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98% chimpanzee, 100% crazy wizard writer

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Uncategorized

I can still hear Jim Butcher’s sing-song, “I’m not gonna tell you” ringing in my ears from his Q & A session at the Barnes & Noble in Buckhead. He chanted that refrain every time someone in the crowd tried to trip him up with a spoiler about Harry Dresden’s future adventures.

The fans only got him once. There was a minor reveal about a fallen angel hiding the shadows, whispering in Harry’s ear in Ghost Story, Harry’s latest outing. It isn’t totally obvious in the book that we’ve seen this character before, or that we might see her again in one of Harry’s later adventures, and Butcher told us her name. But that was the only time he slipped, in spite of an hour of pretty intense fan interrogation.

I bought a dead-tree book. It’s not as if I wasn’t going to read Ghost Story anyway…but the one thing that physical books have all over ebooks is the ability to get the author to sign them.  I read the first 160 pages while I waited for my turn. And then I read the ending to see if I had guessed right. My bad. And that’s what the inscription on the book reads. “To Marlene, a bad girl who already read the ending.”

I finished the book this morning. I couldn’t quite manage to stay up last night, but after all, I’d gotten kind of a late start.

Ghost Story is awesome. It also marks a departure in the Dresden Files universe. When I first started reading the series, somewhere around Dead Beat, Harry’s Chicago and Harry’s world was pretty recognizably the Chicago I knew. Since I had lived in Chicago for a lot of years, it was pretty cool that Harry’s Chicago was only about a half step away.

After Changes, when Harry dies, his world diverges pretty dramatically from the world we know. In a lot of urban fantasies, the mundanes (or muggles) are able to ignore the magic in the world.   But with Harry out of the picture, that seems less and less possible.  There’s just too much bad stuff going down.

It’s not just that Harry is dead. It’s that his death has sent the world spiraling downhill fast. For all his many faults, Harry was the biggest thing (sometimes literally) standing between the light and the darkness. And being large, he cast a huge shadow. A lot of bad things avoided Chicago because that was Harry’s turf. And a lot of bad things just plain hid in their holes because they didn’t want to attract Harry’s attention. But with Harry out of the picture…stuff happens. And big men leave big shoes to fill. Harry’s friends, and even his enemies, try to fill them, but it just isn’t quite enough.

Ghost Story story is not a happy book. In Changes, Harry decides he’s going to save his daughter, even if it kills him. It does. As a ghost, he has to clean up the mess he left behind. And if there is one thing Harry always, always does, it is make one hell of a mess. But this time, the battle is for his soul, and the lives of his friends. And his city. Because even as a ghost, Chicago is still Harry’s town. Last time out, he had to save his daughter, and he did. This time, he has to save everyone.

And Jim Butcher was wearing Harry’s shirt. “98% Chimpanzee.” Cool.

Life after Harry

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Uncategorized

When I say “Harry”, I mean Harry Potter, of course.  Who else could I possibly mean?

The movie poster for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?

Harry Potter fans have been in a curious kind of limbo since July 21, 2007, when the last book was released. We’ve all known how the story ends. But as long as the movies were still being released, the “illustrated” edition was, in effect, still putting out supplements. There were still some unknowns, just not very many. Now that saga, too, is complete.

There are generations yet unborn who will discover Harry for the first time, but there will never be another who will grow up exactly as he does, while he does. Even for those of us who read the series as adults, the experience of waiting for the next book, and speculating on what might happen will never be the same. All has been revealed.

The magic of Harry Potter was not in Diagon Alley, or even at Hogwarts Castle. It was in the overwhelming desire it created in both children and adults to pick up a book and READ! What comes next? Or who?

The inevitable lists have come out, suggesting books that people can turn to as alternatives. For example, Kirkus Reviews published a list of books called “For those suffering from Harry Potter withdrawal“. It’s a great idea, but I’d love to have seen more suggestions for adults suffering from Potter Withdrawal Syndrome (PWS, anyone?) and not just books for kids. And, of course, some of my favs are missing. Tamora Pierce belongs on any list for the magically inclined, either starting with Song of the Lioness or the Circle of Magic. And so does Diane Duane’s series starting with So you want to be a wizard.

