Spontaneous ∂erivation

Dear Fans of the new Sherlock Holmes movie:

Let me apologize on the behalf of older Sherlock Holmes fandom for the bits of it that have been generating get-off-my-lawn reboot wank, not five days after the release of the movie. The Sherlock Holmes fandom has thrived for over a hundred years and multiple generations, and every generation has its… special snowflakes.

But fortunately, every generation has also produced creative fandom work (though they may not see it that way), from the solidly analytical to the wondrously fanciful. I may not agree with all of them, or even remotely like some of them, but they all occupy a place in my heart, because there wouldn’t be a Sherlock Holmes fandom without constant re-interpretation of the works. Yes, even the fic pastiche where Moriarty is a vampire who falls madly in love with Holmes.¹

I present to you the more amusing pieces of Holmesiana I’ve gathered throughout the years. I’ve strived for a varied collection here that is at the very least sometimes accessible, even if it knocks out some of my absolute favorites. Too much of the fandom is out of print; I hope that changes one day, so that reading all the ’ship wank doesn’t cost 500£.

[Love and adaptation: that's how legends survive.]

I wouldn’t even have remarked on the most recent slight flare-up—I didn’t even comment when Helix Magazine took its ball home shut down, what, a couple months back?—but the minor wank spawned of course spread to the SFF.net newsgroups.

So apparently Helix Magazine, of late racism, wank, and lols, has decided to pull all of its archives after all, claiming that they were scared of Janis Ian after she requested Helix remove a story of hers because

And she is, after all, a well-off popular entertainer, with legal and financial resources we could not hope to match; and none of us had the time nor the energy for a courtroom fight.

Yes, Janis Ian, who had to resort to the resources of the SFWA grievance committee, obviously had deep pockets of cash to drop on this.

And of course the right response is to pull down all the archives, even though this was not requested.

Deathless comment by Nick Mamatas: “I’d call even remarking on this beating a dead horse, except that in this case the dead horse has actually managed to get a bat in its teeth and with a posthumous twitch, smack itself!”

And because this is William Sanders, the baby train wreck doesn’t stop there.

Oh Sanders, never change.

I haven’t yet decided whether I should enjoy this as schadenfreude or not. EntreCard hasn’t really ever pissed me off, but then again, I left some months ago¹ before the drama and excitement.

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1. July 18th. I wasn’t mad or upset at EntreCard. S∂ was switching focus, and I didn’t feel that an EC widget would be a great idea for a while. And as it turns out, I didn’t really need or want it anymore (and became much too busy). [↩]

Just to save in my album of Late Summer 2008.

Take:

Yields:

It was like Christmas in August.

Back to your regular bloggery tomorrow.

Is it worth it to submit to some place or other in the mere hopes of publication?

As the worms turned up from Helix: A Speculative Fiction Quarterly’s recent wankery show, sometimes it is decidedly not.

Come with me as we explore a trail of

• racism, bigotry, and rejection letters;
• the acts of nonprofessional spewage from an editor of a Hugo-nominated semi-prozine;
• what happens when your contract with your publisher is not well-examined;
• and how to deal with the blatant wankery.

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