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SHERLOCK HOLMES AND SCIENCE FICTION, by Amy H. Sturgis

Detective fiction and science fiction are siblings of a sort. Both are descended from the Enlightenment’s faith in a systematic, comprehensible universe. They even share a parent. Edgar Allan Poe not only created fiction’s first detective of note, C. August Dupin, in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1841), and “The Purloined Letter” (1844), but he also served as a key voice in early science fiction. A quick glance at the table of contents of Harold Beaver’s edited collection The Science Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe (1976) reveals stories dealing with mesmerism, galvanism, resurrection, and even time travel, among other concepts, following the trail blazed by Mary Shelley and anticipating Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and other stars in the science fiction constellation. These authors posed the question of “what if?” and extrapolated from contemporary scientific knowledge to offer imaginative answers spiced with the flavor of plausibility.

Despite the close relationship of the genres, it’s a rare character who moves back and forth comfortably between the two. Sherlock Holmes, however, has made a lasting home in both the detective and science fiction literary worlds. Understanding why Holmes has appealed to science fiction audiences and how he has been incorporated into the science fiction canon yields useful insights into the Great Detective’s lasting popularity.

Conan Doyle, Holmes, and the Science Fiction Sensibility

During his forty-five years as a writer, Arthur Conan Doyle published works in a wide variety of genres, non-fiction and fiction, from historical romance to contemporary politics. It is worth noting that before, while, and after achieving fame with the Sherlock Holmes novels and stories, Conan Doyle also wrote science fiction. There is no one “science fiction moment” in his career; on the contrary, he maintained a life-long involvement with the genre.

For example, the publication of his “The Great Keinplatz Experiment” (1885), a tale about personality exchange, predated the introduction of Holmes in A Study in Scarlet by two years. After A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four, and in the same year as the debut of the first collection of Holmesian short stories, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), Conan Doyle published both “The Los Amigos Fiasco” and The Doings of Raffles Haw. The former tells the story of how a condemned criminal gains superpowers when subjected to an experimental electric chair; the latter explores a chemist’s transformation into an alchemist who discovers the secret of transmuting lead into gold.

Two years later, his novel of telepathic vampirism, The Parasite, followed. In 1910, well into the phenomenal success of his Sherlock Holmes works, Conan Doyle published “The Terror of Blue John Gap,” a short story about a monstrous creature who lives underground. Two years after the release of the final Sherlock Holmes stories came The Maracot Deep (1929), Conan Doyle’s novel of the discovery of Atlantis by a deep-sea scientific expedition. This list is hardly exhaustive. Over the decades Conan Doyle also produced a number of other stories that could be considered to have science fiction elements, as well.

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Perhaps his greatest achievement in the genre remains his works centered on the scientific jack-of-all-trades known as Professor Challenger. Just as Conan Doyle drew on his own real-life mentor Joseph Bell to create Sherlock Holmes, he modeled George Edward Challenger on another figure he knew from the University of Edinburgh: Professor of Physiology William Rutherford. Between 1912 and 1929, Conan Doyle published three novels (The Lost World, The Poison Belt, and The Land of Mist) and two short stories (“When the World Screamed” and “The Disintegration Machine”) in the series, pitting the larger-than-life Challenger against such forces as dinosaurs surviving on a remote plateau in South America, a poisonous band of ether fated to intercept the Earth, and a brilliant technological invention with the potential to become a most dangerous weapon. The Challenger stories remain popular—and the inspiration for various pastiches—today.

Sherlock Holmes and the Science Fiction Sensibility

Given Conan Doyle’s relationship to the genre, it should come as little surprise that the four novels and fifty-six short stories that comprise his Sherlock Holmes canon are infused with a “science fiction sensibility.” Consider, for example, how John Watson initially hears of Sherlock Holmes from Stamford in the first Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet. Stamford describes Holmes as “a little too scientific for my tastes—it approaches to cold-bloodedness.” Stamford goes on to characterize the man as the sort who might, “out of a spirit of inquiry,” use his friend—or, for that matter, himself—as a test subject for experimentation, due to his “passion for definite and exact knowledge.”