Of course, Hollywood is looking for the next big blockbuster. Deathly Hallows 2 had the biggest opening weekend of any movie in history. It’s too bad they didn’t split it into three parts. Just think of all the money they could have made!

Or, if George R.R. Martin had held out for a series of movies instead of an HBO series for The Song of Ice and Fire. On second thought, that’s one saga that is better as a mini-series. Those books are huge. Condensing them to a mini-series was probably difficult enough.

However, io9‘s Facebook users have leapt into the breach and suggested a list of 10 fantasy book series that could replace Harry Potter at the movies. People were supposed to suggest series for their movie-worthiness; whether the books in question were “good” books or not is, as always, a matter of personal opinion. What was interesting about the list was that the books were not necessarily new, not necessarily popular, and not necessarily good. Having read 7 out of the 10 books listed, I’m can definitely testify to any of the above.

The number 1 listed series was Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. From 1936! These are classics. I mean, really classic. As in, Leiber not only coined the term “sword and sorcery” but Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are arguably among the foundation stories in the genre. If you’ve never had the pleasure the first book is Swords and Deviltry. Or, for a real treat, try the graphic novel version.

Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series was also listed. This is not a big surprise. The series is not just long, but it has a huge number of fans. Artemis Fowl was also mentioned, as he is frequently listed as a successor to Mr. Potter. I haven’t read him, but I have the first three books in the vast TBR pile.

The surprise of the list was Dragonlance. I had to groan. And I did read them, so I am entitled to my groan. I read the Dragonlance Chronicles on a Trans-Atlantic flight, when those were the only three books I had. I can’t sleep on airplanes. If I could have slept, believe me, I would have. Essentially, someone took a Dungeons and Dragons campaign and wrote it up into three books. The trilogy sold well enough that they managed to sell a second trilogy. That first book, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, was almost painful. But as I read it, I could see the writers learning their craft as the book progressed. By the end, it wasn’t too bad. But filming it?

I’d rather see anything else on the list. But then again, the first time I saw the trailer for Cowboys & Aliens, I thought it was either a joke or a video game. Whatever it is, it’s not a substitute for Harry Potter. Or John Wayne either, come to think of it.

 

Dreams of space

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Uncategorized

The Space Shuttle Atlantis is in the midst of her final flight. And it’s also the last scheduled manned mission of the U.S. space program. NASA’s future launches are all for satellites and rockets. Very pretty, but people’s hopes and dreams follow people, not hardware. Our hearts lift when they can ride the wings of another’s fulfilled dream, and imagine ourselves at their side, or in their place.

I’ve been re-watching Star Trek: Enterprise recently. While opinions on the series itself may vary, what still grabs me is the montage of images in the opening title sequence. If you always skipped that part, watch it again carefully. Ignore the music if you feel you must.

What gets me every time is that all of the images consist of archival footage up until the last few, when the sequence changes by showing the International Space Station as it should look when it is complete. But all the images, real and science fictional, show humankind’s relentless pursuit of what is beyond the next hill, what is on the other side of the fathomless depths of the ocean, what is out in the vast depths of space.

There are reproductions of old maps of the earth including navigational charts. A shot of Thor Heyerdahl’s raft voyage across the Pacific Ocean on the Kon-Tiki. The Wright brothers’ first successful flight at Kitty Hawk. Amelia Earhart waving “good-bye,”possibly for the final time. Charles Lindbergh next to his famous plane, The Spirit of St. Louis, which is preserved at the National Air and Space Museum. A scene of Robert Goddard, the father of modern rocketry, writing his theories on a blackboard. Chuck Yeager striding away from the experimental aircraft with which he broke the sound barrier. Pictures of a succession of historic ships which all bore the name “Enterprise”, culminating in the experimental Space Shuttle Enterprise in 1977. The crew of Apollo 11 boarding their spacecraft, and then that “one small step for mankind”. A closeup of the Mars Rover exploring. And, a shuttle crew in flight and on a spacewalk.

