Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Lost World

Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Lost World

by Dominic Green

Author's Notes Dominic Green has written several short stories for Interzone magazine, often in a satirical vein. His story Send Me a Mentagram was picked for the prestigious Year's Best Science Fiction anthology in 2003. Here's what Dominic had to say about this story. Conan Doyle was the Michael Crichton of his time - someone who wasn't 'a science fiction writer' or 'a crime writer', but a man who was capable of reeling off both the Sherlock Holmes stories and the Professor Challenger series, and seeing no problems of genre conflict in doing so. Conan Doyle wrote what he felt would entertain his audience, much in the same way as Dickens or Shakespeare - also, it has to be said, in the same way as H.G. Wells, allegedly the Big Huge Man of Science Fiction, who also wrote a good deal of mainstream material. I am, I suppose, nominally a science fiction writer, but I see the genre as being a licence to write anything I damn well please rather than a constraint to confine myself to depicting taut-thewed Lenspersons of the Galactic Patrol. I've always liked the Victorian era for its sheer preposterousness - a century where table legs are clothed decently, but child prostitution output struggles to meet popular demand. It's a century which is deceptively familiar - nineteenth century English is much the same as today's, after all, and the men have the common decency to run around in trousers - but also more alien than the far side of the Moon. Opium is a common analgesic to which vast swathes of the population are addicted. People have front parlours which they never use except on special occasions. Small squares of fabric are placed on the backs of sofas to prevent the massive quantities of oil gentlemen plaster their barnets with from damaging the furniture. It's a strange, strange world back then, people. Better pack your space suit.