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Oh Dear dept.

I was excited, last year, to see that Oxford were bringing out a second edition of its famous 'Oxford Sherlock Holmes' series. The first 90s editions were for many including myself their first window into the wider world of Doylean scholarship, and justifiably they became standard reference points. But the new second editions have started to come out. They are not a patch on the first. Aesthetically, one must admit they look better. The asterisks that denote footnotes are less obtrusive, the paper is great quality, the covers are well designed. The actual text of the stories remains the same, as far as I can tell. The problem is with the scholarly apparatus. For unlike the first editions, these have been edited not by fan-scholars (Owen Dudley Edwards, Christopher Roden, the late Richard Lancelyn Green) but by 'proper' academics. Do they bring to the table the latest in Doylean scholarship? Yes. But they also bring the latest in literary criticism and contemporary aca...
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The Blue Carbuncle again!

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I must say I'm having fun with Grok, the free AI on Twitter (or 'X'!). It's the perfect way to while away waiting for a bus or challenging it to provide a perfect illustration. Because 'perfect' it isn't... but it is rather amusing!
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a whimsical little Christmas event

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Pull on your Scotch bonnett and tuck that goose under your arm - it's nearly Christmas and that means a trudge through the December sleet and snow in pursuit of The Blue Carbuncle ! * Being the season of goodwill to all men, the Christmas setting seems to have rubbed off on Doyle as much as on Holmes, for we have a story filled with heart-warming characters - such as the (very honest) Commissionaire, good old Henry Baker (gratefully the recipient of a replacement goose) and a jolly publican - and most of these experience unexpected good fortune, even with the villain, most famously, being let off the hook. Henry Baker may be described by Holmes as having lost the love of his wife but this seems an exaggeration when one pictures them tucking in together to their delicious fresh goose. (Holmes' 'deductions' have drawn ample criticism over the years so perhaps we don't have to take his comments on the hapless Mr Baker too seriously) And of course there are the mental ...
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HPL Dictionary Corner: "chlorotic"

From the Yuletide-themed The Festival comes: a "chlorotic glare" The word is from chlorosis, a condition affecting the colour of plants - when devoid of their chlorophyll they develop a yellow colour; in human pathology this word describes skin with a sickly green-yellow colour. Suitable perhaps for a Santa's grotto... or the grotto of The Festival' s strange Kingsport denizens!
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"pattern of chance"

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Towards the end of Moonraker , James Bond considers all the myriad little events which contributed to his saving London from atomic destruction by Drax's rocket: All that would have come about [..] but for a whole pattern of tiny circumstances, a whole pattern of chance. Coincidences, chance happenings, unexpected twists and turns... the crafting and weaving of all of these into a narrative is the whole of the novelist's art, as Fleming knows. As the remote deity above the Bondian universe which he brings into being on his gold-plated typewriter he could no doubt savour the paradox - what seems like mere chance to Bond is the result of Fleming's design. The London of Moonraker was always perfectly safe, just as Bond's aim at winning the love (or at least the body) of Gala Brand was doomed right from the start. What we have, or rather what the characters have, is the illusion of chance. But Bond as a character is himself familiar with such illusions. Work though he does ...
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aquatic germs

As writers develop their themes and characters, it can often seem to the reader that earlier books seem to pre-empt later ones, as if a germ of an idea has hatched only to await further incubation (to mix my metaphors!). One such seems to be in Fleming's Casino Royale . In a passage of otherwise 'straight' prose of Bond at the baccarat table are these sub-marine descriptions: The two cards slithered towards him across the green sea. Like an octopus under a rock, Le Chiffre watched him from the other side of the table. (p.86, Penguin, 2004) Does this not bring to mind the brilliant chapter in the next book, Live and Let Die , in which Bond walks across the sea-bed towards Mr Big's lair, and observes all the aquatic life teeming about him? Almost as if Fleming, searching for similes for his first book, was struck by the picture those words conveyed and decided to render them in a more literal (yet even more poetic, even lyrical) form for the action for his next. Felix Le...
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library lore

There is of course a vast library's worth (probably several libraries' worth) of pastiche 'Lovecraftian' and 'Sherlockian' books, and my strong suspicion has always been that the larger the quantity the poorer the quality. This suspicion has not abated since the explosion of self-published books popping up on Amazon and the like. And apart from anything else, how much of it does anyone actually need? Does anyone read them all? Are there individuals out there who only read books featuring Sherlock Holmes stories? Is there an avid Cthulhu fan who gets everything - everything - that purports to be an untold tale of HPL's Elder Gods? Perhaps. In fact, probably. The only collections of non-HPL 'Lovecraftiana' I think I'll ever need is Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos and its 80s sequel New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos and I have been dipping into both recently.  The original Tales was edited by August Derleth and published by Arkham House (though I was f...
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