A friend wrote of the end of the Shuttle Program that the spirits of those who perished in the Challenger and Columbia disasters could finally rest in peace now. I firmly believe that he is wrong. Those who gave their lives in the space program, on Challenger, and Columbia, and with the first Apollo disaster at the beginning of the program, made their sacrifice so that humankind could reach further, so we could make our way into the stars. Those astronauts dreamed of space, not safety.

The quote from William Shedd still says it best. “A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.” Humankind is not made to be safe. We are made to be explorers. Why have we stopped?

 

What makes the better man?

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Uncategorized

What does it mean to be “the better man”? And which matters more, being “better” in the moral and ethical sense, or being “superior” in the evolutionary sense?

After a recent viewing of the movie X-Men: First Class, those were the questions that kept circling my mind, like the never-ending debate between Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, the future Professor X and Magneto.

We first really see Charles Xavier in the midst of World War II at age 12 in the kitchen of his family’s estate. He interrupts his mother in the kitchen in the middle of the night. Except it’s not really his mother. It’s a little girl who is capable of mimicking the outward appearance of anyone, anyone at all. She has the mutation of being a human chameleon. Her true outward appearance consists of slightly scaly blue skin, red hair and yellow eyes. She is a mutant. But Xavier is not all that astonished. He is a mutant too, but his mutation is on the inside. He can read her mind. And everyone else’s.

Erik Lehnsherr spends his war in a Concentration Camp with a number tattooed on his arm. His introduction shows him, also at a young age, being separated from his mother during the sorting process at the Camp entrance by the Nazis. In his grief and rage at the separation, young Erik uses his burgeoning power to start pulling the metal gates that separate him from his mother off their hinges until a guard knocks him out with a rifle butt. A doctor decides to bring his power to full fruition, using the most obscene lever at his command, Erik’s love for his mother. The doctor kills her in front of the boy, and the power explodes, sending all the metal objects that Erik can see into a swirling Armaggedon.

When we see them each again, it is 1962. They have all grown up. Xavier is graduating from Oxford as a Professor of Genetic Mutation. Erik is traveling to Switzerland and South America, taking his own personal revenge on the Nazis. The little blue girl Xavier found in his kitchen, well, she is still with him in Oxford, pretending to be his sister, and using her chameleon ability to pretend to be normal. And that sums up the three protagonists, one the son of privilege, one the survivor of man’s absolute inhumanity to man, and one a mutant who is ashamed of herself.

They collide in the middle of the ocean. Erik is in pursuit of the doctor who killed his mother. Xavier is in pursuit of the man who wants to start World War III. They happen to be the same mutant, now going by the name of Sebastian Shaw, backed by a small army of mutants. Shaw believes that the spontaneous rise of mutations is the result of atomic testing, and that the release of nuclear war will create more mutants, whom he will rule.

This is the central conflict between Erik and Xavier. Xavier believes that the “better man”, the morally superior man, would capture Shaw and let some higher authority judge him for his crimes. Erik just wants to kill him for the crime of murdering his mother and torturing him, whatever else the villain has done. The problem is that Shaw is a psychopath as well as a powerful mutant who can absorb any energy that is thrown at him. But primarily, he is a psychopath, and probably would have been even if he hadn’t been a mutant. Killing him is the only way to stop him from starting World War III (in the movie, Shaw was the motivating force behind the Cuban Missile Crisis). To borrow from a different science fiction universe, the needs of the many, in this case the entire human race, outweigh the needs of the few. Erik did the right thing, even if his motives were selfish.

Mutants are superior to homo sapiens in an evolutionary sense. Xavier believes that if his people do the moral thing, the better thing, that the homo sapiens will treat his people fairly and not act irrationally. In other words, not turn on them out of fear. Erik knows what it is like to be irrationally hated, he has already been there. He is certain that once their powers are revealed, humans will fear them, and will act on that fear. The story proves him correct. What is interesting is that Xavier has known this all along, he has just refused to admit it, even to himself. That is why he has hidden his talent, and why he has made his mutant friend Mystique use her chameleon talent to hide hers, to keep himself from being exposed.

