Why Solar Pons is better than Sherlock Holmes

preamble:

Some days I have nothing to say except “still working on the game” and that gets boring. A few months ago I tried posting thoughts on the game industry, but to be honest I don’t have many thoughts on the game industry. Everything I want to say I’ve pretty much said.

What I really want to do is discuss issues relating to ideas and what makes a good story.  So let’s start:

who is Solar Pons?

It all started when August Derleth wrote to Conan Doyle and asked “I hear that you won’t be writing any more Sherlock Holmes stories. Would you let me write some?” and Conan Doyle said no. Undeterred, August Derleth invented his own detective, who was remarkably like Sherlock Holmes, but the stories are set twenty years later. Pons is not a replacement for Holmes. In the stories he sometimes mentions Holmes – he is set in the same world, but at a respectful distance in time.

Pons is better than Holmes if you have already read Holmes. If you haven’t already read Holmes, then read Holmes. But if you have already read Holmes, then reading Pons is better than re-reading Holmes:

Because Pons is still alive (in a literary sense) and Holmes is not.

What I mean is, the Holmes canon is closed, and the Pons canon is not. There will never be any new Conan Doyle stories, but there are plenty of Pons stories that you probably haven’t read – and if enough people read them there will probably be more.

Are the Pons stories as good as Holmes? I would argue, yes. Conan Doyle’s genius was in creating one of the world’s greatest characters, and a formula that almost guarantees an interesting and enjoyable read. For that, Conan Doyle deserves immortality. But as a writer, Conan Doyle’s other books are not as special.  Any competent author can mimic Holmes, and many have.

What are the alternatives to Pons?

Consider the choice you have when you come to the end of the last Holmes story:

Do you re-read the same stories again? They can never work as well as mysteries, because once you know the ending there is no mystery!

Do you read the various unofficial Holmes stories? All they can ever do is fill in the gaps. Watson often said that he was only choosing the most interesting cases, and he already told us how Holmes started his career and how he defeated his greatest enemy and how he retired at the end, so all that’s left are the less interesting stories.

The ‘new’ Holmes stories are really about different versions of Holmes. Every author wants to be original, so they always add new twists.  A common trick is to have Holmes meet some famous person, such as Bram Stoker, or Sir Richard Burton, or even Miss Marple. Or they create some twist whereby the real genius was Watson, or Mycroft, or Moriarty. Or they make sHolmes recite poetry and quite from the Bible – something Conan Doyle’s Homes would never do. (Conan Doyle makes it clear many times that Holmes is only interested in topics that directly relate to crime, and does his best to forget everything else)

Why does this matter? The whole purpose of a story is to create a world in the reader’s head. A long, connected series creates a big, rich world. A series of single short stories create merely small, shallow worlds. Most ‘new’ Holmes stories are short and unconnected to each other.

But Solar Pons is different. Pons exists in the same universe as Sherlock Holmes (Pons sometimes refers to Holmes) – so it’s instantly big and rich. And he shows us this universe twenty years later, thus adding to the depth.And we get to know Pons over numerous stories: Pons is more of a sense of humor than Holmes, and covers a wider range of topics (including the almost supernatural). Pons retains all the strengths of Holmes (all the familiar enjoyable elements are there) without making the mistakes of the other ‘new’ Holmes stories.

I’m a Solar Pons fan.

Just my 2c.