After the release of The Singular Papers of Solar Pons, the next collection of new stories by David Marcum, we got the next issue of the scholarly journal devoted to Solar Pons: The Pontine Dossier, Millennium Edition, Vol. 1, No. 6 (Winter 2025-26), edited by Derrick Belanger.
I was surprised to see this on Amazon, since the prior issues came out via a Kickstarter campaign, which is how I learned of them.
For those who missed my previous posts on him, Solar Pons is a popular character inspired by Sherlock Holmes, created by August Derleth, continued by Basil Copper, and more recently continued 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. Following the style of the original Pontine Dossier, the covers for the Millennium Edition so far are the same, just in different colors. Each issue is about the same number of pages.
As always, there are several good articles, a total of 11 from a half-dozen authors.
From editor Derrick Belanger, we get a pair of pieces. One is an update on the world of Solar Pons. The second looks at how to use “Pons” as a possessive word.
From David Marcum, we get an article covering all the Solar Pons works up through 2025. Next, we get a look at putting canonical Sherlock Holmes into a chronology, and the problem with “The Circular Room,” a story by Derleth that was both a Holmes pastiche and a Solar Pons story. But which chronology should it go into? The final piece is a re-examination of the Sherlock Holmes movies starring Basil Rathbone, which he feels should be thought of as Solar Pons movies due to when they are set. He also gives a synopsis of each movie.
Chris Chan has an article asking why we don’t have a character like Irene Adler in the Solar Pons stories, and he also looks at some of the other differences between the Holmes and Pons canon. I’ve been wondering the same thing, and this one went a little further than I might have, but it’s good to show there are differences between the two characters.
We get three articles by Bret Fawcett. One looks at the identity of a character known only as “The Chief” in “The Adventure of Ricoletti of the Club Foot,” a story set early in Pons’ career and the first to include Pons’ brother Bancroft. He puts forth the view that this was another literary character, which I think works.
The second looks at how Solar Pons appeared in an Arsène Lupin cartoon — or did he? As the cartoon series is set in 1930, much later than the original series, “Herlock Sholmes” shows up, who appears to be Holmes, but it works better if it’s Pons. The third takes a deeper look at the story “The Adventure of the Broken Face.”
Frank Schildiner takes a look at “The Adventure of the Broken Chessman” and the actions of Pons in this story related to the OGPU, a sinister Soviet agency. (And yes, this was a real organization for those who are only aware of the KGB.)
From Stephen Herczeg, we get an article looking at August Derleth’s hand in creating the Cthulhu mythos, for good or ill, from the work of H.P. Lovecraft.
As always, it’s a nice collection of articles. I always look forward to these, and I can’t wait for the next volume. As they seem to be putting these out toward the end of the year, and this time it wasn’t connected with a Kickstarter campaign, I guess I’ll just need to keep an eye out for the next one.
They recently finished a campaign for the next collection of Solar Pons stories, Solar Pons: A Year of Mystery 1919, which is out now.
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