In Harry Potter’s world, the wizards and witches hide from the Muggles. In Deborah Harkness’ book, A Discovery of Witches, the witches conceal their talents from the world at large as well, and for the same reason. The magical folk remember the witch burnings all too well, and do not want them to happen again. Concealment is safer.

Katherine Kurtz’ series about the magical Deryni said it best, and the words still send a chill up my spine. “The humans kill what they do not understand.”

The Beekeeper and his Apprentice

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Uncategorized

In 1914, Sherlock Holmes participated in his last official case as published by Dr. John Watson. The case, His Last Bow, took place at the eve of the First World War, and detailed the wrapping up of two years of Holmes’ infiltration into German espionage on British soil just before the Great War. At the end of the story, Holmes and Watson say goodbye, and Holmes returns to Sussex to keep bees. Mrs. Hudson even takes part in the case, going undercover as the German official’s housekeeper in order to assist Holmes.

But after the case is over, Holmes is left with nothing to do. And His Majesty’s government comes to the realization that Holmes might have been killed, or even worse, kidnapped, during the course of his work. Ransoming a national treasure like Sherlock Holmes would have been even more embarrassing than a state funeral!

So Holmes is forced into a retirement with no hope of any cases to enliven his days. In the official Canon, this was never good. He descended into black moods, played the violin at all hours of the day and night, and resorted to cocaine. Mental inactivity was always a worse enemy than any criminal mastermind.

In 1994, mystery writer Laurie R. King published the first of the memoirs that she received from Miss Mary Russell. The memoirs were delivered by UPS in an old fashioned steamer trunk wrapped in cardboard. The stories they told were incredible.

According to Miss Russell’s memoirs, in 1915, when she was 15, she quite literally tripped over Sherlock Holmes as she was walking over the Sussex Downs with her nose buried in a copy of Virgil. She was uncertain at first whether he was a tramp or just an Eccentric. During their subsequent conversation, his upper-class accent firmly placed him in the Eccentric category. But it wasn’t until she correctly deduced that he was attempting to find a group of feral bees to re-stock his hive that he realized that she might possibly have a brain. The story of their continued association, and Mary Russell’s training as Sherlock Holmes’ apprentice is told in The Beekeeper’s Apprentice.

Until now, the entire Mary Russell “Kanon” has been told from Russell’s perspective, and an absorbing one it has been. But in preparation for this fall’s release of the next book in the saga, titled The Pirate King, the story of Holmes’ and Russell’s initial meeting is finally being told from Holmes’ point of view.

Beekeeping for Beginners is Holmes’ story of that fateful meeting. It has always been clear that Holmes rescued Russell, but until now, he has never been willing to admit that she saved him. Her training gave him purpose. Her sharpness of mind sharpened his own back to its laser-like brilliance. We all need to be needed. Even the Great Detective.

I discovered The Beekeeper’s Apprentice on audio when it first came out. The premise intrigued me. I had read a chunk of the Sherlock Holmes stories, but the idea of Holmes taking on an apprentice was, well, implausible, to say the least. But Mary Russell is more than a match for Holmes, and the period is perfect. She arrives in his life after the Conan Doyle Canon is over. I was captivated and enthralled, and each new book is a delight. But with Beekeeping for Beginners, I went back and reread not just the first part of Beekeeper’s Apprentice, but also His Last Bow. to see the whole story fabric knit together. It works. From the high of his last case, to the slough of despond of total ennui that Holmes so often experienced, to the bright, sharp girl who needs training, and becomes…if you haven’t read them yet, I envy your upcoming discovery.

Some of my first loves were vampires

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Uncategorized

Edward Cullen was certainly not the first sexy vampire–if he even makes the list at all.

I still remember reading Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire for the very first time.  I was in my college dorm room.  I remember sitting there, spellbound, turning the pages, just pouring through the book from cover to cover. I think I only got up once to go to the bathroom.  I still remember Lestat, and Louis, and the child vampire Claudia, and the steamy city of New Orleans as if it was a separate player in the drama.  And the poor interviewer who was mesmerized by the whole erotic, gory, glorious mess.  Even if you think you know the story from the movie, it is nothing like reading the book for the first time.  Or again. (Never judge a book by its movie.)

