Sherlock 2000

The future is almost here.

As Plugs & Dottles winds to a close, I can't help but think about what's ahead. I have to ... I'm soon to be out of a job as a centerspread columnist.

But even for those of you whose editor isn't calling it quits, the next century is soon to be upon us all. And while it may seem a simple rotation of the big historical odometer to some, there are a few changes in perspective that will slowly catch up to Sherlockiana, whether we notice them or not.

We tend to think of Sherlock Holmes as a creature of the 1800s, even though his career continued into the 1900s. He is a man of the last century, and even when his career moved into the century we currently inhabit, we tended to overlook the motor cars and telephones that crept into his life, mentally keeping him in that realm where, as Vincent Starrett put it, "where it is always 1895."

That place has been like a temporal next-door-neighbor to us, so close, even as we've moved from the mid-1900s to the late-1900s, to the late-late-1900s. But in a couple of very short years, the 1800s will no longer be the century next door, but the century-two-doors-down. For an occupant of the current century-two-doors-down, think of D'artagnan and his musketeer pals. Will Sherlockians raised in me 2000s view Sherlock Holmes with the same sort of historical distance with which we see the musketeers? Will there be a tendency toward thoughts like, "charming, but they don't really fit in today's world"?

And as Sherlock moves back a century, so do Sherlockians. In the 2000s, every significant event in the history of our hobby (not counting the stories themselves) will have taken place in the previous century. The founding of the BSI? Last century. Those great John Bennett Shaw workshops? Last century. Bob Burr's Plugs & Dottles? Last century.

Feel old yet? Well, it will be sometime into the 2000s before we quit being creatures of the 1900s. Like Sherlock Holmes, some of us will never quite make the leap. But for those who do, the 2000s will be an entirely new era in Sherlockiana. New Sherlockian milestones are just waiting to be laid in the wet pavement of that new century.

Think about this for a second.

Morley, Starrett, Smith, Stout, Shaw, Wolfe, Tracy, Baring-Gould, Hardwick, Harrison, Knox ... they're the great Sherlockians of the 1900s. They can't be the great Sherlockians of the 2000s. We're going to need new great Sherlockians, or else that future landscape's going to look pretty barren.

So now you're asking yourself:

"What's left to be done?" Holmes has been annotated, indexed, bibliographized, and encyclopaedized, often more than once. Well, here's a few things that haven't been done:

A stand-out biography of Sherlock Holmes. Sure, there have been a couple of nice tries, but there has never been a biography of Holmes that is seen as the unbeatable masterpiece the way we view some other works. Someone could really turn the Sherlockian world on its ear with this one, if done right.

A Sherlock Holmes artificial intelligence. In other words, a computer program that acts life Holmes. I'm not talking sentient life, just something that can mimic Holmes and carry on a conversation. He could live on a web page and see visitors, just like it was 221B.

Virtual 221B. There are miniature 221Bs and reproduction rooms a-plenty. Has anybody set up a three-dimensional electronic 221B Baker Street yet?

A truly good pastiche. One we all like. They say it's impossible. They say some of us are too burnt out to ever like any pastiche. But we're the human race, bunky. We do impossible things every single day.

A unified Sherlockian world. Sure. most of us get along with each other, but have you noticed the number of clubs, publications, and activities out there competing for your time and bucks? Sherlockiana has done well with the talents of lone sparking plugs and "benevolent dictatorships." But the more things are happening, the more you have to wonder if we can't combine a few things here and there, and work together a little more often than we do now. "Joint ventures" is what they call the concept in the business world.

The best things about the future, though, are the things no one ever expects, the total surprises that change the way we see things almost overnight. They're out there, and you can bet the Sherlockian world of the 2000s will be tossing them at us like never before.

Because, as always, you can never be sure what Sherlock Holmes will be up to next.

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, November 1998)