Babel Clash

Although Sir Arthur Conan Doyle always had a rational solution for each of Sherlock Holmes’s cases—even the one called “The Case of the Sussex Vampire”—the Victorian/Edwardian age in which Holmes lives feels like the supernatural would be very much at home. It’s funny that Holmes never enountered a case involving the supernatural if you consider the fact that many Victorians believed in many different kinds of paranormal phenomenon, such as fairies—a subject which Doyle himself believed in wholeheartedly.

While I am a rationalist by nature, and Holmes’s devotion to reason is one of the things I love about him, I guess I like the possibility of the supernatural happening, as that adds another layer of difficulty for the great detective. That’s why I assembled The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes as I did—I mixed straight mystery Holmes stories with those tinged with the fantastic, so that when you’re investigating the cases along side Holmes, you won’t know if it’ll have a supernatural explanation or a perfectly rational one. That’s why I called it the “Improbable Adventures” of Sherlock Holmes, because it plays with the idea behind Holmes’s most famous maxim: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” So the anthology asks: what happens when Holmes can’t eliminate the impossible?

So the possible supernatural aspect of the storyline that the trailer hints at doesn’t bother me at all; I’m more troubled by the way it appears as though Holmes is portrayed as quite a different character than the one we know and love. Now, I’m open to liberties being taken, but there’s so much different in the trailer that I’m a bit wary about the film. But I remain optimistic and am planning to see it in the theater when it opens. It does look like it’ll be full of action and fun, and perhaps that’s what’s needed to interest a new generation in the adventures of the great detective.

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  Steve, thank you once again for all of the great posts and for spending time with us on Babel Clash.  Good luck with Elegy Beach and other books to come.  I’m looking forward to seeing what you try next. Our next guest is John Joseph Adams, highly regarded editor and...