Wednesday, January 6, 2021

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR. HOLMES!


It's true that I'm O'Bsessed with television as a fantasy realm.  But tisn't my only area of interest.  What got me on the Fantasy kick in general was my introduction to JRR Tolkien with "The Hobbit" in 10th Grade.  (Thank you, Mr. Kostrezwa!)  But there is also a certain consulting detective who once lived at 221-B Baker Street.

For several years now, Toobworld Central has celebrated Sherlock Holmes on what many Sherlockians/Holmesians consider to be his birthday.  (For that splainin, click here.)  

And we continue that tradition today....


This image was shared by one of my Crossoverist associates on Facebook (Win Scott Eckert, I believe?) and it led me to learn more......

From the review by "Lucky Ladybug" at Amazon:

The story is somewhat difficult to explain. The "summary" given on the product page is very vague and doesn't really tell enough, but in the interest of not spoiling as much as possible, I'll try not to reveal plot details, either. It's an intricate web woven through two time periods: Victorian England and present-day Hollywood. By the end I still wasn't fully certain I understood what had happened, but after taking a few moments to process it I felt I'd come to make sense of most of it. It wasn't quite what I'd hoped; I had wanted more of an active role of the supernatural. Holmes never quite stumbled across that angle, as I had hoped he would. Holmes and the supernatural are an interesting combination I greatly enjoy seeing in others' works.

I had also hoped for more of an active role concerning Kolchak's awareness of Holmes having tried to solve the case first. Instead he only knows of Holmes' role seemingly through a manuscript (which is, I think, Watson's account of the unsolved events). I had wanted him to also have photographs, letters, etc. With just a manuscript it's too easy to say that Kolchak's world has Holmes as a fictional character, as in real life, and that the manuscript was just a fictionalized account of real events, told as the fictional Holmes' adventure. But I prefer to think that Holmes is indeed a real person in Kolchak's world, or was during the Victorian era, and that Watson did indeed author the manuscript (which is hinted, but not outright stated).


You can read another review here.

I'm glad to see that the prevalent conception of Sherlock Holmes is as he looked when he was portrayed by Jeremy Brett, the official portrayer of Holmes in Earth Prime-Time.  And it doesn't seem as though wild leaps had to be taken for them to actually meet in person.  Despite the fantastic nature of the tale, it's kept bound to reality by having each of them work on this case in their own time periods, linked only by the manuscript left behind by Dr. Watson.

Here's to the memory of Sherlock Holmes on the anniversary of his birth.....


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