When Watson first encounters Holmes in person, in the chemical laboratory of St. Bart’s Hospital, he describes the scene in this way:

Broad, low tables were scattered about, which bristled with retorts, test-tubes, and little Bunsen lamps, with their blue flickering flames. There was only one student in the room, who was bending over a distant table absorbed in his work. At the sound of our steps he glanced round and sprang to his feet with a cry of pleasure. “I’ve found it! I’ve found it,” he shouted to my companion, running towards us with a test-tube in his hand. “I have found a reagent which is precipitated by hæomoglobin, and by nothing else.” Had he discovered a gold mine, greater delight could not have shone upon his features.

In short, the reader’s introductions to Holmes represent him with the single-minded zeal of a scientist in the familiar setting of a scientist. He is portrayed as a cerebral hero, one whose goal is not to conquer a land, win a girl, or defeat a villain, but rather to know. And, as the reader discovers along with Watson, Holmes employs his own disciplined method with exact precision in order to achieve this goal. His drive to understand, to solve the mysteries of the universe through methodical rationality, reveals Holmes as a distinctly science fictional protagonist.

Others agree. For instance, E.J. Wagner, whose book The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear, the Real Forensics Behind the Great Detective’s Greatest Cases recounts how Holmes influenced generations of forensic scientists in the same way that Star Trek later influenced physicists and engineers, says, “Sherlock Holmes may have been fictional, but what we learn from him is very real. He tells us that science provides not simplistic answers but a rigorous method of formulating questions that may lead to answers. The figure of Holmes stands for human reason, tempered with a gift for friendship.”

Ryan Britt, in “Sherlock Holmes and the Science Fiction of Deduction,” published in the science fiction publication Clarkesworld Magazine, seems to concur: “Essentially, Holmes believes any mystery can be approached, and a solution deduced, scientifically, by gathering necessary data, and drawing conclusions based on logic and reason. In the Doyle stories, the science of deduction usually always works, and serves as the basic premise for every single Holmes adventure. Like a science fiction writer, Doyle seemed to start with the premise of ‘what if?’.”

If the Holmes canon as a whole represents a science fiction sensibility, specific stories within the series qualify as science fiction proper. The most obvious, perhaps, is the 1923 short story “The Adventure of the Creeping Man.” In this tale, an aging professor attempts to rejuvenate himself for his young bride by taking a drug derived from the langur monkeys of the Himalayas. Of course he does not realize that this concoction will alter both his body and mind, devolving him into a sinister, threatening figure. The flavor of the tale invites comparisons with other classic science fiction works such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and H.G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896).

Arguably an even better example from the Holmes canon is 1910’s “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot.” Holmes hypothesizes that the victims went mad and/or died from inhaling the powdered root of an African plant that, once heated, vaporizes and carries on the air. He tests the hypothesis on himself—so successfully that Watson must save him, in what is one of the duo’s most harrowing moments. Conan Doyle created the fictional plant at the heart of the mystery, but he presents it as plausible fact, going so far as to offer its scientific name (radix pedis diabolic, or “devil’s-foot root” in Latin) for the sake of realism. Holmes builds and tests his theory of the crime like a proper scientist. As the genre legend Isaac Asimov admits in his introduction to Sherlock Holmes Through Time and Space, “The Devil’s Foot” is not merely a compelling mystery, it is also “very good science fiction.”

Since the Sherlock Holmes canon as a whole displays a science fiction sensibility, and some Holmes stories in particular are clearly works of science fiction, it is unsurprising that science fiction authors who came after Conan Doyle have chosen to use Sherlock Holmes in their own genre writings.

Sherlock Holmes in Science Fiction Literature

During his lifetime, Conan Doyle opened Sherlock Holmes’s universe to other creative minds. In an often-quoted telegram to U.S. actor and playwright William Gillette, he said this of his most famous character: “You may marry him or murder him or do whatever you like with him.” Friends such as J.M. Barrie (of Peter Pan fame) wrote Holmesian stories for Conan Doyle’s amusement. In the decades following Conan Doyle’s death, the Holmes pastiche has become a popular phenomenon of its own. Within this tradition, a number of subgenres have developed, from Sherlock Holmes-meets-Jack the Ripper tales to romance stories in which Holmes finds true love.

