Belloq was Right

Different people recall different portions of favorite films. I tend to remember snippets of dialogue. This actually evolved into something of a game with the Kidette, then a shorthand way of speaking, relating films to daily life. So, if someone tries to do the same old thing, but differently: "He's just changing the dog's name." Or if someone claims to be a good guy: "There are no good guys, there are no bad guys; there's just a bunch of guys." So, while some might take away from Raiders of the Lost Ark the image of the adroit swordsman being shot or an inattentive Nazi being sliced and diced by a flying wing's propeller, I tend to remember what Belloq, the evil French archaeologist, said about his pocket watch:

 "You know it's worthless. Ten dollars from a vendor in the street. But I take it, I bury it in the sand for a thousand years, it becomes priceless... like the Ark. Men will kill for it. Men like you and me."

Belloq was right, you know. Let anything acquire a patina of age and it becomes valuable. I often wonder what future archaeologists, whether evolved Cockroaches or visiting scientists from Altair IV, will make of the room where I do all my writing. A book shrine? An ancient library? A temple dedicated to the triune god Asimov-Bradbury-Clarke? And what if my remains are there, my skeleton sitting at a typewriter or laptop? The last Archivist? The Priest of Philip K. Dick and Raymond Chandler? Divine Being? Maybe I'll end up in an alien museum. I do like museums.

However, we need not wait so long to see our things become valuable. Recently, I was book-searching on the internet, curious about some of the Lovecraftian publications from Necronomicon Press. The results were quite startling.

The three booklets pictured contain prose and poetry written by HP Lovecraft that had not been previously collected for publication. Mostly, they consist of amateur writings from HPL's Amateur Press Association days; poetry and essays from what we would now call "fanzines;" poems, essays and vignettes culled from his corpus of letters; and discarded drafts of later stories. When published, they each cost $4.95 in the late 70s, early 80s, so I spent about $15 for all three, plus a modicum of postage. I figured they had probably increased a bit in value over the years, driven by collector demand and the increasing worthlessness of the US dollar. However, I was not prepared to find a listing offering the three booklets for $224.95+$8.95 s&h. I also found six reproductions of Lovecraft's articles from The Californian offered for $350 and a two-volume set of HPL's letters to Robert Bloch for $225. The HPL Christmas Book sold for $1.50, but I found listings of it for $41.25+s&h. The History of the Necronomicon (1992 @  $1.50) is available for $84. Even Lovecraft Studies #7, Necronomicon Press' scholarly periodical which contained my article "The Old Man and the Sea," is available on Amazon for $35, quite a bit more than the original.

I don't plan on getting rid of those booklets anytime soon, but it did set me wondering about some of my own Small Press efforts, both the Sherlock Holmes stories published by Gryphon Publications and my own modest chapbooks that I published under the imprint of Running Dinosaur Press. Was it possible that either had gathered enough of a time-worn patina to become valuable or (dare I suggest?) respectable? Well, as it turned out, they had acquired much more value than I suspected.

The first book I looked at was Sherlock Holmes in The Adventure of the Ancient Gods. The story was first published in the Trek fanzine "Holmesian Federation." I've already written about the genesis of the story, so won't go into it here, except to say that it does have some significance amongst Holmes/Lovecraft pastiches because it was the very first story to combine the two literary universes, beating the excellent Pulptime by a few years. When Gary Lovisi republished the story as a chapbook, the price was $5. I thought it a little steep at the time, but I knew that specialty publications were often priced in advance of trade-published books. In a recent listing, I found it priced at $45+$4.95 s&h. Of course, I have in the past seen it listed at $60 or so, and, once, for $112 on Amazon by a rare books dealer. 

The sort-of sequel to the book, Sherlock Holmes in The Dreaming Detective, also published by Gary Lovisi's Gryphon Books was listed recently for $25+$5 s&h. That is more in line with what I would expect for a specialty book now out of print (for the time being), but I have seen other listings in the past asking upwards of $100 for a "Fine to Very Fine" reading copy.

I have to admit that neither listing (Necronomicon Press nor Gryphon Books) really shocked me all that much. After all, the quality was very high, the books were unique and not available elsewhere, and both presses were (and are) highly regarded by scholars, fans and collectors. The shock came when I looked up some of my own Running Dinosaur Press publications.

I have to admit that Running Dinosaur Press was never more than a hobby for me, a creative outlet for myself and others. Despite being a paying market for stories, poems and illustrations, I never made a penny on any booklet. Press runs were meager. When I was invited to sit on a Small Press panel at the 1991 World Fantasy Convention, I represented more the Micro Press than Small Press. And I purposely kept prices at a minimum, just enough to cover production and postage. I truly thought that the chapbooks would never be of interest to anyone but those whose names appeared within.

