a prodigy, adaptations soon started to want to make him an older man, with the wisdom of a classic male authority figure. Robert Stephens from The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes was the first glimmer we had of a Sherlock Holmes who might not be "all that," as Stephens's Holmes points out himself, claiming Watson has over-hyped him in the stories.

Then, of course, came The Seven Per Cent Solution and the idea that for all his gifts, Sherlock Holmes could also be burdened with a drug addiction, a childhood trauma, and deep flaws to somehow balance out his genius. Those themes seemed to come up more and more as Holmes started to be portrayed younger and younger. Benedict Cumberbatch seemed to catch the most perfect and palatable mix of wonder and weirdo, so different from Basil Rathobone and yet popular enough to catch the attention of a generation, just as Rathbone did.

Harry Attwell's Sherlock on the podcast adaptation Sherlock & Co. has become another favorite, starting as a familiar echo of Cumberbatch, but then evolving into something new and yet oh, so Sherlock. Attwell's Holmes is almost childlike at times, silly, but also imperious and commanding at other times because he knows the truth and is acting upon that thing he knows he is not wrong about. That is a fine line for an actor, to hit that part of Holmes and not come off as a complete asshole. (I won't name the actors that I didn't think made that leap, because your mileage may vary.)

There's a steel rod at the core of a Sherlock Holmes that must be there, I think. There are softer, malleable parts around that core that can be molded for a particular adaption, but without that core, I don't think a Sherlock can fully succeed. We never got to see enough of the non-hallucinatory Robert Carlyle version of Sherlock Holmes in CBS's Watson to 100% say that core wasn't there, but one has to wonder how he would have developed in another season had the show not been cancelled.

While we all have our likes and dislikes among our Sherlocks, there must be threads that run through all of the varieties of Sherlock Holmes that we each choose as favorites despite their differences. Those keys for opening the door to 221B Baker Street are what make for any great Sherlock Holmes portrayal when they work for more of us than not, keys that can not only unlock doors, but be played in a new tune that we'll love to hear.

And on Sherlock Holmes will go.

A Sherlockian at True Crime Pottery Night

 It seems like whenever I get pulled into a trivia night, it seems to be as the wild card in the deck.

Usually, I avoid themed trivia nights, being a more "random info" sort of guy, but some of my friends from work needed a sub, and it wasn't just a trivia night -- it was a True Crime Pottery Night. Having not done a pottery night, which has been a common social outing for years now, and intrigued by the blood-spattered examples of what could be done, it seemed like an interesting diversion for an evening.

But here is the first dilemma with any sort of pottery-painting night -- first you have to pick an item to turn into your masterpiece. Themes abound on the shelves of a place like Art At The Bodega, across the river from Peoria. Highland cows, dragons, toadstools, and the like, scattered among the mugs, plates, planters, and more functional pieces. But something in a Sherlockian theme? 

Not all dogs can be a demon hound of the Baskervilles. (Missed opportunity, now that I think about it -- Watson's bull pup! They had young bulldogs!) Gasogenes, tantaluses, pipes, deerstalkers, cyanea capillata . . . nope . . . and what I thought was a snake turned out to be curled up primitive swan. A treasure chest looked more piratical than Agra. So I finally went with an object that wasn't just a plate, but still offered flat surfaces to create upon . . . a dresser that you could plant small plants in. A dresser from Bart's.

With that first problem solve and my compatriots joining me at the table to start painting, the true crime trivia began. 

"I'm afraid all of my true crime knowledge is well over a century old," I apologized, before things took off

We named our team "The Saints of Bloody Gulch Road," combining our employer with an actual road from a hotel we once stayed at for work. And round one started with a seeming mandatory Dahmer question, which most folks knew. Followed by our first mis-step, which was all my fault: "Name the platform where true crime rose to prominence in popular culture."

Well, it's podcasting, of course, a true crime podcaster (or someone who plays a true crime podcaster, if that character believes Sherlock Holmes Is Real), will immediately tell you. But, sadly, apparently the desired answer was "Netflix."