One of the more popular of these subgenres often walks the borderline of science fiction. Stories in which Holmes encounters vampires may lean toward fantasy or science fiction, depending on how the vampirism itself is explained. What is certain is that some of those who have contributed to this Holmes-vampire subgenre are writers who have made their professional names in science fiction. For example, Fred Saberhagen, most famous among science fiction readers for his Berserker saga, also penned a series about Dracula comprised of ten novels and two short stories; The Holmes-Dracula File (1978) and Séance for a Vampire (1994), in particular, are noteworthy as Holmes pastiches. Best known for his Chronicles of Amber novels, Robert Zelazny combined Sherlock Holmes with Count Dracula and a host of other Victorian heroes and villains for A Night in the Lonesome October (1993), which was nominated for science fiction’s prestigious Nebula Award.

A host of other writers have devised strategies for drawing Holmes into works that are undeniably science fiction. These may be divided into three loose categories: tales that fold Holmes into preexisting science fiction stories; tales that pair Holmes with various science fiction-related individuals, either fictional or historical; and tales that allow Holmes to travel in time or have other science fictional adventures. Discussing all such publications thoroughly would require a book-length study, but a few representative works may illustrate each of these approaches.

Pairing Holmes with Science Fiction-Related Characters Including Holmes in Preexisting Science Fiction Stories

One trend in Holmes pastiches is that of retelling a well-known science fiction story, or offering a sequel to one, and including Holmes as a central character. For instance, the father-son writing team of Manly Wade Wellman and Wade Wellman published Sherlock Holmes’s War of the Worlds in 1975. This novel—a collection of several short stories, more accurately, beginning with “The Adventure of the Martian Client,” which first appeared in The Magazine Of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1969—serves as a sequel to H.G. Wells’s 1898 science fiction classic The War of the Worlds. It follows Holmes and Watson (as well as Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger) as they experience the Martian invasion of London. Titan Books released a new version in 2009 as The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The War of the Worlds.

Loren Estleman provides another example with his 1969 novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes, which details how Holmes, at the Queen’s request, investigates the murder of Sir Danvers Carew. Holmes thus is drawn into the world of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 science fiction novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. (This, too, was rereleased by Titan Books in 2011.) The formula continues to be popular; Guy Adams’s 2012 work Sherlock Holmes: The Army of Doctor Moreau builds upon The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells (1896), enabling Holmes and Watson to discover the chilling experiments conducted by Wells’s brilliant-but-mad physiologist.

Pairing Holmes with Science Fiction-Related Characters

A second kind of story pairs Holmes with characters, either historical or literary, who are associated with traditional science fiction. Take, for example, The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls (2008) by John R. King. This novel picks up where Conan Doyle’s Holmes story “The Final Problem” ends, at the bottom of Reichenbach Falls, adding a new element: Thomas Carnacki. Carnacki, known as the “Ghost Finder,” starred in multiple short stories by William Hope Hodgson from 1910-1948. One of science fiction’s earliest “paranormal investigators,” Carnacki utilized both contemporary technology (such as photography) and imaginary technology (such as his beloved “electric pentacle”) when on a case. King employs Carnacki to save Holmes and then team up with the Great Detective against Professor Moriarty in an adventure with decidedly supernatural overtones.

Similarly, Barbara Roden pairs Holmes with another classic genre character in her short story “The Things That Shall Come Upon Them” (first published in Gaslight Grimoire in 2008). Created by Hesketh V. Hesketh-Prichard (a friend of Conan Doyle’s) and his mother Kate, writing as E. and H. Heron, Flaxman Low was science fiction’s first “psychic detective.” Stories featuring Low appeared in Pearson’s Magazine and, in 1899, were published together in the collection The Experiences of Flaxman Low. In her tale, Roden contrasts Holmes’s and Low’s quite different approaches to solving mysteries when she assigns both detectives the task of investigating the home of Julian Karswell from M.R. James’s “Casting the Runes” (1911).

This approach also remains popular. In 2012, Howard Hopkins edited Sherlock Holmes: The Crossovers Casebook, offering stories that pair Holmes with a number of historical and literary characters, including Conan Doyle’s own science fiction star, Professor Challenger.