A Walk in the Dark had a horror/dark fantasy theme. I asked for poems about what scared people and received several hundred submissions, out of which I chose 49. It included such notables as Janet Fox, Steve Rasnic Tem, Duane Rimel, t. Winter-Damon, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Scott Green, and a contribution from Randall Jarrell (posthumously) via his publisher. The cover was light blue, as were all RDP covers, and the price was just $2.35, which included mailing. So I was more than a little surprised when I found a listing offering it for $26.25+$4 s&h.

In Alternate Lives, I gave authors the difficult task of exploring alternate histories, timelines and universes via poems and fiction of 100-200 words. There are a few anthologies that explore the theme, my favorite being Worlds of Maybe, but, let's face it, it's a daunting task to create a new history or timeline, put some characters in it and tell a story in anything shorter than a novel. And, yet, about thirty people accepted the challenge and did a very good job. The price on this booklet was only $1.25 (again, including postage), but I found a listing that offered a copy for $30+$5 s&h.

The last publication I want to look at is HP Lovecraft's Fungi from Yuggoth, his famous sonnet sequence, permission for which I obtained from Arkham House. I wanted to publish this for a hew reasons. I believe there is a story told in the course of the sonnets, and argued that in an issue of Robert Price's Crypt of Cthulhu, and continued that argument in this booklet.  Though a few Lovecraftian scholars agree, most do not, so over the years it has become a bit of a tempest in a Lovecraftian teacup. The second reason is that I wanted to illustrate the sonnets, in which I was joined by my good friend Nick Petrosino, who is an accomplished artist and designed much of the armor used in the film Army of Darkness. The third reason...well, what HPL fan does not want to become part of the author's mythos? Anyway, again I charged the minimum I could to cover expenses (yes, Nick was paid, I insisted) and postage, only $2.50. I found several listings in my search, but they were all around $50+s&h. I have to admit this surprised the least, as I know first hand how popular anything connected with HPL is.

So, yes, Belloq was indeed correct. Let enough time pass and almost anything, even me, can become respectable and valued. Who knows? Maybe I will end up in that alien museum after all. As a bonus, let me leave you with one of Nick's illustrations, the one he did for "Antarktos," one of the sonnets.

Deep in my dream the great bird whispered queerly

Of the black cone amid the polar waste;

Pushing above the ice-sheet lone and drearly,

By storm-crazed aeons battered and defaced.

Hither no living earth-shapes take their courses,

And only pale auroras and faint suns

Glow on that pitted rock, whose primal sources

Are guessed at dimly by the Elder Ones.

If men should glimpse it, they would merely wonder

What tricky mound of Nature’s build they spied;

But the bird told of vaster parts, that under

The mile-deep ice-shroud crouch and brood and bide.

God help the dreamer whose mad visions shew

Those dead eyes set in crystal gulfs below!

--H.P. Lovecraft 

"Holmes, I do not think we are in London anymore."

So, what am I reading at the moment? Well, among many other things a delightful Sherlock Holmes pastiche entitled Sherlock Holmes in Oz by my good friend Gary Lovisi. Yes, as odd as that sounds, Sherlock Holmes, that master of logic and deduction, finds himself in the Wonderful World of Oz, complete with Munchkins, the Yellow Brick Road and, of course, a certain Wicked Witch. A word of warning, however, Gary has based his story on the original 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, so don't expect Holmes to break into song with choruses of Munchkins or search for the Ruby Slippers. Those are all products of Hollyweird, not L. Frank Baum's febrile imagination. Adding to the invocation of the original book are the wonderful illustrations by Lucile Cali which are based on the period images by W.W. Denslow.

The story begins in London with a new menace taking shape in the East End, an insidious drug involving Red Poppies. Some of the police detectives refer to the addicts as Opium Zombies, resulting in the acronym...well, you get the idea. We also get a flashback to an old case of Holmes', "The Sign of Four," the story in which Dr Watson met of the first of his many wives of indefinite number. Despite this new and pressing case and pressure from Scotland Yard for Holmes' help, the Great Detective decides to help his good friend and biographer Dr John Watson find his great-niece Dorothy, who has gone missing from the plains of Kansas after a great storm.

Gary does a great job of depicting Holmes and Watson, though his vision of Holmes is of a more caring and compassionate man than the one depicted in Watson's jottings. It must be remembered, however, that Watson was writing for a more Penny Dreadful audience, so presenting Holmes as a soulless machine was good for business. It is more likely that Gary's characterization is closer to that of the real Sherlock Holmes. Yet, for all the infusion of humanity, Sherlock Holmes loses nothing of his deductive powers and keen intellect.

