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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Was Holmes Fooled in “Thor Bridge”?

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Was Holmes Fooled in “Thor Bridge”?

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Thor_GlassPart of the fun of being a Sherlockian (I use the term to mean someone who has read the stories and delves into them, studying and possibly writing about them: not having watched the BBC television show Sherlock and expounding the wonders of Benedict Cumberbatch) is speculating on the stories. In a post last November, I posed that perhaps Holmes was actually fooled by Lady Brackenstall in “The Adventure of The Abbey Grange.”

I don’t think that actually happened, but in Playing the Game, I laid out what I thought was at least a plausible scenario for it. Similarly, I pondered the possibility that Holmes set himself up in the blackmailing business after matters were concluded in “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton.” Now, I don’t believe what I wrote in that one at all, but it was fun and it’s not impossible (just preposterous).

So, I ask you, is it possible that Holmes had a blind spot regarding the fairer sex and that he once again was duped by a pretty woman?

SPOILERS – SPOILERS – SPOILERS

Though frankly, if you’re reading this post and you haven’t read “The Problem of Thor Bridge,” I’m a little perplexed. But click on this link and read it. It won’t take long.

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Thinking About What Makes The Shining and The Exorcist Work

Thinking About What Makes The Shining and The Exorcist Work

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Linda-Blair-in-The-Exorcist-1973
Aw, man. This just ain’t right.

Sometimes in the course of growing as a writer, you fluke into a success before you grow the skills to consistently hit that success. My second-ever fiction sale was to Asimov’s Science Fiction in 2008 and over the following two-and-a-half years, I collected nothing but rejections from them.

My 2008 story had accidentally included enough good elements that it made it into the magazine, but I didn’t understand what those science fictional elements were or how to use them properly until about 2011.

I think the same thing happened to me with a story called “Dog’s Paw.” I thought I’d been writing a lit story when in fact, I had included horror elements that eventually got it published in a horror anthology, Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year, and a superb audio version at Pseudopod.org (British people make everything sound extra-good). After my experience with my 2008 Asimov’s story, I was under no illusions that I was a competent horror writer, just a lucky one.

This spring, I decided to try to write a horror story. Knowing my weakness, I deliberately tried to figure out what goes into a good horror story. And when I want to analyze story structure, I go first to movies, because I find it easier to see the moving parts.

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Kull and the Quest for Identity

Kull and the Quest for Identity

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Baen Kull Robert E Howard-smallkull-the-fabulous-warrior-king-198NOTE: The following article was first published on April 18, 2010. Thank you to John O’Neill for agreeing to reprint these early articles, so they are archived at Black Gate which has been my home for over 5 years and 250 articles now. Thank you to Deuce Richardson without whom I never would have found my way. Minor editorial changes have been made in some cases to the original text.

Robert E. Howard’s “The Shadow Kingdom” is a remarkable advancement upon “Exile of Atlantis” and the “Am-ra of the Ta’an” fragments. Howard’s first published story of what will later be known as the Pre-Cataclysmic Age leaves behind the derivative world of Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiches to mine new territory in terms of character and setting as well as genre.

Kull, the barbarian who has recently seized the crown and now must struggle to keep it, marks a significant break from both Howard and the fantasy genre’s past while continuing to build upon the age-old theme of the outsider as noble savage. Howard was hardly the first young man who felt a sense of kinship with such characters. It is not hard to imagine the aspiring young writer, alienated in Cross Plains, pouring his feelings into the exiled Atlantean who remains an outcast even after rising to the throne of Valusia.

The story opens with Kull making a proper royal entrance. Unsurprisingly, the barbarian king’s empathy rests not with Valusia’s finest archers and trumpeters, but with the mercenaries paid to act as foot soldiers – men who show the king little respect, but who demonstrate integrity for all their brash honesty. This sets the stage for the introduction of Brule, the noble Pict destined to become Kull’s loyal companion. While Brule enters the series as a figure of suspicion, Kull soon modifies his opinion of the man’s character. Brule, like Kull, is a man of integrity.

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A Rose By Any Other Name?

A Rose By Any Other Name?

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ClockworkIt was back when I was teaching a course on satire that I understood for the first time the true importance of characters’ names, and the titles of books. It’s more obvious, perhaps, in a satirical work than in any other, but names – whether of people or novels – are vitally important.

It behooves us as writers to pay them great attention.

To illustrate what I mean, let me show you an example from a satirical work that’s also considered SF, Anthony Burgess’ Clockwork Orange. What’s the significance of the title? We all know what an orange is, don’t we? A type of citrus fruit that grows in semi-tropical areas, which can be eaten, or made into juice, or marmalade or some other specimen of usefulness.