Allowing Holmes to Do Science Fictional Things

Other authors give Holmes science fiction-related adventures. For instance, David Dvorkin in Time for Sherlock Holmes (1983) posits a Holmes who has discovered the secret to immortality thanks to his bees and a Moriarty who has stolen H.G. Wells’s time machine. As Moriarty travels into the future to assassinate world leaders and create chaos, the deathless Holmes (along with equally immortal John Watson and Mycroft Holmes) is there to meet him. Their conflict extends not only into future centuries, but into space itself as humankind explores the universe and colonizes the planets.

Nebula and Hugo Award winner Vonda N. McIntyre offers a more Earth-bound tale in her short story “The Adventure of the Field Theorems” (first published in Sherlock Holmes in Orbit in 1995). In fact, this narrative hits very close to home, as it has Arthur Conan Doyle himself consider the mystery of crop circles along with Holmes and Watson. Scientist Stephanie Osborn brings Holmes into the present day through her ongoing “Displaced Detective” series (including The Arrival and At Speed in 2011 and The Rendlesham Incident in 2012). In these novels, a modern-day female physicist discovers the alternate reality in which Holmes is doomed to die at Reichenbach Falls, rescues the detective, and brings him into our universe to share her high-tech adventures.

Several collections of Holmesian science fiction showcase how noted genre authors use Holmes in their works. Among the best of these are Sherlock Holmes through Time and Space (1984), edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin Greenberg, and Charles Waugh; Sherlock in Orbit (1995), edited by Mike Resnick and Martin Greenberg; and The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (2009), edited by John Joseph Adams.

Sherlock Holmes in the World(s) of H.P. Lovecraft

Writers and readers of Holmesian science fiction seem to agree that the Great Detective appears especially at home in the universe of one author in particular: H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraftian Holmes pastiches—or is that Holmesian Lovecraft pastiches?—form an impressive literary presence of their own.

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Why H.P. Lovecraft?

H.P. Lovecraft was a U.S. author of so-called “weird fiction” whose writings are recognized today as formative works in the development of contemporary science fiction, fantasy, and horror. He is perhaps best remembered as the father of the “Cthulhu Mythos,” a shared universe of stories to which many writers contributed, inspired by the premise of Lovecraft’s 1928 story “The Call of Cthulhu” and his related writings. “The Call of Cthulhu” suggests that alien creatures once ruled the Earth and in the future will awaken from their current slumber to reclaim their dominion. The insignificance of humanity on this indifferent cosmic stage threatens the sanity and lives of those people who are sensitive enough to perceive it.

At first blush, the otherworldliness of Lovecraft’s vision might not seem a fitting subject for Holmes’s skeptical attention. As Holmes himself says in “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire” (1924), “This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us.” No Great Old Ones from outer space, one might say, need apply.

There are, however, excellent reasons why so many authors have felt compelled to invite Holmes into Lovecraft’s world(s). For one thing, the setting fits. Conan Doyle and Lovecraft were contemporaries; Lovecraft outlived Conan Doyle only by seven years. Lovecraft was an enthusiastic Anglophile, as well, and fancied himself a Victorian gentleman by nature, if not in circumstance. Thus Lovecraft’s writings reflect a certain flavor, a mood created by gaslight and shadows and veiled peril, that complements the tone of the Holmes canon well.

The message of both the Holmes stories and Lovecraft’s work also agrees in principle: the universe is knowable. Conan Doyle’s Holmes reaches his conclusions via the science of deduction. Lovecraft likewise constructed the body of his tales on the skeleton of the hard sciences. A serious study of astronomy, in particular, informed his mechanistic materialist views and led to the cosmic outlook of his fiction. The two authors drew different lessons from the comprehensibility of the world around them, however. The universe is knowable, Conan Doyle seems to tell readers, and is that not reassuring? We may find order in the apparent confusion. On the other hand, Lovecraft implies that the universe is knowable… but understanding it might drive one mad. (It bears repeating that Lovecraft’s protagonists are often sensitive, thoughtful, curious scholars and researchers and investigators, all of whom suffer from the desire to know—not unlike Sherlock Holmes himself.)