While the story contains many fantastical elements (it is Oz after all), I think Gary does very well in maintaining a suspension of belief while adhering to the tenets of the Canon. He does this through spot-on characterization, good plotting, authentic period dialogue, the drawing in of other authorities (such as Professor Challenger), and the ability to present even the most outlandish situations in a calm and logical light. I enjoyed the book very much  and recommend it both Sherlock Holmes and Wizard of Oz fans. It is published by Wildside Press and is available there, on Amazon, and other bookselling venues, in both print and digital formats.

I have known Gary Lovisi for a long time. He is a great writer and editor, is the the owner of the legendary Gryphon Books, is an expert on Sherlock Holmes, and frequently contributes to books and magazines about book collecting and pulp fiction, most recently Ed Hulse's The Art of Pulp Fiction. 

Sherlock Holmes' Triligual Time Travel Adventure

In 2005, I wrote Sherlock Holmes & the Coils of Time which was published, featuring a great cover by Jukka Murtosaari, by Gary Lovisi's Gryphon Books of Brooklyn, New York, an excellent small press geared to book collectors, crime fiction fans and Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts. It details what really happened the night Holmes returned from his supposed death at the hands of Moriarty, and put Colonel Sebastian Moran, the second most dangerous man in London, into the hands of Scotland Yard. What was a matter of hours in Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Empty House," was for me an adventure that stretched from the beginning of time to its end, with a couple of alternate histories thrown in for good measure. If you have not read this book, I urge you to do so, as I feel it is one of my better efforts. The story was told, the book was published, and I thought that was the end of it. As it turned out, not quite...

Through Gary Lovisi, I was introduced to a German literary agent who asked me to sign a simple agreement and to send him my Sherlock Holmes tales. I did, and promptly forgot about it. Imagine my surprise, then, when I receive a check and a copy of Sherlock Holmes I Zavojnice Vremena (Sherlock Holmes and the Coils of Time). Yes, I suddenly found myself translated into Croatian, published by Zagrebacka Naklada, a book publisher in Zagreb, featuring an eerie cover by Tihomir Tikulin that depicts Sherlock Holmes encountering some of the cannibalistic Morlocks in London's foggy East End. One note about this book is that it contains a second story wedded to the end of the first...a sort of "joining" story I wrote when I contemplated an omnibus edition of all five novels, a framework that would link all the novels into an episodic whole. While I was pleased with being published abroad, I was even more pleased by the reception of the book by readers in Central Europe.

And lightning strikes a third time for Coils of Time, this time in German as Sherlock Holmes und die Zeitmaschine, published May 2012 by Blitz Verlag. The cover is by designer Mark Free. It's being marketed as a collectible book, limited edition, and billed as the "First German Edition." I am very pleased with the reviews that have been published, and, more, that a new audience is being entertained by a story that was so satisfying to write.

Whenever an author finishes writing a book, there is a sense of satisfaction and completion, but also a tinge of sadness and depression, especially when so much has been invested in it -- for Sherlock Holmes and the Terror Out of Time I spent hundreds of hours researching Victorian and Edwardian London, but for this book I did at least triple that, for I had to knit together the lives of various real and fictional characters into my own story of Morlocks in London. When a book actually sees print, there is a leap of excitement...and then you move on. I count myself lucky, and privileged, to have experienced three leaps of excitement, with the same story. Thanks, Gary, and thanks, Uwe.

Never Lost in London...as long as Queen Victoria reigns (or maybe Eddie)

It's all Gary Lovisi's fault...or so I tell myself.

Gary Lovisi is the publisher of Gryphon Books of Brooklyn, N.Y., avid collector of paperback books, and Sherlock Holmes expert. When it comes to paperback collecting, he wrote the book...no, really, he did write the book: the Antique Traders Collectible Paperback Price Guide. And when it comes to Sherlock Holmes, his knowledge is inexhaustible. And the books published by his own small press house are worth collecting themselves. If you have never visited his website, please do yourself a favor:

http://www.gryphonbooks.com/

But back to Gary Lovisi's culpability. After Gryphon Books published Sherlock Holmes: Adventure of the Ancient Gods, Gary suggested that, were I to write a sequel, he'd be interested in "first refusal." A sequel was far from my mind, but Gary had planted the seed, and eventually I wrote Sherlock Holmes and the Terror Out of Time and Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time. So, am I blaming Gary Lovisi for those books? No, not at all; I blame him for my fondness ("addiction" is such an ugly word) for London guidebooks.

