History, Holmes And The Hound

This evening, as an alternative to reading or blogging, I watched television for a while and, of course, found something relevant. Tony Robinson of the Time Team which we mentioned here walks through historical Britain (see here) and, in an episode shown this evening, visited Cromer where Sheila and I on holiday two years ago learned something that was directly relevant to Sherlock Holmes and thus indirectly relevant to Poul Anderson's Time Patrol. See here.

Since Holmes exists in the Time Patrol timeline, so must the Hound of the Baskervilles. However, contrary perhaps to some popular misconceptions, this "Hound" is not supernatural. Doyle believed in Spiritualism but kept Holmes scientific and secularist. The Hound Of The Baskervilles is said to be the most often filmed novel and one film version introduces a seance in Baskerville Hall - kind of appropriate in one way though not in another. In any case, the Time Patrol series remains historical sf, not fantasy, and is not tainted with supernaturalism by its inclusion of the Great Detective who debunked the Hound.