Other vampires have told their tales to other interviewers.  After all, a good story always needs an audience.  Dracula wanted to tell his side of the story, to let people know the “truth”—to counter all the “propaganda” that Bram Stoker published for Van Helsing.  So, after his true love Mina had lived her full life, on the night that she was ready to rise, the Count waited out the evening with yet another poor, unsuspecting journalist with a tape recorder, pouring out the true tale of his fateful meeting with Jonathan Harker, Mina, and Dr. Van Helsing.  Fred Saberhagen’s retelling of the Count’s own story makes compelling reading in The Dracula Tape.

Saberhagen went on to relate more stories of Count Dracula’s modern day adventures in The Holmes-Dracula File and An Old Friend of the Family, as well as later books. It was a very interesting family that included Count Dracula among its “old friends”. And a story of Sherlock Holmes not just meeting, but joining forces with, Count Dracula–it is absolutely delicious. Two alpha predators at the height of their powers joining forces for the greater good.

And last, but not least, there is the mysterious vampire known as the Le Comte de Saint-Germain, who first appears in Hotel Transylvania by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and has appeared in many, many books since.  Saint-Germain rescues a woman from ruin, as he so often does, in a tale that blends history, romance, and mystery.  It is fitting that this story blends fact with the paranormal, as the fictional character of Saint-Germain was based on a true historical “worker of mysteries” who appears seemingly everywhere, in a spinoff of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, a Buffyverse comics miniseries, and more than one videogame. The Comte, like Count Dracula himself, seems to be immortal.

Good cops, strange beats

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Uncategorized

In an urban fantasy, when the detective needs to round up the “usual suspects”, those suspects can be pretty unusual. That’s actually part of the fun, seeing how close the author can hew to the traditional line of the mystery or police procedural formula and still bite the reader with that touch of the weird.

In any urban fantasy, there is a touch of alternate reality going on. History as we know it has gone down a different leg of the trousers of time (to borrow a phrase from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld) and magic works in the here and now. In urban fantasy, it’s our world, our history, our pretty much everything, except there’s this one big change–magic and magical creatures co-habit with science.  How that happened changes from one author to the next.

A lot of authors work from the theory that magic has always existed but that magic practitioners have tried to hide themselves. Remember the Salem Witch Trials? If magic does exist, that era of real history would be enough to keep any real witch (or any other unusual being, for that matter) from revealing themselves for several generations.

In Laura Anne Gilman‘s alternate New York, her world has always contained magic. Magic is current, that is, electricity. Ben Franklin wasn’t out there with that kite because he was conducting a science experiment, oh no. He was trying to control the lightning because in Gilman’s version of history, Franklin was a mage! But Gilman’s modern-day protagonist, Wren Valere, has a slightly more profitable use for her magic–she is a retrieval agent. She finds things that are lost, or missing, or stolen–and retrieves them–even if they are protected by magic. But Wren’s life is complicated by too many things: her changing relationship with her business partner, her friendship with the demon P.B., and that fact that Wren is a Lonejack, a Talent who works alone, and now the organization that keeps tabs on Talents, the Cosa, short for Cosa Nostradamus, suddenly wants to control her. The first book in Gilman’s Retrievers series is Staying Dead. Wren’s journey is worth following.

In P.N. Elrod‘s Vampire Files series, the detective is a vampire, although he keeps it a secret from everyone except his partner. Jack Fleming’s first case is to find out who turned him. Bloodlist has all the elements of a 1930’s noir detective novel except that the detective is a vampire. The moral dilemma of a vampire dealing with, and later in the series, becoming, a Chicago mobster in the 1930’s is absolutely priceless.

But my current favorite for mind-bending urban fantasy is DD Barant‘s Bloodhound Files series. So far, it’s Dying Bites, Death Blows, and Killing Rocks. The title puns are pretty typical of the gallows humor. Jace Valchek is a FBI profiler who specializes in serial killers, the really whacked-out kind. Her job is exciting enough in the first place. Then she gets whisked away to an parallel universe by the their national security administration because in their version of reality, only humans commit serial crimes, and, humans are less than 1% of the population. So what are the rest? Vampires, werewolves, golems, and pretty much every other supernatural creature that Jace only knows of in legends. But someone is murdering them, and Jace is the one expert they located who could possibly figure this out.

