{"id":4343,"date":"2014-07-16T14:31:06","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T20:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/myparticularfriend.com\/?p=4343"},"modified":"2014-07-16T18:45:49","modified_gmt":"2014-07-17T00:45:49","slug":"a-study-in-terror-sir-arthur-conan-doyles-revolutionary-stories-of-fear-and-the-supernatural","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/myparticularfriend.com\/?p=4343","title":{"rendered":"A Study in Terror: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle\u2019s Revolutionary Stories of Fear and the Supernatural"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"study-in-terror\"<\/a>Available Sept. 24, 2014<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s nearly impossible for a Sherlockian to remember that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle\u00a0wrote anything\u00a0other than the Sherlock Holmes stories. Some of us\u00a0may know The Lost World<\/em>, but mainly for the suspicion that Lord John Roxton was really Sherlock Holmes in disguise. The really knowledgeable may know of The White Company<\/em> and Brigadier Gerard and some have actually read those novels, but what very few can appreciate is the sheer quantity and diversity of what Conan Doyle\u00a0wrote.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why\u00a0A Study in Terror: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle\u2019s Revolutionary Stories of Fear and the Supernatural<\/em> is so enjoyable. These nine stories (one is a novella) are a good reminder that Doyle dared to tread where his Great Detective would not. Ghosts can\u00a0apply in these stories, along with witches, sky beings and dwellers under the earth.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d read a few of these stories long ago in collections of stories that had appeared in the Strand Magazine<\/em>, but frankly I\u2019d forgotten\u00a0Doyles\u2019 excursions into the supernatural. In my mind, I\u2019d\u00a0equated his supernatural leanings with fairies and ectoplasm and automatic writing and not the sort of Lovecraftian horror present in these stories.<\/p>\n

H.P. Lovecraft, of course, is what one is most reminded of in these stories.\u00a0All the stories but one are written as journal entries and one story is the account of a dead man. These\u00a0stories are the equivalent of the modern-day found footage in movies like The Blair Witch Project<\/em> or\u00a0Paranormal Activity<\/em> and they read like dispatches\u00a0from the grave. The\u00a0narrators are sober-minded men\u00a0who\u00a0dally with the unknown at their peril and it\u2019s interesting that a man who\u00a0espoused and championed spiritualism should choose to write such stories. These are all cautionary tales and certainly don\u2019t paint a rosy picture of the spirit realm.<\/p>\n

Then again, a good story is a good story and it\u2019s important to remember that Doyle wrote an amazing amount. He had to, of course, for he had given up his medical practice in 1891 and lived by his pen.\u00a0Nevertheless, many of these stories were\u00a0written after he\u2019d already become famous and I think it\u2019s obvious he wrote these\u00a0simply because he enjoyed it.<\/p>\n

The first story, The Horror of the Heights<\/em>, is far more of a speculative\/science fiction tale, very much in keeping with The Lost World<\/em> and is my favorite. It\u2019s set in what for Doyle would have been the future\u2014the 1920s\u2014and\u00a0it\u2019s the journal of an aviator who flew too close to the sun and discovered the rarefied air at 41,000 feet is not devoid of life but in fact is a teeming \u00a0jungle.<\/p>\n

Accompanying the story is\u00a0The Oceans Of The Sky: Aviation And The Horror Of The Heights<\/em>, an essay by Chuck Davis that examines how prescient Doyle was about the future of aviation. He generally gets good marks and shows he was aware of\u00a0current-day technology and predicts some advances. I enjoyed the essay with some caveats. The essay has too many links to wikipedia. Please know that I love wikipedia\u00a0and use it constantly, but always as a springboard. I also felt\u00a0speculation about the biology\u00a0of aerial monsters unnecessary, but that\u2019s because, despite loving science fiction and supernatural stories, I\u2019m a committed skeptic about the unseen world, and I don\u2019t think the same can\u00a0be said for the contributors to this anthology.<\/p>\n

I really enjoyed the essay\u00a0Revisions Of History: Arthur Conan Doyle And The Mary Celeste Mystery<\/em> by editor Derrick Berlanger. One of the stories included in this anthology is\u00a0J. Habakuk Jephson\u2019s Statement<\/em>, Doyle\u2019s fictionalized account of what happened to the Mary Celeste, the most famous maritime mystery of all time. Doyle\u2019s story\u00a0was so influential it overshadowed the real events, to the point most people aware of the\u00a0mystery believe Doyle\u2019s fictional account to be the real story. The essay is a sober-minded but enjoyable examination of how truth becomes fiction.<\/p>\n

The final essay,\u00a0Towards The Horizon: Christopher Penczak And The Paranormal World Of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle<\/em>, is an interview between Brian Belanger and Mr. Penczak, credited as an award-winning author of over twenty books, the co-founder of the nonprofit organization The Temple of Witchcraft, and the co-owner of Copper Cauldron Publishing;\u00a0a teacher of shamanism, tarot, Reiki, herbalism, astrology and Qabalah. When I read this, my eyes rolled so much my cat was playing with them on the floor.<\/p>\n

The interview explores the state of spiritualism today, which is appropriate in an age when far fewer people claim to be religious but\u00a0many more claim to be spiritual. I would have appreciated a more scholarly approach to the topic, but\u00a0I enjoyed reading the essay all the same, but perhaps with more humor than intended.<\/p>\n

The one story in the collection that does make one think Doyle had a pennies per word calculation in mind when he wrote it is the novella The Parasite<\/em>. It\u2019s a dark tale of possession and\u00a0again makes one wonder why such an advocate of the spirit world would write such a story. The story\u00a0frankly goes on way too long but it, like most of the stories in this collection, has a saving grace.<\/p>\n

Doyle, when you come right\u00a0down to it, was an optimist. An H.P. Lovecraft story often ended with the narrator waiting for the rats to finish him off or Cthulhu to take him to another dimension, but Doyle\u2019s\u00a0British bull dog spirit rarely allowed that pessimistic of an ending. And that makes this anthology so enjoyable. Doyle gives us a glimpse of a darker world but in the end, we survive and even though we didn\u2019t always like what we glimpsed, we\u2019re intrigued enough to want to read more. And curiously enough, the full title of this anthology is\u00a0A Study in Terror: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle\u2019s Revolutionary Stories of Fear and the Supernatural\u2014Vol. 1. <\/em>(Editor Berlanger has confirmed there is another volume in the works.)<\/p>\n

Despite a few trifling quibbles, I can heartily recommend this anthology to anyone who thinks\u00a0ghosts can<\/em> apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Available Sept. 24, 2014 It\u2019s nearly impossible for a Sherlockian to remember that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle\u00a0wrote anything\u00a0other than the Sherlock Holmes stories. Some of us\u00a0may know The Lost World, but mainly for the suspicion that Lord John Roxton was really Sherlock Holmes in disguise. The really knowledgeable may know …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"A Study in Terror: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle\u2019s Revolutionary Stories of Fear and the Supernatural Review http:\/\/wp.me\/p32UJ9-183","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other-reviews","column","threecol","has-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/myparticularfriend.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/study-in-terror.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p32UJ9-183","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/myparticularfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/myparticularfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/myparticularfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/myparticularfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/myparticularfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4343"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/myparticularfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4370,"href":"http:\/\/myparticularfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4343\/revisions\/4370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/myparticularfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/myparticularfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/myparticularfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/myparticularfriend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}