The very next question was right in my wheelhouse, however. So much in my wheelhouse that I rolled my eyes so hard they about left my head. "What city did Jack the Ripper commit his crimes in?"

"Do we get extra points if we can name all of the victims?" I asked. Sadly, no. 

Living in downstate Illinois, our state killer clown was easy to identify, but everyone in the room was from downstate Illinois. The name of the car OJ Simpson tried to escape in? If you lived through that year, Ford Broncos are etched in your mind. But then we got to the nitty gritty: The Zodiac Killer's unsolved clue. The BTK Killer's name. The state where some more recent murders that I never even heard of occurred. Ed Gein trivia. 

But thank goodness for the play "Arsenic and Old Lace," when it came to "What is the most common poison used in murders?" Well, arsenic had a play written about it and strychnine and cyanide don't, soooo arsenic? Correct!

No Palmer and Pritchard questions. No Jonathan Wild questions. Nothing about Oscar Slater.

It appears that a knowledgable Sherlockians can be a bit weak on a subject that a current day Sherlock Holmes might be well versed in -- no great surprise there, of course. My chemistry knowledge is probably worse. But such an evening, even dipping lightly into that topic as we did painting pottery, gives one pause to wonder how many true crime devotees possess a Holmes-level knowledge of the annals of crime?

We might want to add one or two of them to our social circles.

Pastiche, More Than Fanfic, Can Be A Battlefield

 A friend brought up the topic of folks vocally hating pastiche the other night, talking about fanfic as well, and it was interesting to me how close and yet how far apart the terms "pastiche" and "fanfic" can be. And why one fuels the flames a bit more than the other.

Fanfic, of course, is simply that fiction written by fans, both extending and deep-diving into some existing intellectual property with their own creations.  Pastiche, however, while often written by fans for the same reasons, can more easily tread on holy ground. A true pastiche is actually trying to replicate an experience anew, to catch a creator's voice and give us that one thing we so desire: That new tale the original creator did not tell. Fanfic so often is used to write stories from other mediums, so it raises less hackles. Pastiche dares to work in the same medium as the original, where direct comparison is possible and charges of blasphemy or fraud can be levied by the self-appointed judges of said works.

Loving something so much you want to try to replicate it, make something like it all your own, is really the next level in being a fan. It's also the exact opposite of that other next level of being a fan -- the sort of love where you want to put your beloved text in a box, protect it, and keep it a sacred and special part of your life. And with two next levels of the same fandom, we suddenly have the sheepmen and the cattlemen of the Old West, ready to go to war.

Both sides have their point. Creativity and the freedom to explore the world that exists in a great work is a grand concept. Trying to recreate, to inspire that feeling we felt before, is a basic human urge. And we have seen those who seem to succeed. Yet all creativity has its failures, and Frankensteining parts of a great beauty into a monster can also bring the villagers with torches. While most try to be kind and not call out the uglier specimens wandering into our fandom village, there will be those, through choice or habit, just have to be a little too honest. 

I've been on both sides of this great divide in fandom, and after decades of being a Sherlock Holmes fan, I've learned there are no winners in fighting that fight. (And some other fights.) Sherlockiana is not that big a pond, and sometimes we have to accept that the opposite of our opinion exists in this big tent, to mix my metaphors. The divide is not a chasm, there is no real canyon that separate us from the other side. Just a spectrum of fans in between us and our opposite numbers, sharing our views to a degree and their views to a degree, friends who can bridge that gap and occasionally call us out when we might be verging upon unkind or treat our wounds when we're cut to the quick by a sharp comment.

And few things bring out the cutting comments more than a new attempt to make new Sherlock Holmes, be it TV, movies, or that story you wrote last week. The best wisdom that exists in this internet age has long been "never read the comments." Being careful where you swing your own sharp objects, however, is a wisdom that goes back to when humans first used tools, so maybe we need to give that one even more consideration.

Walp, this palaver went a lot of places I didn't expect, so I'll step away for now. Take care out there.