So Jace is stuck. Unless she finds their serial killer, she can’t go home. She might find another magic practitioner to send her to her world, but only they know exactly when they took her from. Her best chance of going back to find her old life reasonably intact is to help. And profiling serial killers is what she does.

What I enjoy about Jace’s story is her point of view. The mystery she solves in each book is fun, but I like being in her head. Her story is a “fish out of water” tale. The world she has been taken too is “almost” like hers, like ours, but not quite. She starts to adapt, and then something brings her up short. Her partner is a golem, named Charlie of all things. Charlie is a snappy dresser, and he likes to dance! But he’s made of rock. When he gets wounded, he needs a patch kit, not a medic. Her new boss is a vampire who may look like an 18-year-old surfer dude, but is actually hundreds of years old. In every encounter with the bad guys, she is reminded that she is part of an endangered species. Humans are called O.R.–that’s short for “Original Recipe”, and the name is derived from KFC. Like Jace, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at that revelation. See what you think.

If you just want a sample of some weird detecting? There is an urban fantasy anthology titled, you guessed it, Unusual Suspects.

 

Real person fiction

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Real person fiction, otherwise known as RPF, is a term used in fanfiction to describe a story that uses the actors playing the characters in a TV show or movie rather than the characters themselves. And what is fanfiction, you ask? Fanfiction is when someone writes an alternative version of something they watch, read, or play and posts it somewhere that is fanfiction friendly like fanfiction.net or livejournal.com. There are also sites dedicated to specific interests. The number of sites devoted to Harry Potter is positively legion. Fanfiction is very definitely a violation of copyright, but, since no one makes any money off of it, most writers allow it.

But RPF is a breed all its own, and a lot of sites won’t touch it. There is a very big difference between imagining any kind of behavior one cares to between fictional characters, and applying that same imagination to real people–the tabloid papers at the grocery counter notwithstanding.

However, there is a growing trend in mystery writing of using real people as amateur sleuths. An amazing number of historic figures have been pressed into service in recent years, solving a surprising variety of dastardly deeds that history did not record.

One of my favorite books is The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey. It is a police procedural and a historic mystery, wrapped in a single package. In the police procedural framing story, Tey has her police detective laid up in hospital with a compound fracture. While he is unable to investigate real murders, and is bored out of his mind, he is forced by inactivity to find another occupation. Because the story was written in the 1930’s, her detective does not have the option of surfing the net, or even TV as mind candy, even if he were inclined to mind candy. A book someone brings him causes him to latch onto the idea of investigating the historic mystery of the Princes in the Tower–Edward V and his brother Richard, Duke of York, who disappeared sometime after 1483.  Shakespeare’s play, Richard III, has pinned the crime of the Princes’ murder on their uncle and successor, Richard. Tey’s detective makes a different case.

Reading The Daughter of Time in my early teens gave me a lifelong interest in British history. The title is based on an old adage, “Truth is the daughter of time”. Whether Tey’s conclusion is the truth, no one knows. The topic is one that has been debated for over five centuries now, and Richard as the murderer has been fixed in the popular imagination. Although bodies purported to be the Princes were found in 1674 and possibly 1789, forensic testing has not been performed to date.

Imagine my surprise to discover that Tey herself had been “borrowed” as a fictional detective! Nicola Upson has begun a series of mystery novels using Josephine Tey as the center of a series of murders based in Tey’s real life as playwright Gordon Daviot. Ironically, both Tey and Daviot were pseudonyms, her real name was Elizabeth Mackintosh.

The first novel in the series, An Expert in Murder, revolves around the end of production of the play Richard of Bordeux in 1934. The play was Tey/Daviot’s most popular work, and was the theatrical event of its time. Many of the real participants left detailed memoirs of the period and their friendship with Tey (Sir John Gielgud, for example) and Upson’s portrait of the theatrical world in the 1930’s is fascinating. One does hope that not quite so many dead bodies turned up as in this mystery.

