Alongside the release of a new collection of Solar Pons stories by David Marcum, Further Papers of Solar Pons at the end of 2022, we got the next issue of the scholarly journal of Solar Pons: The Pontine Dossier, Millennium Edition, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Autumn/Winter 2022).
For those who missed my previous posts on him, Solar Pons is a popular character inspired by Sherlock Holmes created by August Derleth, and continued by Basil Copper and more recently by David Marcum and others. As Pons is more than just a Holmes copy, calling him a pastiche doesn’t do him justice. His stories are set between WWI and WWII.
As I noted previously, The Pontine Dossier was a scholarly journal from the 1970s now brought back. And following the style of the original Pontine Dossier, the covers for the Millennium Edition so far are the same, just different colors. Each issue is about the same number of pages.
This is Vol. 1, No. 3, marked as Autumn/Winter 2022. And always there are several good articles, a total of six. The first article by publisher Derrick Belanger of Belanger Books gives an overview of 2022, which gave us a collection of new Solar Pons novellas, a new theatrical production, and a new Facebook group. By the way, the script of that theatrical production was included in the novella collection. And, of course, this new Dossier and Marcum’s new Pons collection.
Mark Wardecker speaks on creating a new edition of Pons’ earliest stories. The versions that saw print in the pulps were changed for book publication. This led to the book The Dragnet Solar Pons, but it looks like plans are to do a new and better edition later in 2023 to be titled The Arrival of Solar Pons, which has since been published. This article lays out those plans.
Pons stories set in the eastern part of England are the topic of Ian Millsted‘s article, which also touches on some stories by others.
While August Derleth created Solar Pons, he also wrote in other areas. One was within the Lovecraft Mythos, which was certainly my introduction to him, and his publishing house was responsible for keeping H.P. Lovecraft in print. But Derleth was also able to link, if in a simple manner, Pons and the Mythos, and this has led to others as well as shown by Stephen Herczeg‘s article. There is the recent collection of such Solar Pons stories. And I would also be remiss not to note the genre of “occult detective” that is out there as well, several of whom confront Mythos-like horrors.
David Marcum, who is the main writer for new Solar Pons stories, writes on “Solar Pons Chronologies.” This is a topic I have wondered about in terms of what is the chronology of the original Derleth Pons stories, how do Copper’s stories fit in, as well as Marcum’s and everyone else’s? Here he looks at the internal chronology of several other detective series.
Having also read The Three Investigators (I still have my copies), I can relate to that. When I get into a series now, I want to start at the beginning and not bounce around, even though with many series that’s okay.
Marcum here also delves into Basil Copper’s chronological “sins” in regards to the Omnibus edition he created. And he touches on several existing Pons chronologies, as well as Holmes and Dr. Watson stories that probably should be Pons and Dr. Parker.
Maybe we could have an updated/expanded Pons chronology in a future Dossier?
And from Chris Chan, we get a look at why Pons never meet Judge Ephraim Peck, a character that Derleth wrote several works about in 10 novels over 20 years. Well, Arthur Conan Doyle never had Holmes meet Professor Challenger…
As I supported the Kickstarter campaign, I was sent an electronic version of the book and later got my physical copy. You can order it from Amazon. It’s another good collection, and hopefully, we’ll see another in late 2023, hopefully tied to another campaign. I’m not sure what is planned. I will be getting the new Marcum collection and will be reading and reviewing it as well.