Before ever I write a single line, I delve deep into a region's lore and history. Nothing unique about that. Many writers' yarns could be used as walkabout guides. Personally, I love stories with a strong sense of place. Sir Arthur's own tales document London with the accuracy of a camera; one of my favorite books pairs quotes from his stories with period photos. Other writers who have married fiction and geography include Raymond Chandler, HP Lovecraft, Steven Saylor and William Faulkner. I also read books about time periods, but I favor books from from those periods, particularly guidebooks.

This edition had a full-sized fold-out map of all London in the back.

I told myself I was tracking down various editions of Baedekers, Muirhead's, ABC Rail Guides and many others just so I could accurately trace my way through London and provide readers with a memorable and accurate visit to Baghdad on the Thames. Of course, after about a dozen acquisitions through EBay, estate sales and various booksellers, here and abroad, that excuse began to wear thin, even to me.

When a passing cab picked up India Jack Neville near the East India Docks it was equally important to me that all the streets and buildings were correct as it was that poor India Jack not get rooked by the driver. However, since the British tar did not live long enough to pay a fare, the amount was actually something of a moot point. Still, knowing how much it would cost for a hansom cab ride from Charing Cross to the Zoological Gardens, for example, is a nice thing to know. Like it might come in handy some day. Well, it might! All right, maybe not, but still nice to know.


Guidebooks of London from the Victorian and Edwardian eras are not really that difficult to find, nor need they be expensive. A great many came to me via the EBay auction site, which used to function like a global car boot sale or a million garage sales; unfortunately, the once-friendly site has been overrun by corporate entities, grifters and swindlers from the Far East. ABE Books was another good source, but, caution is always advised when buying a book online, even if a photo is supplied, and sellers found themselves peppered with queries. My favorite method of purchase was in person, and it really is surprising how often antique guidebooks show up at estate sales and charity shops. Regardless of how I came across them, I still had more books (Victorian, Edwardian, the VI Georgian and the II Elizabethan) than I could ever justify with any number of books and stories I could write set in London.

This was the cultural/economic heart of London; another book I have, The London of Oscar Wilde, discounts
entirely London's East End, averring there was no need for a gentleman to ever set foot there.

It's a little difficult to see in this scan, but some 19th Century London tourist annotated the map in pencil.

Despite its small size, the Zoological Gardens was a marvel of its time;
when an antiques dealer is killed nearby in the unpublished The Quest of the Copper Scrolls Scotland
Yard conveniently blames it on an escaped lion...that somehow found its way back in.

The previous owner of this copy of The Streets of London decided
to keep his book updated through tipped-in articles from and
letters to the London Times.
I love used books!

Augustus Hare's two-volume opus is strictly not a "guidebook",  but it one of my favorites; It is just
what the title claims...street by street...step by step...house by house...profusely illustrated.

One interesting thing about guidebooks of the past was they were often rife with advertisements. While most of the ads concerned hotels in London (none in the East End, of course) and in popular spots along the many rail lines, others were for charitable associations, house agents and purveyors of "personal" products. Here are a few examples:

"Temperance Hotel" -- Don't expect it to have a bar, American or otherwise.

Mystery writer Agatha Christie was born in Torquay in 1890, and it continued to play a part in her life
and fiction; when she and husband Max Mallowan bought a home there they would have used house agents
such as those who advertised in the various guidebooks of the times.

Rowland's Kalydor might protect and promote soft, delicate skin, but a little arsenic
will give the cultured lady of society that peaches-and-cream complexion so appealing to dukes and earls.
(Hint: Don't go overboard with the arsenic)

So, you see, I would not have any of these dozens of books had Gary Lovisi not asked for "first refusal" of books I had no intention of writing. Acquiring so many was just an outgrowth of my desire to provide readers with literary excursions that were as accurate as possible, a sense of verisimilitude that they could "take to the bank," so to speak; I'm sure I was just trying to follow the guidance of the great Isaac Asimov, who once said: "No one reads a story for scientific facts, but certainly no one reads it for errors." And I think the stories I wrote were the better for the cultural immersion of their author.

Croatian edition:  Coils of Time

German edition: Coils of Time

The new incarnation of "The Coils of
Time"...plus a few friends

On the other hand, while I might be able to pass off responsibility to another for my collection of London  guidebooks, street histories and books about the lore of London, it is, I admit, difficult to explain my affinity for Victorian novels, especially those of the sub-genre known as London shop girl stories...will the poor lass discover the truth about her inheritance...will she marry the duke who does not realize her lowly status in society...will she find happiness? I just have to know.