Classical References

Mainwethering in the London Time Patrol office says:

"'I'd like to engage a private inquiry agent, but the only worthwhile one is entirely too clever. He operates on the principle that when one has eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. And time trafficking may not be too improbable for him.'"
-Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2006), pp. 21-22.

FBI agent Finch says:

"'When we've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true.'"
-SM Stirling, Drakon (New York, 2000), p. 235.

Finch adds, "'Classical reference...'" (ibid.) when Henry looks blankly at her. Is there a detective who does not know about the Great Detective? After eliminating aliens, Finch concludes, "'Time traveler...'" (ibid.)

Later, when a time traveler informs Henry about the physical attributes of a future warrior, Henry wants to ask:

"...what about the blue tights and the cape?" (p. 243)

- thus confirming the comparison with superheroes and villains.

An Unfalsifiable Proposition

Fantasy writers may legitimately assume a hereafter for fictional purposes. Poul Anderson sometimes did. Other writers express their own beliefs about a hereafter through fiction, although such fiction must still be classed as fantasy because the hereafter is not (yet) a publicly accessible realm. Arthur Conan Doyle believed in Spiritualism and also wrote fiction about it he but kept the supernatural out of the Sherlock Holmes series which is the part of his work that Anderson refers to.

Science fiction writers can devise scientific rationales for a hereafter, e.g.:

Midsummer Century by James Blish;
Immortality Inc. by Robert Sheckley.

The personality is neither a cerebral process nor a supernatural entity but a semi-stable electromagnetic field or etc.

There is something logically odd about the proposition that there is a hereafter. On the one hand, if there is a hereafter, then we will know about it. On the other hand, the question of whether there is a hereafter does not fully meet the criteria of an empirical question. Thus, if I predict that there will be a total eclipse of the Sun at noon tomorrow, then my prediction is both testable and falsifiable:

if there is an eclipse at noon, then at 12.01 pm we will know that there was an eclipse;
if there is not an eclipse at noon, then at 12.01 pm we will know that there was not an eclipse.

However, if I predict that, after death, you will enter a hereafter, then, if you enter a hereafter, you will know that you have entered a hereafter whereas, if you do not enter a hereafter, you will not know that you have not entered a hereafter. So is it an empirical question?

I discussed some of the issues here.

Futures And Pasts

A different future implies a different past. In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol history, the invention of time machines at a future date entails that there has already been considerable activity by time travelers in the past. Additionally, Sherlock Holmes, a fictional character in our timeline, is a historical figure in the Time Patrol timeline. Holmes' Adventures, narrated by Dr Watson but written by Conan Doyle in our timeline, are both written and narrated by Watson in the other timeline.

In terms of human activities, Anderson's History of Technic Civilization parts company with our history some time in the present century. However, in terms of other planetary evolutions and of Chereionite civilization, the two histories have differed for billions of years.

This means that everyone who is known to us as either a historical or a contemporary figure exists in two versions. One Alexander Solzhenitsyn existed in a timeline that would later include the Terran Empire and another Solzhenitsyn existed in our timeline that will include we do not know what.

Solzhenitsyn paints a favorable picture of an older fellow prisoner, a former Social Democrat who had known Lenin personally and who suffered imprisonment for his "...sixty-three years of honesty and doubts." (Chapter 5, p. 196) History is composed of such diverse individuals. Fiction must reflect this diversity and Anderson succeeds in his Technic History.

Successive Realizations

(i) Only on rereading Poul Anderson's "Time Patrol" did I realize that the Victorian private investigator and his amanuensis were Holmes and Watson although this should have been obvious in the first place.

(ii) Only on reading a Complete Sherlock Holmes over a decade later did I realize that the phrase "...the singular contents of an ancient British barrow..." was a quotation.

(iii) I did think on first reading The Shield Of Time that "Altamont" was Holmes although I had to check "His Last Bow" to confirm this.

