The Adventure of the Ectoplasmic Man by Daniel Stashower

It's good to be back in the saddle.

Sorry for the tiny image. it's the biggest version I could find of the cover for the edition I read. Above the title it says: "Holmes meets Houdini in the most phantasmic adventure of his career!"

Fan fiction: the butt of endless jokes. Often, when a fan of a particular movie or tv show is debating continuity with another who cites a novel or comic, the term "fan fiction" will be used to belittle the licensed media. But is it fair? I'm not gonna draw it out: the answer is no.

Fan fiction is much older than most people give it credit for. What are we to make of the ways that cultures (*cough*Romans*cough*) appropriated the stories of their neighbors and those they conquered? "Oh, I like this Zeus guy. Let's tweak him a little bit and call him Jupiter." It's the same impulse, really: I like this story. I like these characters. I want to try something with them. Some may find it unoriginal, or a waste of time, but personally I think it's a testament to the collaborative nature of, well, everything.

And so that brings us to The Adventure of the Ectoplasmic Man by Daniel Stashower. It claims to be from a lost Watson manuscript (because of course Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were real people, ya dummy!) about the time that Holmes got Harry Houdini off from being framed for a robbery and a murder. I'm not going to go into great detail about the plot itself, but it's not bad. Parts of the solution to the case are fairly obvious early on, but some parts are surprising despite being properly set up, which is all you can ask of any mystery novel.

I'm more interested in the ways that the novel works as fan fiction, and how it resonates with myself as a Sherlock Holmes fan. I've had a love for the character since childhood. Just ask my mom about "Sherlock Joel," a story I had her transcribe for me while I was still figuring out how writing letters worked (Spoiler Alert: Darth Vader did it). And of course, I am just as enamored of the BBC Sherlock series as everyone else on the planet. But it has been some time since I've actually read a Sherlock Holmes story. I think the last one might have been around my freshman or sophomore years of high school. So it's been a while.

I was worried my mental image of the characters might be tainted by repeated viewings of the BBC series. Fortunately, that did not wind up being the case. My old mental images of Holmes and Watson quickly reasserted themselves (although Lestrade was stuck as Rupert Graves until near the end, when for some reason he started to look more like a constable in an Edward Gorey piece. My mind is a strange place). I must give credit for this to the writing. It was pretty close to how I remember the characters in the original stories. Stashower isn't interested in reinventing here: he just wants to add to what has come before. And he does so fairly well. The characterizations are solid, the plot is decent, but if it fails as "an addition to what has come before" it does so in how much it winks at the reader.

All sorts of in-jokes and dramatic irony pepper the story just for those familiar with Holmes and Houdini. After the third or forth time someone punches Houdini in the stomach, I kind of wanted to say "yeah, I get it, Stashower. Move on." There are all kinds of references to earlier Holmes stories, complete with footnotes specifically pointing out that they are references. This, I can only imagine, is as an aide to any readers who might be less familiar with the Holmes cannon. Perhaps Stashower's target audience is less hardcore Holmes fans and more those who are just casually acquainted with the character, and he hopes to get them to read more of the original stories. If this in fact was his goal, he succeeds. I was left thirsting for more Sherlock Holmes, although I won't be getting back to him until I get to the D's in my own library.

One last criticism: I do wish that Houdini had done more. Holmes does all the heavy lifting in the story, with Houdini merely being a client. It would have been nice for Houdini's skills as an escape artist to affect the plot a little more than they did. But it's a minor thing. I didn't even notice it until reflecting on the book afterwards.

Overall, The Adventure of the Ectoplasmic Man is an enjoyable read, and a solid piece of unabashed, unashamed fan fiction. If you're the type to likes to do this sort of thing, pick up a copy for some beach reading this summer. I might pick up my own copy of it at some point, but for now this copy is going back to Wade.

Next: The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell.

(Not) Finishing the Book

Okay, it is time for me to face some harsh truths about this little New Years Resolution project of mine.

Truth one: I'm not going to actually finish my entire library by the end of this year. I was probably never going to finish the whole library in one year, but I guess I thought I could put a sizable dent in it. Maybe get to the M's.

Truth two: Sometimes, you just don't want to finish the book.

The book this blog entry would have been about is On Being a Christian by Swiss Theologian Hans Küng. It is a very dense and dry book, although not without its points of interest. It was loaned to me (along with Theology for the Third Millennium by the same author) by my father after I expressed an interest in Theology many years ago. It has mostly just sat on shelves and in boxes at different points since, a 700 page leviathan that I was afraid to approach. Then came this crazy New Years Resolution. I was going to have to read it, as per the rules I established for myself. After finishing A Prayer for Owen Meaney back in February, I cracked the spine on Küng.

Progress was slow. It is so dry it was rarely able to keep my attention for more than a few pages at a time. Weeks went by without any progress at all. Wade would call me and goad me on, but even with that encouragement I found it a chore to return to Küng. I took to keeping a text document with my responses to Küng's points along with quotes that I liked. But that only helped a little. I was still massively bored by it.

Why? Why was I bored by this? I have always found religion to be an interesting topic, and I didn't have nearly this much trouble with Robert M. Price's The Christ-Myth Theory and its Problems back in the fall (although I was reading it for a paper I was writing, so that helped). I came to realize that I was more interested in historical and social trends related to religion and how individuals connect with religious belief than I was with Theology. That isn't to say that I didn't find some interest in the book. But the interesting parts were few and far between in the 248 pages that I wound up getting through.

There came a point where Wade stopped encouraging me to finish the book and started encouraging me to not finish the book. He thought that at least I should skip the second Hans Küng book. He reasoned with me that since I had a rule to allow myself to read other books in a series if I decided I liked the one I had, that I should also be able to decide not to continue reading if I didn't like the first book. While these two Küng books are not technically in a series together, I still take his point, which leads to:

Truth three: I need to revise the rules.

So as of now, if I decided that I don't like an author, I don't have to read any more of that author's books. However, if I decide that I do like them, I can pick up more books by that author and read them before continuing on with my project. Also, and this is the biggest change: I don't have to finish the book.

I know! This is antithesis to the very name of the blog! But I came across this infographic a couple of days ago, and it finally got me thinking about just... not finishing. I quite liked one of the quotes in the infographic. "I once heard that the rule for when to abandon a book is 100 minus your age." That's probably a pretty good rule. That isn't to say that a book might not start out slow and pick up by the end, but do I really have another five months to slog through a book just to find out? If I'm lucky, I have another 50 years of book reading ahead of me. If I keep at my current pace with Küng, I'll have wasted one of those years on a book I'm not even enjoying that much. This is unacceptable. So although the title of this blog is "Finishing the Book(s)", I have decided that when it becomes apparent that finishing a particular book is going to come at the expense of future books, then it does not have to be finished. I'll give it 100 pages minus my age.

So fare thee well, Hans Küng. You'll be finding your way back to my father's bookshelf soon. I've already started the next book in this blog series, I'm already half way through, and I already know that I made the right decision.

Next time: The Adventure of the Ectoplasmic Man by Daniel Stashower.