Many readers see the appeal in bringing Conan Doyle’s and Lovecraft’s conclusions to bear on one another. In other words, blending their universes offers the chance to “shake up” the unflappable Sherlock Holmes at last, and/or the opportunity to bring a calming reason to Lovecraft’s bleak and terrifying nightmares. Furthermore, as Lovecraft’s stories are far more popular today than they were during his lifetime, especially within science fiction circles, writers who wish to write a Holmesian story feel comfortable in invoking Lovecraft’s mythos, knowing they are safe in assuming some knowledge and familiarity on the part of readers.

Exemplar Works

One example of a key Holmesian-Lovecraftian work is P.H. Cannon’s Pulptime: Being a Singular Adventure of Sherlock Holmes, H.P. Lovecraft, and the Kalem Club, as if narrated by Frank Belknap Long, Jr (1984). This mystery involves Lovecraft himself as a character, as well as his writer friends who formed the “Kalem Club” (including award-winning author Frank Belknap Long), and Harry Houdini. Added to this blending of historical figures is the Great Detective himself: elderly, but instantly recognizable.

2003’s Shadows Over Baker Street: New Tales of Terror!, edited by Michael Reeves and John Pelan, draws attention to this phenomenon by collecting some of the most compelling short stories that place Holmes in Lovecraft’s universe. Science fiction and detective fiction author Barbara Hambly in “The Adventure of the Antiquarian’s Niece,” for instance, pairs Holmes and Watson with Carnacki the Ghost Finder to traverse the landscape of several of Lovecraft’s stories, most notably “The Dunwich Horror” (1929) and “The Rats in the Walls” (1924).

Perhaps the single most famous Holmes-Lovecraft mashup also appears in Shadows Over Baker Street; it is Neil Gaiman’s “A Study in Emerald,” which won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story and the Locus Award for Best Novelette, both science fiction honors. This piece relocates Conan Doyle’s “A Study in Scarlet” to the darker world of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu tales.

The formula continues to yield new works. Christian Klaver’s The Adventure of the Innsmouth Whaler (2010), for example, puts Holmes and Watson on a case directly related to Lovecraft’s story “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” (1931). It is not uncommon to see Lovecraft-inspired works in the pages of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine; the two lead stories in the June 2012 issue of The Lovecraft eZine are Sherlock Holmes stories.

The pairing even has leapt beyond fiction. The adventure game Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, developed by Frogwares for Microsoft Windows in 2006, follows Holmes and Watson as they investigate mysterious disappearances linked to the Cthulhu universe. After drawing a worldwide audience (and winning GameSpot’s “Best Use of a License” Award in 2007), a remastered version appeared in 2008. It earned not only popularity, but a rating of M (Mature 17+)—the first Holmes-related game to do so.

Sherlock Holmes and Other Science Fiction Media

Sherlock Holmes has made himself as comfortable in other forms of science fiction media as he has in novels and short stories. A thorough review of his appearances demands a separate study, but a quick overview proves the point.

Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who

The world’s longest-running science fiction television series, the BBC’s Doctor Who (1963-present), has spawned several tie-in publications that feature Holmes. Andy Lane’s novel All-Consuming Fire (1994) teams Holmes and Watson with the Seventh Doctor against Azathoth (one of the figures from Lovecraft’s mythos). Two years later, in Paul Cornell’s novel Happy Endings, Holmes and Watson are brought forward in time to attend the wedding of the Seventh Doctor’s companion, Bernice “Benny” Summerfield, to Jason Kane. One of the novels in the Faction Paradox series, itself a spin-off to Doctor Who, is Kelly Hale’s 1994 Erasing Sherlock, in which a doctoral candidate goes back in time, posing as a housemaid in 221B Baker Street in order to study the young consulting detective.

Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek

Holmes’s presence in “the final frontier” is, thanks to Nicholas Meyer, Star Trek canon. Holmes fans know Meyer first and foremost as the author of three pastiche novels, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1974, which was adapted to film in 1976, with Meyer’s screenplay), The West End Horror (1976), and The Canary Trainer (1993). Star Trek audiences know him an uncredited co-writer for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), a credited co-writer for Star Trek IV: The Journey Home (1986), and the co-writer and director of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991).