We all know what a clockwork is. A mechanism designed and built by humans to run other items or machines, initially clocks (hence the name), but subsequently a variety of other things. On a large scale, they could run factories, on a small scale, toys. We still find people who would say  a “wind-up” or “clockwork” toy, particularly a “clockwork man.”

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The Other Sax Rohmer

The Other Sax Rohmer

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bianca HCbianca italiaI recently penned an article examining the possibility that four privately-printed titles by The Theosophical Society of London might have been the work of a young Sax Rohmer since he and the author of the four theosophical works were both born in the UK as Arthur Henry Ward in 1883. Rohmer shared a lifelong interest in theosophy and occasionally wrote non-fiction pieces on the topic and other occult interests. The current article is concerned with a second mystery writer with the name Sax Rohmer or, more correctly stated, Elizabeth Sax Rohmer.

Credited on the back of her lone novel as the daughter of Sax Rohmer, Elizabeth was in fact his wife. Born Rose Elizabeth Knox into a family of Music Hall entertainers, her brother Teddy was one of The Crazy Gang whose influence in British comedy ranged from The Goon Show to Monty Python. While never as prolific as her husband, Elizabeth penned at least two short stories, “Spikey” and ” ‘arker” under the name Lisbeth Knox in 1924 and 1932, respectively. Under the name Elizabeth Sax Rohmer, she scripted a number of radio and television scripts with her husband. Sadly, no copies of the programs survive and her short fiction remains obscure.

Elizabeth Sax Rohmer’s lone novel, Bianca in Black was published in 1958. At the time, her husband was battling poor health and involved in a protracted court case over his literary rights. Strapped for cash, Elizabeth went to work on a novel herself for Thomas Bouregy’s Mystery House imprint in the US and for Ryerson Press in Canada. A paperback edition by Airmont would follow four years later. Elizabeth acknowledged that her husband helped her with the story and writing of the book. While it is clearly his wife’s work primarily, Sax Rohmer’s hand is evident in certain aspects. The story itself has some slight echoes of his 1954 mystery, The Moon is Red.

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Only War for Christmas: How to Defend Warhammer for Teenage Boys

Only War for Christmas: How to Defend Warhammer for Teenage Boys

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Kurtzhau army
…telling stories, reading books, engaging with craft…

Older relative: “Well I’m not buying him  (nose wrinkle) Warhammer.”

Fellow parent: “Oh God, Warhammer. We’re trying to steer him away from that!”

Another parent: “But it’s sooo expensive.”

It’s the run up to Christmas and people want to know what older and teenage boys want, and — just like with books — the boys, the geeky ones at least, want the wrong things.

Except of course, I think these are right things and I want to yell:

There’s this thing you can get that coaches boys in applied game theory, and keeps them telling stories, reading books, engaging with craft, and gathering with friends away from a screen (sometimes even organising them). It also enables them to talk to older boys and adults as peers, and take their place in a multi-generational community… No, it’s not an educational game. No… it’s not an after school club… It’s… Warhammer!!!

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The Fionavar Tapestry Book 1: The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay

The Fionavar Tapestry Book 1: The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay

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oie_2954621i1N7me0pWhile Guy Gavriel Kay is probably best known for his fantasies set in lightly fictionalized versions of the real world — such as The Lions of Al-Rassan or the Sarantine duology — his first book was The Summer Tree (1984). It’s the opening volume of The Fionavar Tapestry, a trilogy of epic high fantasy that manages to cram into its pages nearly every important Germanic or Celtic myth you can think of. You want a dark lord in an impregnable northern fortress? Check. How about noble elves practically glowing with an inner light, and noble blond horse-nomads? Double check. Considering that at the age of twenty, Kay was picked by Christopher Tolkien to help him collate his father’s papers into The Silmarillion, it’s understandable.

The Summer Tree is a book of beginnings and setting the pieces on the table. The game that will be played out in the two succeeding books, The Wandering Fire and The Darkest Road, is the usual one of long-imprisoned dark lord frees himself and sets out to get right this time his efforts to subvert creation and rule the world. Or in this book’s case, THE WORLD. Fionavar is the first world, the one from which all others, ours included, spring and are but shadows of.

The book opens in Toronto where five grad students, Jennifer, Kevin, Kimberly, Paul, and Dave go to hear Prof. Lorenzo Marcus lecture at the Second International Celtic Conference. He reveals to them that he is really Loren Silvercloak, a sorcerer from another world, and he would like them to travel back there with him for two weeks. In one of the book’s weaker moments, it doesn’t take much to convince them to go along. Dave balks at the last minute, which results in him arriving in a far different part of Fionavar than his friends, and having several chapters all to himself. What none of them knows is that while Loren has said he simply wants them to cross over in order to be present at a celebration for the king, the reality is he knows they have yet undetermined roles to play in Fionavar.