There are two more books in this series so far, Angel with Two Faces and Two for Sorrow. I plan to read both ASAP. But as much as I’m enjoying this series, there is something very ironic in this. Tey was, by all accounts, including Upson’s own, an extremely private individual. Making Tey the leading character in a mystery series is probably something she would have shied away from or made one of the suitably biting comments for which she was apparently famous. Too bad she can’t write this play, or novel, herself.

 

Holmes is everywhere

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Every generation reinvents Sherlock Holmes to suit itself.  The current revision, Sherlock, was created by the same team that is also at the helm of Doctor Who. This is totally appropriate, as Sherlock beat Doctor Who for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for Best Drama Series. The announcement was made yesterday, on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s birthday. Watson would have been pleased, especially since the actor who plays Watson also won for Best Supporting Actor.

Sherlock is either a reboot or an update of the Holmes canon. The premise updates Holmes into the 21st century, complete with cellphones, GPS, non-smoking restaurants, competition from modern forensics, and modern psychiatric diagnosis of Holmes’ quirks. Sherlock knows he is a high-functioning sociopath. This doesn’t stop him from solving crimes that the police can’t. Watson is still a police surgeon invalided out from the Afghan war.  It’s the same unwinnable war. Some things do not change.

I was astonished at how well this premise worked. It’s not the canonical Holmes, and yet it is. We forget that when Conan Doyle wrote Holmes originally, they were contemporaneous. Holmes was a creature of his times. It’s only to us that they are historical because the Victorian period is one that turned out to be a memorable epoch. And, ironically, part of the reason that the Victorian period is memorable is probably due to Holmes.

I also watched the Robert Downey Jr. /Guy Ritchie version of Sherlock Holmes not too long ago.  Once the main plot finally got going, I enjoyed the movie, and it was great steampunk, but…Downey just isn’t my Sherlock Holmes. The late Jeremy Brett still matches the portrait I see in my head when I think of Holmes, more or less.  But the “great detective” has lent himself to a multitude of portrayals over the years since Conan Doyle first published Watson’s stories, and every character in the canon has been given his, or her, due.

The original versions of the Sherlock Holmes canon remain cracking good stories, which is one reason why they have continued to be read and re-interpreted to this day.  But the fun is in the re-imaginings.  TV’s updated Sherlock is just the latest in a very distinguished line.

The resemblances between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Gregory House on House M.D. have been commented on too many times to be repeated. The creator of House has admitted that the show is an homage to Holmes in a number of ways.  Holmes=Homes=House just for starters.  There were even two episodes of Star Trek, the Next Generation where Data portrayed Sherlock Holmes on the holodeck.

Authors have continued to push the “world’s first consulting detective” into cases that his original biographer did not pursue.  One case in point, Holmes and Jack the Ripper, were, or would have been, contemporaries.  Had Holmes existed, Scotland Yard would surely have called him in to investigate such a notorious and inflammatory series of murders.  In Dust and Shadow, by Lyndsay Faye, Holmes is both a suspect and an investigator into the Ripper killings, as Watson follows his friend into horror.

On the other hand, if you prefer villains as heroes, Michael Kurland has written a series where Holmes is a bumbling, drug-addled idiot, and Professor Moriarty is the actual hero of the piece.  The Great Game concerns the “Great Game” of European politics in end of the century—the 19th century, that is—Europe, as the great powers tried to stave off, or speed up, the advent of the “Great War” that we know as World War I.

Holmes has featured in other worlds, particularly in the recent collection The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which includes the award winning story by Neil Gaiman, “A Study in Emerald”, where Holmes and Moriarty join forces in a parallel universe in which the Cthulhu Mythos of Lovecraftian invention has taken over Victorian England.  Very improbable indeed!

Last, but absolutely not least, the series which contains the answer to the question, “What did Holmes do after he retired to keep bees in Sussex?”  His last recorded case (His Last Bow) takes place in August, 1914.  And then?  According to Laurie R. King, in The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, he kept bees, took way too much of his 7% solution of cocaine, and was slowly killing himself in boredom.  One afternoon in 1915 a fifteen-year-old girl tripped over him on the Sussex Downs with her nose buried in a copy of Virgil.  And the second act of his life began.