Sherlockian Periodicals: The Baker Street Chronicle

  

The Baker Street Chronicle 

Duration: July 1981 to July 1985, twenty-three issues, four years
Frequency: Bimonthly
Editor: Pattie Brunner
Club Affiliation: See below

Sometimes things happen in the Sherlockian world in reaction to other things in the Sherlockian world. Clubs splinter off from other clubs. Articles are written in reaction to other articles. And in some cases, journals come out of dissatifaction from other journals. Such was the case of The Baker Street Chronicle, originally called John Clayton's Underground Newspaper, its first issue announcing that it was being published in reaction to the silence of The Morning Post, the newsletter of St. Louis's Noble Bachelors. Of course, this sort of rambunctiousness caused all sorts of friction in St. Louis, but it also produced a really fun little journal that appeared more often than most. With art by Jeff Huddlestone (a great Sherlockian artist of the day) and articles by regulars like Kelvin Jones and Brad Keefauver, The Baker Street Chronicle was a fun journal that made attempts at graphic design few would attempt with a typewriter, border tape, and paste. If I'm going to get sentimental about any Sherlockian period, its going to be the early 1980s, so I'm not the most objective where this one is concerned -- a great, fun journal of its time!

Sherlockian Periodicals: The Air-Gun

  

The Air-Gun

Duration: January 1985 to May 1991, seventeen issues, six years
Frequency: Monthly
Editor:Wally Conger
Club Affiliation: The Blind German Mechanics of Monrovia, CA

Here's a slim little number that was especially fun. Irreverent, arcane, with a touch of anarchy, yet as perfectly written and edited as one would hope from someone who made his living in the writing trade. Wally wrote about all the current Sherlockian bits like many another newsletter of the day, but he did it in a way that's still fascinating to read, even now. The Air-Gun featured articles some of the usual prolific writers of the day, but it was mostly the editor's baby and he did make it interesting. The ongoing series, "Sherlock's Secret War," spotlighted the very strange secret's behind the Canon, involving Holmes and the Illuminati, Holmes and things Lovecraftian, Holmes and all sorts of Things with a capital T. Wally also had a habit of pulling interesting quotes from his correspondence -- stuff that would get you tut-tutted on any internet chat for bashing Brett or the BSI in these non-1980s times. (But in reading these old issues one gets reminded that our current Sherlockian gripes have been with us a lot longer than anyone thinks about.)

There's the Sherlockian mainstream, and then there are those bits of the hobby that are the wild frontiers of the borderlands and beyond, which is where  The Air-Gun set up shop during its run.

Sherlockian Periodicals: Afghanistanzas

Twenty-first issue

 Afghanistanzas

Duration: October 31, 1976 to Summer 1986, fifty-six issues, eleven years
Frequency: Monthly
Editor:George Scheetz (1976, un-named), Mike Clark (1976-1980), Doug Highsmith (1980-1982), Jack Nordheden (1983-1985) 
Club Affiliation: The Double-Barrelled Tiger Cubs of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois 

I'll admit it: I'm probably a little prejudiced when it comes to this particular newsletter. It was the first one to which I ever subscribed. Maybe that's why it's one of my favorites, or maybe it was the enthusiastic mix of articles, news, pastiches, humor, movie stuff . . . basically, anything and everything about Sherlock Holmes and his legacy. 

The Double-Barrelled Tiger Cubs were (and are? I'm never sure.) a college-based group at the University of Illinois. Their membership turned over constantly as students enrolled at and graduated from the university, and they were (are?) consistently one of the youngest Sherlockian groups, and that youthful energy was always present in Afghanistanzas. Whether it was Doug Highsmith's Hornblower Holmes parodies, or the pastiches written by Toby Sherman (yes, that's Toby the dog), Julie Maynard's cover art, the comprehensive Christmas gift guides, or John Wyman's movie stills with word balloons added, Afghanistanzas showed off that energy with every monthly issue.

The Passing of a Paper Generation

 I had seen the signs. I knew things were changing. But now that I've seen it confirmed, I feel like I've lost an old friend.

The mass market paperback is dead.

Cheap, lightweight, and so common we thought they'd be around forever, the just under 4.25" by 7" standard paperback on cheap paper is going the way of all things historical. Sure, trade paperbacks will still exist, twice the size and mostly on better paper, but damn . . . I cut my teeth on the mass market paperback. My Sherlockian teeth.

