The Maniac Collector's Inbox
No. 447, December 26, 2010

Christmas 2010
By Don Hobbs

On Christmas mornings, I admit that in the back of my head, I am always a little disappointed. My disappointment is strictly of my own manufacturing. It is selfish of me but I always hope, deep down, that I will get some fabulous Sherlockian present that will be the envy of the Holmesian world. My disappointment comes from rarely getting any Sherlockian presents. My children always lament that I have everything. See, that generation gap works in both directions. I do not know them and in turn, they do not know me.

This was not this situation this Christmas. Joyce’s son Christopher gave me a copy of The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. This book, edited by John Joseph Adams, is a collection of pastiches. Some of the stories are new and others been previously published in other collections. I did not own this book. There was a time when I bought every pastiche published. I was also writing MiniReviews on everyone one I read for The Holmes and Watson Report. Still, it was nice to get a Sherlockian book for Christmas and even better getting one that was new to my library.

The next Sherlockian surprise came from my wife Joyce. One of her presents to me was a set of blank, note cards titled “Great Moments in Literature” and not only is our hero one of the cards, his image is on the box cover. The subtitle for the set is {famous lit in stick} and that is just what each of the four different cards are, stick figures. Each card measures 3 ½" x 5” and features the artwork of Jeffery Metzner. There are four cards each for Peter Pan, Gulliver’s Travels, The Three Musketeers, and The Hound of the Baskervilles. If anyone is interested in getting a set, contact me through the mailbox at SherlockPeoria.

Therefore, this year’s Christmas was turning in to one of the better Sherlockian ones in recent memory. I had a little down time and during one of the lulls, I snuck upstairs. For some random reason, I decided to search the Internet for ‘Oriya Sherlock’ and received quite the shock.  I found a translation of “The Red-Headed League” in Mando’a (Te Ge’tal-Headed League)! I had never heard of Mando’a. It turns out that it is a language created by Karen Traviss and it is from the Star Wars Universe. This translation truly adds the Galactic to The Galactic Sherlock Holmes. This is the eighty-ninth language that has a translation of the Canon. Ironically, I have tried for more than a decade to get the Klingnon Language Institute interested in sponsoring a Canonical translation without success. Looks like Star Wars beats Star Trek again.

This was a great Christmas, indeed.

Happy Collecting!!

https://sites.google.com/a/klingonword.org/mandalorian/te-ge-tal-headed-league-by-a-c-doyle

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