MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part XXVI

David Marcum

Description

Featuring Contributions by:Marcia Wilson, Peter Coe Verbica, Margaret Walsh, James Gelter, Naching T. Kassa, DJ Tyrer, Ian Ableson, Kevin P. Thornton, David Marcum, Adrian Middleton, Dick Gillman, Geri Schear, Mark Mower, Susan Knight, Frank Schildiner, Arthur Hall, Harry DeMaio, Mike Hogan, Anthony Gurney, James Moffett, I.A. Watson, and forewords by Peter Lovesey, Roger Johnson, Steve Emecz, and David MarcumHere, though the world explode, these two survive, And it is always eighteen-ninety-five.So wrote Sherlockian Vincent Starrett in his 1942 poem 221b, soon after the United States entered World War II. Even as those years brought terrible challenges, so too has 2020 been a year of great testing for so many of us, as a global pandemic rages and good people are called to stand against evil.For Sherlockians, comfort can be found in climbing those seventeen stairs to the Baker Street sitting room, where it is always eighteen-ninety-five - or a few decades on either side of it.In 2015, the first three volumes of The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories arrived, containing over 60 stories in the true traditional Canonical manner. That was the largest collection of new Holmes stories ever assembled, and originally planned to be a one-time event. But readers wanted more, and the contributors had more stories from Watson's Tin Dispatch Box, so the fun continued. Now, with the release of Parts XXV, XXVI, and XXVII, the series has grown to nearly 600 new Holmes adventures by almost 200 contributors from around with world. Since the beginning, all contributor royalties go to the Stepping Stones School for special needs children at Undershaw, one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's former homes, and to date the project has raised over $75,000 for the school.As has become the tradition, this new collection features Holmes and Watson carrying out their masterful investigations from the early days of their friendship in Baker Street to the post-War years during Holmes's retirement.Join us as we return to Baker Street and discover more authentic adventures of Sherlock Holmes, described by the estimable Dr. Watson as "the best and wisest . . . whom I have ever known."59 new traditional Holmes adventures in three simultaneously published volumes The game is afoot!All author royalties from this collection are being donated by the writers for the benefit of the preservation of Undershaw, one of the former homes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 27 septembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781787057807
• Langue: English

Extrait

The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories
Part XXVI: 2021 Annual
(1889-1897)
David Marcum




First edition published in 2021
Copyright © 2021 David Marcum
The individuals listed in the Copyright information section assert their right to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy, or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied, or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious or used fictitiously. Except for certain historical personages, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Any opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of any other party.
Published in the UK by
MX Publishing
335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive
London, N11 3GX
www.mxpublishing.com
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Cover design by Brian Belanger
www.belangerbooks.com
Photos of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson courtesy of Roger Johnson