Thus, Manse Everard of the Patrol interacts with Holmes in both volumes of the Time Patrol series, both in the omnibus collection and in the single long novel. Meanwhile, the Holmes series could appropriately be collected in three omnibus volumes. See here. Finally, it would be possible for a new reader to embark on the whole of Holmes, then to follow this with the whole Time Patrol - from the nineteenth century into the twentieth century, back to the nineteenth century, then backwards and forwards throughout history with Everard's deception of Altamont coming in the fifth of the six parts of The Shield Of Time. Quite a ride.

Sherlock Holmes And The Time Patrol

When Manse Everard reflects that Rudyard Kipling is still writing, he does not also mention Arthur Conan Doyle because the Time Patrol timeline has Dr John Watson instead!

"The private agent smiled sourly and watched [two disguised Time Patrolmen] with a narrow eye as they approached the mound; he was tall, thin, hawkfaced, and accompanied by a burly, mustached fellow with a limp who seemed a kind of amanuensis." (Time Patrol, p. 25)

Poul Anderson practices the art of understatement in this passage. Manse Everard, who is our viewpoint character and one of the two Patrolmen, knows very well that the burly, mustached, limping fellow is the private agent's amanuensis. It was reading that fellow's veiled reference to this incident that has brought Everard to 1894 in the first place.

The private agent asks Everard a sharp question after noiselessly approaching from behind. Everard has several paragraphs of conversation with Holmes who must be very carefully misdirected. The local Patrol office dare not employ him because he might learn too much. And later in Everard's career, the latter must secure the Altamont case.

Holmes

How many Holmesian allusions are there in Poul Anderson's works? I will not try to list them all. However, there are major allusions in:

"Time Patrol"
"The Queen of Air and Darkness"
"The Martian Crown Jewels"
"The Adventure of the Misplaced Hound" (with Gordon R Dickson)

"Time Patrol" -

- is premised on an untold case mentioned in one of Conan Doyle's stories;
introduces Manson Everard and the Time Patrol;
cameos Holmes and Watson in a scene shared with Everard.

Thus, Holmes is seen by a time traveler. In the remaining three listed stories, he is imitated by a descendant in an extrasolar colony, by a Martian and by a Hoka. It follows that all these works are science fiction.

Since I plan to reread "...the Misplaced Hound," I here share links to some previous posts, on another blog, about the Holmes canon:

The Structure of a Series: Conan Doyle
The Structure of a Series: Conan Doyle II
The Structure of a Series: Holmes Omnibuses

Bradshaw

Bradshaw's Guide is consulted by:

Sherlock Holmes;

Mainwethering of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol London office;

a character in a ghost story by Rudyard Kipling;

Athelstane King in SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003), p. 343;

Michael Portillo, former Conservative Member of the British Parliament (see image).

King has Bradshaw's Indian Imperial Railways by Newman's of Calcutta. Bradshaw himself died in 1853, well before the Fall.

Portillo, in a BBC TV series, traveled around Britain, and later Europe, guided by Bradshaw. His brief was to find out how much of Bradshaw's world still survived and how much had changed. For example:

the railway takes Portillo to the building that was the first factory (and here) in the world;
Bradshaw describes the Crystal Palace which burned down in 1936;
Birmingham will soon have a majority non-white population, unlike in Bradshaw's time! - there is a Central Mosque and many Indian restaurants and one restaurant owner intends to found a college to teach authentic Indian cooking.

It would have been remiss of either Anderson or Stirling not to mention Bradshaw but, of course, they both do.

Modern Myths

Manson Everard, who does detective work in the past, refers to Sherlock Holmes.

Malcolm Lockridge, who has been hired to help recover a treasure, refers to James Bond.

Jack Havig, who has the superpower of time travel, refers to Superman.

I am a fan of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels and of Superman in some versions, e.g., when written by Alan Moore or in the Smallville TV series.

Holmes, Bond and Superman are modern myths by which I mean fictional characters who are universally known, even by those who have never read the original texts. Others are:

Dracula
Frankenstein
Alice in Wonderland
Rip van Winkle
Peter Pan
Tarzan
the Batman
the Time Traveler
the Invisible Man
the Man in the Iron Mask
the Three Musketeers
the Count of Monte Cristo
the Wizard of Oz

Usually, it is possible to describe a mythical character's distinguishing feature in a single phrase or sentence. I am sure that it would be possible to generate a list of a hundred, although some would need to be verified by opinion polls.