Heading towards darkness

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Uncategorized

Things are always darkest…just before they turn completely black.  And that is how urban fantasy series tend to go, at least based on recent reading.

I just finished the latest Sookie Stackhouse book, Dead Reckoning, from Charlaine Harris.  And, I also just read the story Aftermath (from the Dresden Files anthology Side Jobs by Jim Butcher) that takes place a couple of hours after Changes.  And neither story is exactly what anyone would call lighthearted.

Urban fantasy has a pretty shady premise to begin with.  The myths and legends, the darkness under the stairs, the things that go bump in the night, are real.  Magic works.  But it’s not just Glinda the Good Witch who is alive and well, it’s also the troll under the bridge.   And there are more trolls under more bridges than good witches–or good wizards.

Sookie, in her very first outing, Dead until Dark, was a fresh voice.  Her point of view was frequently laugh-out-loud funny, even when she was laughing at herself.  But Sookie’s world started out very small, because the book, and the series, is about Sookie’s journey.  When she meets Vampire Bill, she discovers the world beyond Bon Temps, LA, and more important, it discovers her.  Her ability to read minds is a prize, a talent that can be used, and as she explores the greater world, she learns that it is a very dark and dangerous place.  She finds love, loses it, and finds it again.  And looks to be losing it again.  She learns that there are more dangerous things out there than she every imagined, and that she is becoming one of them.

Harry Dresden has always been the only wizard listed in the Chicago phone directory.  In Storm Front, the first book of the series, Dresden operates mostly as a private investigator, barely making enough money to scrape by.  In fact, he never seems to do much better than scrape by.  But he becomes much more than just a paranormal private investigator.  As the series progresses, Harry becomes more and more involved in both wizard politics and mob shenanigans in Chicago, as well as having issues with the Summer and Winter courts of the Fae.  As his power grows, so do the numbers and strength of his enemies.  In Changes, the latest book in the series, every enemy of Harry’s comes to get him, and every part of Harry’s life alters, seemingly not for the better.  The short story Aftermath, the last piece at the end of the Dresden Files collection Side Jobs, is seen from Karrin Murphy’s grief stricken point of view as she attempts to pick up the pieces of Harry’s supernatural gate-keeping in the wake of his apparent death.

There are similarities between the two series.  Both are told from the first person point of view.  When you read, you are in either Sookie’s or Harry’s headspace, seeing what they see, hearing what they hear, knowing what they think, but not knowing what anyone else thinks.  They have to be likeable characters, or it’s not possible to stick with the series.  Sookie laughs at herself and her telepathic ability, Harry has a fine line in sarcasm.  It makes both their internal voices extremely funny, even if under some circumstances it’s gallows humor, sometimes literally.  Urban fantasy is a second-cousin to horror–there is a lot of death to deal with, and sometimes Sookie or especially Harry are its instrument.

They both regularly consort with vampires.  Two of Sookie’s lovers are vampires, as is Harry’s brother.  Vampire politics are always… complicated.  Something about living for hundreds of years seems to demand convolution in political relationships.  But long term series have to progress in some way, or get stale.  When it’s a cozy mystery in a small town, although it is nice to find out what all your favorite characters have been up to, one does start to wonder if the dead bodies are starting to outnumber the living!

In an urban fantasy, the hero or heroine is usually in the process of either discovering their power or discovering the true strangeness of the world around them.  As the world gets stranger, then what?  In Sookie’s case, things get more dangerous.  She gets deeper into the netherworld of vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, fae.  The more she learns, the darker the books get.  Dead Reckoning does not have a happy ending.  Or, to use a different metaphor, eating the apple from the Tree of Knowledge caused the exit from Eden, not the entrance.

The more Harry develops his power, the more dangerous he becomes.  In order for him to be challenged, his enemies must also become more deadly.  This does not a happy ending make.  The upcoming book in the series is titled Ghost Story, and it looks a LOT like Harry is the titular ghost.

Yet another book to be read with the lights on.  I can hardly wait!