Editor’s Foreword: A Series of Tales
by David Marcum
A few weeks ago, I was exchanging messages with a Sherlockian friend, and the topic of editing came up. We were discussing a new Holmes anthology which neither of us has yet read, containing stories by several authors that my friend likes and several other authors that I like (and also that I know by way of their previous participation in various anthologies that I’ve edited). I mentioned how it might be a little while before I would actually have time to dive into this new book, as a great deal of my free reading time nowadays is now spent editing submitted stories, which I print on 8½ x 11-inch paper and read with red pen in hand. Over the last few years, I have less time for purely recreational reading than I used to, as I currently receive around 200 traditional pastiche submissions per year for various collections that I edit, and each of those gets multiple read-throughs.
“ I can’t imagine, ” my friend, who is a noted editor himself, replied, “ wading through 200 traditional Sherlock Holmes pastiche submissions in a year. You’ve got my respect and sympathy for that .”
That response has stuck with me for several weeks. Sympathy? Why sympathy ? Right now I’m having my Sherlockian wish come true – people send me new Sherlock Holmes adventures nearly every day. Decades ago, when I first found my way to 221b Baker Street, new stories beyond the original Canon were very few and far between. I’d be lucky to find a new pastiche once or twice a year . Now, in terms of new Holmes tales, we’re living in the most golden part yet of the Golden Age that started when Nicholas Meyer published The Seven-Per-Cent Solution in 1974.
There are a lot of newer Sherlockians who don’t know what it was like back then –before the internet, when one couldn’t instantly research anything as soon as the idea crossed one’s mind, or reach out to an author directly with praise, or to ask a question or offer a comment. One couldn’t simply download something or buy a physical copy within minutes of seeing it. Back in those days, one generally didn’t know about a new book or its release until it was there in front of you at the bookstore, serendipitously discovered on the shelf. And in those long-ago days, the idea that the majority of writers could write and then get their work in front of the public with any kind of ease was almost laughably impossible – akin to getting a rich man into heaven or a camel through the eye of a needle.
Publishing then was an elitist club with a closed door – even more than so than today, if that can be conceived. (Back then, it took so long for a new story or book to grind through the process then set in place that very few made it, and if something was picked for publication, it might be years before it actually physically appeared.) There were certainly a lot of potential Sherlockian authors in that era who would have brought forth Watsonian manuscripts if there had been any hope at all of them reaching the hands of the true fans. Thankfully for both writers and readers, this is a different and better time.
When I was ten years old in 1975, and obtained and read my first Holmes book, there was relatively very little out there beyond The Canon for those who wanted additional adventures. There was some scholarship, but it was generally very esoteric, and extremely difficult to locate, as most of it was published in very limited runs, which quickly vanished into private collections.
But some could be located if one was lucky. I remember when I was in high school in the early 1980’s and had reason to go to the nearby University of Tennessee Library for the first time. It was then housed in a vast building that was more akin to a castle than a university building – that is to say, it was perfect. On my first trip, I happened to check the card catalog – if you don’t know what that is, kids, Google it – and found that there was a whole section of Sherlockian scholarship upstairs. I was stunned and amazed.
When I navigated the Library of Congress method of cataloging and shelving – which makes no sense if you’ve been trained on the sensible Dewey Decimal System – I found that they had a complete run of The Baker Street Journal , all the way back to the first issue. There were other legendary titles that I’d only seen in mentioned in footnotes – Bell’s Baker Street Byways , Blakeney’s Sherlock Holmes: Fact or Fiction? and Holroyd’s Baker Street Byways , among many others. Over the course of the next few years, I spent a goodly number of hours up there, working my way through the Journals and the other volumes (which I could not check out), standing at a Xerox machine and plowing through mounds of dimes to copy items from them, one page at a time. And what was I copying? Pastiches , of course. For those books sometimes – although quite rarely – contained a very few of them, buried amongst the scholarship, and it was worth my time and money, because I wanted more Holmes adventures!
It was tough then for people like me who had read through The Canon at a dead run and burst out the other end still wanting more. One option was to start in and re-read the pitifully few 60 stories again, and then again, and again, in whatever way seemed best: Straight through in the order that they were collected in book form, or jumping around randomly, as influenced by whatever tale seemed most interesting that day. (My parents gave me Baring-Gould’s biography, Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street , early on, with its very influential chronology, but it hadn’t yet occurred to me the wisdom of actually reading the stories in chronological order.)
My initial exposure to extra-Canonical adventures was first by way of the previously mentioned The Seven-Per-Cent Solution , followed soon after by Nicholas Meyers’ much better sequel, The West End Horror – still one of my favorite Holmes adventures to this day. (I’ll never forget the surprise ending.) I found a few others through the mid- and late 1970’s – Sean Wright and Michael Hodel’s Enter the Lion , for instance, and Michael Kurland’s The Infernal Device , along with those reissued treasures, the Solar Pons volumes by August Derleth – and these encounters with new Holmes adventures in those days came primarily from what showed up on the drug store paperback rack. One can easily imagine how rarely something Sherlockian appeared there.
As I grew older, other methods of obtaining Sherlockian volumes became available. One could write letters to certain specialty bookstores (advertised in the back of a few mystery magazines) requesting their “catalogs” – usually nothing more than a set of poorly Xeroxed and stapled sheets. (How many Sherlockians – like me – still have those precious documents saved someplace?) There were a few dealers that put out nicer brochures and catalogs a couple of times per year – the place in California called Sherlock’s Home and Carolyn and Joel Senter’s wonderful Classic Specialties. And of course there was Otto Penzler’s amazing The Mysterious Bookshop – still going strong today . My family knew that when my birthday or Christmas rolled around, I would provide them with these various catalogs, with pages suitably marked and Sherlockian items specifically requested. I imagine that Sherlockians all over the country did the same thing, and they probably learned the same lesson that I did: If you come across a Sherlockian item that you want, you’d better go ahead and get it now, because it will soon be gone, and trying to find it again later is either going to be nearly impossible or very expensive!
And so it went for several more years – Every once in a while, a traditional pastiche could survive the publishing gauntlet and appear for the hungry public in a real bookstore. Carole Nelson Douglas’s definitive Irene Adler novels came along during this time, as did some anthologies by editors like Martin Greenberg and Marvin Kaye. And several small publishers offered Sherlockian titles for a while – Magico and Ian Henry, for instance. Some canny authors like Master Pasticheur Denis O. Smith self-published his initial efforts in chapbook form – and thankfully I have all of those in my collection, proving again my point to grab these things when you have the chance.
And then: The Internet .
The Internet