The parallels between the rational Holmes and Star Trek’s logical science officer, Mr. Spock, became a running theme in Star Trek fan discussions and fan works almost from the first appearance of Trek on U.S. television in 1966. The fact that actor Leonard Nimoy, who brought Spock to life, also portrayed Sherlock Holmes in the documentary short Sherlock Holmes: Interior Motive (1975), and again in the 1975-1976 Royal Shakespeare Company’s U.S. production of William Gillette’s play Sherlock Holmes, invited further comparisons. As Nicholas Meyer told Ryan Britt (as cited in “Sherlock Holmes and the Science Fiction of Deduction”), “The link between Spock and Holmes was obvious to everyone. I just sort of made it official.”

Meyer made it official in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. During a scene in which Spock puts forth his own deductions, he quotes directly from Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” (1892) and credits Holmes as a forefather: “As an ancestor of mine once said, ‘Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”

Star Trek: The Next Generation paid homage to both Holmes and the Holmes-Spock (and, by implication, Spock-Data) by having the android Data develop a taste for Holmesian roleplaying. Complete with deerstalker and pipe, Data faces off against a holographic version of Professor Moriarty in the episodes “Elementary, My Dear Data” (1988) and “Ship in a Bottle” (1993).

Sherlock Holmes and Other Television

Holmes has starred in other science fiction television fare, as well. For example, the made-for-television CBS movie The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1987) features Watson’s present-day descendant Jane discovering a cryogenically frozen Holmes and reviving him. Perhaps the best example of the science fictional “updating” of the Holmes canon stories is the 1999-2001 animated series Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, a co–production by DiC and Scottish Television. Each episode revisits classic adventures, with a twist: the year is 2104. Sherlock Holmes, frozen for years, has thawed and returned to his detective work, joined by a robotic Watson and a descendant of Inspector Lestrade. Professor Moriarty is represented in this future by one of his clones.

The BBC’s Sherlock

The most faithful and sophisticated reimagining of Holmes at present, and arguably one of the best adaptations of the Holmes canon at any time, the BBC’s Sherlock (2010-present) displays a keen science fiction sensibility. This is to be expected, considering that co-creator Steven Moffat is also the head writer and executive producer of Doctor Who, and co-creator Mark Gatiss has written for and guest starred in Doctor Who, adapted for television and starred in H.G. Wells’s The First Men in the Moon (2010), and performed in the live television remake of the science fiction classic The Quatermass Experiment (2005), among other genre-related accomplishments.

Although the series has displayed many science fictional characteristics since its debut (thoroughly exploring and exploiting contemporary technology, from blogs to mobile phones to government surveillance equipment), the second-series episodes “The Hounds of Baskerville” and “The Reichenbach Fall” (2012) qualify as science fiction proper. The former updates the Gothic fear of a spectral hound, recasting it in terms of conspiracy theories surrounding genetic experimentation at the Baskerville military research base to create a “luminous” super attack dog. Sherlock, John, and Lestrade uncover a conspiracy regarding “H.O.U.N.D.,” a secret government project designed to create a chemical weapon that triggers violent hallucinations in those exposed to it. The latter episode finds Jim Moriarty with a computer code capable of overriding any and all security systems, which he demonstrates by simultaneously opening the vault at the Bank of England, unlocking the cells at Pentonville Prison, and breaking into the display case containing the Crown Jewels.

The third series of the program, currently scheduled for filming in 2013, likely will continue to illustrate the affinity between the Holmes canon and science fiction.

Sherlock and Science Fiction

In Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901-1902), Sherlock Holmes notes, “We balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination.” This is an elegant description of what Conan Doyle did, and what creators today continue to do, with Holmes. It is also an excellent characterization of the endeavor of science fiction itself: “the scientific use of the imagination.” As today’s world continues to blur the lines between science fiction and science fact, the Great Detective will remain as relevant and meaningful as ever, incorporated into the genre, figuratively and sometimes literally immortal.

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Amy H. Sturgis earned her Ph.D. in intellectual history from Vanderbilt University and is scholar of science fiction/fantasy studies and Native American studies, the author of four books and editor of six others. Her official website is amyhsturgis.com. This essay is based on a live lecture presented in February 2012 and sponsored by the Hugo Award-winning podcast StarShipSofa.