Sherlock Holmes appears in Poul Anderson's first Time Patrol story. Although I had already read some Holmes storoes, I did not recognize the private investigator and his companion in "Time Patrol" as Holmes and Watson on first reading but I was very young. It was obvious on a later rereading.
How many Holmes references are there in modern fiction? Here is another. In Julian May's Intervention, a confidential agent tells the Swiss banking regulatory board that the Edinburgh University Parapsychology Unit will soon publicly demonstrate extracorporeal excursion, thus ending banking confidentiality. A frail, ill-looking banker tells the agent that the chief Scottish parapsychological researcher is a menace to civilization and that something must be done about him...
The sinister banker is called Herr Reichenbach. If May had not intended a Holmesian allusion, then she would not have used that surname. Just another of our Anderson-May parallels.
6 comments:
Paul:
Sherlock Holmes has such worldwide recognition that you're likely to find a Holmes reference in all manner of stories if there's the least aspect of a mystery involved. Just a few examples off the top of my head:
An animated cartoon based on the Peanuts comic strip, "It's a Mystery, Charlie Brown," featured Snoopy putting on a deerstalker cap to investigate the question of who'd swiped his little bird friend's nest.
In a 1996 arc of the newspaper comic Sherman's Lagoon, Sherman the self-described "roly-poly cartoon shark suitable for plush toys" donned a deerstalker to investigate who'd shot his brother dead. The cheerily sociopathic nature of this strip (the main characters eat humans and fellow talking fish all the time) meant there were no repercussions when the killer turned out to be Sherman's wife.
A Japanese anime (another television cartoon) about high school students looking into minor mysteries (Who locked a girl into an unused classroom without her noticing?) has a closing credits animation showing the female characters in outfits modeled on the traditional appearance of Holmes and Hercule Poirot.
H. Beam Piper (Sorry, I'm mentioning him again!) in Four-Day Planet, showed one character greeting a "Dr. Watson" with the "You have been in Afghanistan..." line, which the narrator recognized as a Holmes reference and probably a password. He didn't seem to consider the possibility that a doctor named Watson will hear the Afghanistan joke often.
The Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell includes a moment when the hero describes to some friends how he used to read detective stories from Old Earth, and then cites the Holmesian line about eliminating the impossible.
Kaor, Paul!
I remember that bit about the private investigator reporting his findings to the Swiss financiers and bankers. But, my recollection (possibly wrong) is that these bankers decided they would not take any criminal or violent actions against the Scottish parapsychologist.
Sean
Sean,
Possibly wrong!
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Or possibly right! It's been a long, long time since I read these books by Julian May. Also, stereotypes and cliches to the contrary, a banker is no more likely to be a bad man or a criminal than anyone else.
Sean
Sean,
Do reread it.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I plan to! However, while I was in Florida, I got sidetracked into reading Harry Turtledove's HOT WAR series: BOMBS AWAY, FALLOUT, and ARMISTICE. The books being his speculations on what might have happened if President Truman had decided to atom bomb Red China to force Mao Tse-tung to stop interfering in the Korean War. Unfortunately, Stalin thought he would lose too much face if he sat still for that and began atom bombing Western Europe--and WW III was suddenly raging!
Sean
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