Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds  by Wade Wellman and Manly W. Wellman

 

Please note, I see that Amazon also lists a book with the title: The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: War of the Worlds  by Manly Wade Wellman and Wade Wellman.  I'm not sure whether that is identical to the book I read, or whether it includes other material.

 

 

The concept of the book is that during the events in H. G. Wells’ War Of The Worlds, Sherlock Holmes uses his skills to understand what is happening.

 

I'm a fan of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories as well as SF.  (And I’ve enjoyed some latter day Holmes stories, as well.)  So I wanted to give this book a try, although the rating of the book at Goodreads.com was not impressive.

 

This book just wasn't written with the same style as Doyle.  I'm a reader who generally doesn't put emphasis on the writing technique and such matters.  Nor do I recall Doyle being mentioned as one of the literary gods of style.  What’s more, I wouldn't say Wellman's writing style was amateurish.  So I can only say I didn't experience the same feel.  Perhaps, part of this was the fact the story isn't really a detective mystery.  Holmes is bright and has impressive insights, but he doesn't fix the problem by unraveling a puzzle, and then have his deductions be the cause of the bad guy's failure.  Holmes merely predicts what will happen without his intervention.

 

In addition to the general feel, there is some divergence from usual Holmes lore.  Holmes has occasionally been portrayed as having a love interest at some point in his life, but the idea of him having a long-term relationship - which he is still in - seems inconsistent with the general Holmes theme.  There is also the inclusion of Prof. Challenger, which may not be contrary to the Holmes concept, but detracts from it being a Holmes-oriented story. 

 

The book is like some modern Holmes films where Holmes is a bright guy who does good things, but is not the same kind of investigative puzzle solver as was so impressive in Doyle's stories.  Perhaps, you might ask what I expected - what clever mystery was to be unraveled in the War of the Worlds?  I don't know.  But the fact the War of the Worlds lacked potential for an effective Holmes story doesn't make this an effective Holmes story.

 

Finally, there are my issues with hard SF.  Wells' War of the Worlds had the Martians dying as a result of Earth germs.  The ability of the germs (or other life forms) evolved on one planet to infect or get sustenance from life evolved on another planet is questionable.  Perhaps, Wellman's adoption of that aspect could be accepted as merely being consistent with the older work he is playing with.  However, there are two issues with this.  First, Wellman's book does take issue with a few elements of Wells' book - but not this.  And Wellman actually takes this further in his additions to what Wells' told us about the aliens.

 

Therefore, perhaps this book may be of greater interest to those who are interested in it as an extension of Wells' writing, as opposed to those interested in it from the Sherlock Holmes angle.  It's been too long since I read the original War of the Worlds for me to make a personal opinion how it works in that way.

 

 

 

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