The Lost World of Sherlock Holmes

(From Calabash: A Magazine for Holmesians, Number 3, March 1983)

By Brad Keefauver

Once in every three or four decades, a bewhiskered old fellow should come down from the mountaintop and say, "Let’s get the record straight again." After which, he would proceed to post gilt-edged parchment notices of all the misconceptions and just plain wrong turns that mankind has made mentally in the last term. Once the race had been put on track again, the sage could return to his mountaintop for another few decades, knowing that all is well.

If such were the case, there is a strong likelihood that a copy of one of his notices would appear on the inside cover of every edition of the Holmesian canon to follow:

"This work, formerly thought to be either factual criminal histories or fictional mystery tales, shall henceforth be known to fit into the genre of science fiction. Thank you."

"What!" many a member of the Master’s following would cry, "Fiction, never!"

"Pure lunacy," would be the comment of others. "Of course they’re mysteries. The entire genre sprang from Holmes."

But could any one of them remember hearing a truly satisfactory explanation for the confusion at dating the stories? Or a good, sound reason for Watson’s changing war wound? Not to belittle the works of many wise and scholarly men, but why has no one found answers to these problems that are acceptable to all?

"Ah-ha," the more insightful would realize. The Sherlockian canon is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s greatest work of science fiction, so subtlety full of imaginative genius as to stagger the mind of any Trekkie or "Star Wars" fan.

The problem of dates of stories? It’s simply the temporal anomaly that 221-B Baker Street existed in. Time’s flow was never constant there, sometimes eddying back, sweeping ahead, or whirlpooling at the whim of the ultimate man of science, Sherlock Holmes. The additional problem of Watson’s multiple marriages is also washed away when one fully comprehends the quirk in time Holmes created. Watson could leave his Kensington home one afternoon for a walk, stop in at 221-B, live four or five months with Holmes; then return, only a few hours after his original departure, to his waiting wife. Mary Morstan Watson thus had a long and happy marriage unmarred by a slightly premature aging on her husband’s part.

Life was not all tea and time warps for Holmes and Watson, however. Dr. Grimesby Roylott and his other-wordly menagerie was just one of the bizarre menaces they were to deal with. Passing such creatures as the blang (a humanoid who did strongly resemble a distorted child) and the tundano (a large rodent found on the planet Soom Athra: known for its cat-like whines) off as baboon and cheetah, Roylott put the detective and the doctor in more danger than the casual reader has realized. They may have escaped unharmed from the attack of the alien swamp adder, yet in other cases they were not so lucky.

Prior to meeting Holmes, John Watson found himself in an encounter few men suffered even in their worst nightmares. In battle with a mysterious inhuman foe, he was wounded by the dreaded jezai bullet, a projectile consisting of an immature Sirian larvae in its conical shell. The jezai parasite, when hatched, grazes aimlessly along veins and arteries (the subclavian in Watson’s case) living a life of leechly leisure, causing little damage for a time. In Watson, one can follow the jezai’s path to some extent, from his shoulder (STUD) down to the area of his Achilles tendon (SIGN) through his leg (NOBL) and back upward (indicated in CARD by the fact that his hand seemed to be able to reach it).

Eventually, the jezai stumbled onto Watson’s brain, at which point the creature began a new stage of existence.

This new state, catalyzed by first contact with brain tissue, is a slow process of intertwining with and eventually controlling the brain. In most races of the galaxy, this eventually would be deadly without exception. The race homo sapiens, however, turned out to be somehow compatible to the jezai’s development, as can be seen in Watson. At first a dual personality develops as the jezai and the native consciousness jockey for dominate position. Evidence of this stage can be found in TWIS as the jezai personality seems to fancy the name "James."

Holmes’s chance encounter with Watson in the opium den at this point was extremely fortuitous. The jezai personality had obviously been keeping Watson away from his knowledgeable friend, fearing Holmes could help Watson overcome the usurper. When TWIS was finally over, an even greater and more dangerous adventure awaited Holmes and Watson. To remove the alien parasite’s influence from his friend had to have been Sherlock Holmes’s greatest triumph.

But alas, one never penned.

To go further into other aspects of Doyle’s ever so subtle brand of science fiction would produce enough words to fill a series of rather large books, something for another time and place. Numerous perceptive and gifted Sherlockians have certainly been enjoying Doyle’s tales as a part of their true genre in any case, so to dwell further on it would only be spoiling the pleasure of future such Sherlockians.

To those who have yet to discover Watson’s bull pup Billy, the dread dimensional portal caused by the combustion of a certain dried root, or the horror of the changling Vandeleur, among others; this article is merely a hint. No blatant shoves in the right direction will be administered at this time.

By the way, it is said that a bewiskered fellow did once make trips down from the mountaintop every few decades. They say he was stoned to death his third time down.