Tuesday 5 July 2022

Literary References

Literature and fiction refer to earlier literature and fiction. We are who and what we are because, among other reasons, we know about Homer and Shakespeare. This is one of those posts where I started to compile a list and the list did not stop. To begin with, Poul Anderson refers to William Shakespeare in A Midsummer Tempest, to HG Wells in There Will Be Time and to James Bond in The Corridors Of Time and incorporates Sherlock Holmes into "Time Patrol," as well as cameoing Holmes in A Midsummer Tempest.

However, Poul Anderson fans might be interested in some close parallels:

James Joyce's Ulysses is structurally based on Homer's Odyssey and, in Ulysses, Stehen Dedalus discusses Shakespeare;

CS Lewis refers to Wells in his Ransom Trilogy;

Ian Fleming refers to Holmes in From Russia, With Love;

Stieg Larsson refers to From Russia, With Love, Holmes, Miss Marple, Astrid Lindgren and the idea of a "time machine" in his Millennium Trilogy;

John Gardner wrote James Bond novels and a Moriarty Trilogy with Volume III entitled Moriarty;

Anthony Horowitz wrote a James Bond Trilogy and two Holmes sequels, the second entitled Moriarty;

one of Isaac Asimov's Black Widower stories is a discussion of Moriarty.

This post is occasioned by the fact that I am reading Horowitz's Moriarty and can recommend it to Anderson fans.

9 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And we see a descendant of Professor Moriarty in Anderson's "The Word to Space"!

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

And a descendant of Holmes in "The Queen of Air and Darkness"?

Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Well, possibly a COLLATERAL descendant, thru Sherlock Holmes' brother Mycroft. The former seems to have been a hardened bachelor, after all. And there has been persistent rumors among fans that Mycroft was the father of Nero Wolfe! (Smiles)

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,

And, in a MAN FROM UNCLE novel, the survivors of the Professor's organization founded THRUSH.

Paul.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Moriarty survives Reichenbach in at least three sequels by other authors.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

No doubt to the stunned amazement of A. Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes became a worldwide cultural archetype!

And it was a passionate popular protest and outcries from Sherlockian fans which finally drove Doyle to "resurrect" Holmes!

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Sean: but as one rustic fan said to Doyle, "He were never the same after he went over them falls."

S.M. Stirling said...

Doyle preferred his historical fictions, which I've always liked a great deal.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

I enjoyed reading Sir Arthur's novel SIR NIGEL, but Doyle will always be best known and immortalized because of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Ad astra! Sean