Anderson's characters are not on the list. Each of us appreciates the modern myths and also many less well known characters.

Elementary...

"Through a great thundering mist, Alexander Jones heard THE WORDS.
"'Not at all. Elementary, my dear Watson!'"
- Poul Anderson and Gordon R Dickson, Earthman's Burden (New York, 1979), p. 121.

It had to happen.

People rightly say that Holmes never said that. But then why is it attributed to him? There are reasons why I think that it is a legitimate quotation. It would be more accurate if it were punctuated, "Elementary...my dear Watson!" but that is grammatically awkward.

(i) Holmes does say, "Elementary."

(ii) He does say, "My dear Watson."

(iii) Once, and I am not going to look it up now, he says both in quick succession in the course of a single conversation over two or three pages.

Therefore, it is legitimate:

to infer that Holmes would have said THE WORDS at some time in an off-stage conversation;

to attribute THE WORDS to him in some of the many sequels and adaptations.

In Casablanca: I think that the line "Play it again," is addressed to a character called Sam, hence that other spurious quotation, "Play it again, Sam."

Literary Links

Ian Fleming:

wrote some scripts for a proposed TV series to be set in Jamaica, then adapted the scripts as the novel, Dr No;

wrote three scripts for a proposed James Bond TV series, then adapted these scripts as short stories;

co-wrote a treatment for an original James Bond film, Thunderball, then novelized the treatment;

created, we are told, the flamboyant name of the central character of a TV series in which an international intelligence organization, the United Network Command for Law Enforcement, resists attempts at world domination by an evil organization combining features of Bond's SMERSH and SPECTRE.

The evil organization of the U.N.C.L.E. TV series either made use of or was controlled by (accounts differ) an "Ultimate Computer." (This phrase re-occurred as the title of a Star Trek episode.)

One of the original U.N.C.L.E. novels reveals that:

the villainous organization had been founded at a meeting in a late nineteenth century London hotel by the successors of a criminal mastermind called "the Professor";

the organization's familiar name was originally an acronym for a cumbersome phrase beginning "The Technological Hierarchy..."

This gives us one definite and another possible link to the works of Poul Anderson. The definite link is Holmesianism: creative references to Sherlock Holmes in other works of fiction. Anderson refers directly or indirectly to Holmes many times. For example, when a Time Patrolman mentions "Altamont," this refers to Holmes just as "the Professor" in the U.N.C.L.E. novel refers to Moriarty.

The other possible link is that, in Anderson's The Long Way Home, the Solar System is a "Technate" run by a computer, the Technon. However, the only connection here is the old idea of a computer running things. Although there are, genetically created, slaves in the Technate, there are also free Commoners whereas the Hierarchy would have enslaved the entire world population although, arguably, this would have made it difficult to maintain an advanced technology.

A world dictatorship without any external competitor would be a horrific despotism, which is perhaps what is described in 1984, where the three States only pretend to be at war. In fact, a member of the Hierarchy shows the U.N.C.L.E. Director that crucial line in 1984, "The object of power is power."

Anderson, like every comprehensive sf writer, shows us some future dictatorships as warnings, futures we don't want.

Elementary...

"Through a great, thundering mist, Alexander Jones heard THE WORDS.
"'Not at all. Elementary, my dear Watson!'"
- Poul Anderson and Gordon R Dickson, Earthman's Burden (New York, 1979), p. 121.

People say rightly that Holmes never said that. So why is it so widely (mis)quoted?

Holmes does say "Elementary" and does say "My dear Watson" and once says both in quick succession over three or four pages in the course of a single conversation. Thus, it is legitimate to infer that he would have said both together sometime offstage and it is also legitimate to put that phrase into his mouth in new Holmes stories and films.

"Elementary...my dear Watson!" would be a grammatically more accurate, if slightly clumsy, quotation.