Every Sherlock Holmes pastiche stocked by my junior college bookstore -- Farmer, Wellman, Boyer, Mitchelson & Utechin, and, of course, Meyer -- were gobbled up like M&Ms in my early days as a Sherlockian. 

Paperbacks were where I met Solar Pons and Vincent Starrett, and I can remember the exact location where I found each, a Walden Books and a Walgreens, in two different local malls.

The reasons for the demise of the mass market paperback are many, all of them eating away at the sales numbers that made them mass market.  Reading books on screens for one, but also that larger cultural shift we've seen since the internet started giving us near-unlimited options for entertainment: We're not all reading the same things any more. More writers are being published than ever before. A simple trip to Barnes & Noble can be a mind-boggling experience at the array of choices. Where Nicholas Meyer's Sherlockian pastichery was plentiful in the days of paperback bestsellers, his latest was just one among many Sherlockian works in today's trip to Barnes and Noble.

Books still exist, yes, and so do readers. And when you reach a certain age, for better or worse, you get to watch as previous eras slip through your fingers and fade. Moments of grief are natural. But then we turn back to the current world as it exists right now and get on with enjoying the people and things that are still with us, and plan for the days ahead.

But for today . . . alas, poor paperbacks. I knew them, Horatio . . .

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.

The Land of Sherlockian Lakes

 Minnesota, when we're not thinking of it as the home of the great university Sherlock Holmes collection, is also known as the "Land of 10,000 Lakes." As I recover from the grand weekend of 221B Con, I'm thinking that Minnesota being a Sherlockian center, as well as this land of many lakes, is very appropriate.

Because when you do a head count of Sherlock Holmes fans involved in a specific thing, Sherlockiana can seem like a very small pond. Three hundred people is a great success for a live event, be it in New York, Atlanta, or anywhere. Three hundred people, that three digit number 300, compared with an American population of 342,000,000, or something like American football where a single game pulls an average of 70,000 attendees. A very, very small pond indeed.

But we know that there are more Sherlock Holmes fans than that. There have to be. There are TV shows.

But some of the truth of that came out this weekend as I ran the Alpha Inn Goose Club Trivia Hour, and tested a full room of my fellow Sherlockians on what I thought was common Sherlockian knowledge. One of the categories was "Those Non-Canonical Baker Street Regulars," in which I selected a character from a Sherlock Holmes TV show who appeared regularly, but was not in the original stories. Molly Hooper, Marcus Bell, Sergeant Wilkins, Amelia Rojas, and Ingrid Derian were the names that answered each of five questions, each of those characters coming from a TV show that reached millions of viewers and was made due to the popularity of Sherlock Holmes.

Someone in the crowd knew the answer to almost all of them. (We shall forgive no one knowing Wilkins, as his TV show was in the early 1950s, even though it's readily available on YouTube.) But it was a different someone each time, and not many someones.

Because even with our most widely viewed Sherlock Holmes media, we are not a small pond -- we are a collection of small ponds. Sherlockiana is, like Minnesota, a land of ten thousand lakes.

It's easy to look at one's own view of the elephant, to switch to the metaphor of the blind men and the elephant, and think that it's the whole elephant. (I think it was former U of M Sherlock Holmes Collections curator Tim Johnson who first made that comparison with Sherlockian fandom.) The older the part of the fandom, the easier it is to see that as the whole. And maybe that's the comfortable level we want to make a part of our lives, sticking with the original Canon, BBC Sherlock, creating our own pastiche version of 1880s Baker Street, whatever trips our trigger. But we can never forget that our piece is part of the Minnesota of the whole Sherlock Holmes culture.

An annual dip in the 221B Con pool, figuratively speaking -- I've yet to indulge in post-con "nerd soup" at the Atlanta Marriott pool -- is a good thing for reminding one's self of all of the diversity of thought within the fan culture of Sherlock Holmes. Because it isn't just a pool. It, like Minnesota, is a land of lakes.

Napoleon Bust of Crime Does Con!

 I'm sorry . . .