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In the Wake Of Sister Blue: Chapter Five

In the Wake Of Sister Blue: Chapter Five

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In The Wake of Sister Blue Mark Rigney-medium

Linked below, you’ll find the fifth installment of a brand-new serialized novel, In the Wake Of Sister Blue. In this latest dice-roll of adventures and misadventures, Maer takes steps to learn self-defense, we re-visit the Spur, and we spend some quality time with my favorite villain, Mother Sand –– if villain she truly is. I do love a complex character…

Oh, and a bonus! We meet, at last, a Sindarin. Face-to-face. Yes, the hooks are baited for Chapter Six, to follow in two weeks’ time.

A number of you will already be familiar with my Tales Of Gemen (“The Trade,” “The Find,” and “The Keystone“), and if you enjoyed those titles, I think you’ll also find much to like in this latest venture.

Bear in mind that this is a true serial. I haven’t written to the end; I couldn’t publish all at once even if I wished to do so. I do have the overall arc of the piece ever more firmly in mind, but as to how exactly I’ll write from Point A to Point Z? I predict it’ll be one complication at a time – minimum. I do promise this: I’ll dole out the breadcrumbs of story just as fast as I can tear them from the fictive loaf, and when we reach the end, we’ll get there simultaneously.

Welcome to adventure, In the Wake Of Sister Blue.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Stanford Does Holmes and More…

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Stanford Does Holmes and More…

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Stanford_CoverI don’t know how many Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle related books I have on my shelves. But it’s certainly several hundred. And I know almost every one of them and where they are. Some days, I like to simply pull various volumes out, look at them a bit and put them back. And once in awhile, I run across something I had forgotten about. Such happened to me as I was trying to decide what to write about this week.

Did you ever hear of the Stanford Victorian Reading Project? This admirable effort, currently on hiatus, released facsimiles of Charles Dickens and Sherlock Holmes stories. Regarding Dickens, they explored Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities and Hard Times.

I’m not much of a Dickens reader, so I’m only going to look at the Holmes project here.

You could sign up and they would send you, in the mail, free, an issue with a recreated cover from The Strand Magazine, a very short essay somehow related to Holmes or Doyle, a facsimile of a story with Sidney Paget’s illustrations, and annotations, often including a map or other picture. Quite simply, these are neat! Starting in January of 2006, I received (on a weekly basis), ”A Scandal in Bohemia,” The Speckled Band,” The Hound of the Baskervilles in nine installments, and “The Final Problem.”

Beginning in January of 2007, the sent out “The Empty House,” “Silver Blaze,” “The Musgrave Ritual,” “The Reigate Squire,” “The Greek Interpreter,” “Charles Augustus Milverton,” “The Abbey Grange,” “The Second Stain,” “The Bruce-Partington Plans,” “The Devil’s Foot,” “The Dying Detective” and “His Last Bow.”

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The Great Savage Sword Re-Read: Vol. 2

The Great Savage Sword Re-Read: Vol. 2

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In the first installment, I explored Volume 1 of the Savage Sword of Conan Dark Horse reprints of the classic Marvel Comics black-and-white magazine.

2577548-savage_sword_of_conan_015_01Volume 2 begins with Savage Sword of Conan #11 from 1976. A terrific issue written by Roy Thomas — who wrote most of the stories in the magazine its first few years — with art from John Buscema and Yong Montano. Buscema/Montano paring is an interesting one, and the results are every bit as lush and detailed as Alfredo Alcala’s inks in Volume One.

It’s too bad Montano only did this one issue of SS because he brought Buscema’s superb pencils to life as well as Alcala, yet with a decidedly different style that was no less immersive. This adaptation of Howard’s “The Abode of the Damned” isn’t your typical tale of the Cimmerian, as Conan is either off-screen or in disguise as “Shirkuh” for half the issue. It’s a brutal excursion into the violent lives of desert tribesmen, as seen through the eyes of the intrepid maiden Mellani. Seeking vengeance for her slain brother leads her right into captivity where Cimmerian-in-disguise is her only hope of surviving. Yong Montano didn’t turn into a regular Buscema inker like Alcala and later DeZuniga and Chan did, but on SS #11 he did a bang-up job creating that Buscema/Alcala level of artistic detail, while offering a fresh texture in his mastery of light and shadow.

In Savage Sword #12, reigning artistic champions John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala return to help Roy Thomas adapt Howard’s “The Slave Princess” into a Conan tale called “The Haunters of Castle Crimson.” The lush black ink work is the high standard of the magazine’s early years. Alcala’s hyper-detailed panels took Buscema’s masterful pencils to a whole new level of artistic integrity. Following their bravura performances in SS #2, 4, and 7, Buscema/Alcala bring more lighting-in-bottle greatness to these pages — and it’s their high-end work that highlights this entire second volume, beginning with SS #12.

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