After the release of The American Adventures of Solar Pons edited by David Marcum, we got the next issue of the scholarly journal of Solar Pons: The Pontine Dossier, Millennium Edition, Vol. 1, No. 5 (Winter 2024-25), edited by Derrick Belanger.
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 World War I and World War II.
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. 5, marked as Winter 2024-25. And as always, there are several good articles, a total of eight.
From editor Derreck Belanger is a kind of update on the world of the Praed Street Irregulars. He has another on Derleth’s other detective series, Tex Harrigan, which I had never heard of. I knew of Derleth first because of the Cthulhu mythos stories, then learned of Pons. I am also aware of his regional work. But his Tex Harrigan series I had never heard of. I very much enjoyed this article. Has anyone reprinted this series?
Chris Chan has a short article on the limits of the Pontine canon. What kinds of stories are canon or not? An interesting piece.
We get two articles on Baron Kroll, Pons’ archnemesis, by Brett Graham Fawcett. The first looks at his chess mastery in one of the stories he appeared in. The second looks at the meaning and significance of his name. Fawcett has a third article looking into what happened to the announced TV adaptation of Solar Pons.
An article I was concerned going into was Stephen Herczeg‘s on “presentism” and “cancel culture,” and its effect on Solar Pons, as I’ve seen too many intellectual properties getting destroyed by these scourges. So I was worried about what his approach would be, but I was pleased by the actual article.
David Marcum writes about his “Pons Pilgrimages” to London, with several photos. This includes a visit to 7 Praed Street, which is an actual location in London, as well as the pub that Pons and Parker first met. I know there are tours of Sherlock Holmes locations in London. Do you mean we don’t have the same for Pons? Who’s slacking off here?
As always, it’s a nice collection of articles. I always look forward to the new issues, and can’t wait for the next volume.
I contributed to the Kickstarter campaign to get this published, but you can obtain it from Amazon. With it, I also got the latest issue of the Sherlock Holmes journal, Steel True, Blade Straight, also published by Belanger Books. I was not aware of this one, so it will be my first time checking this out. See my separate review on it, and I plan on getting the previous issues.
And, strangely, I see I somehow missed doing a posting on the previous volume. I’ll have to rectify that.
Derleth published seventeen stories abouit Tex Harrigan in the science fiction magazines from 1951 throught 1975.
They were collected in the Arkham House edition HARRIGAN’S FILE in 1975.
Thanks for the info. Wasn’t aware of the series. Wonder if there is a more recent collection what with the various efforts to reprint his stuff of late.