some fine reviews, was short-listed for an Aurora Award and released in an Italian translation (Il Grimorio di Baker Street) by Gargoyle Books in 2010. Two of the stories — Barbara Roden’s The Things That Shall Come Upon Them and Chris Roberson’s Merridew of Abominable Memory — were picked up for John Joseph Adams’ reprint anthology The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes alongside stories by Stephen King and Neil Gaiman. Not too bad for our first effort!
Needless to say we immediately began work on a follow-up, practically commissioning stories on the spot, over pints of Guinness, from writers Stephen Volk, Mark Morris, Lawrence C. Connolly, Barbara Roden and Simon K. Unsworth, at the launch during WFC 2008. Within a few months we also added stories from William Meikle, Neil Jackson, Leigh Blackmore, James A. Moore, Hayden Trenholm, William Patrick Maynard and of course my co-editor Jeff Campbell. Add in another cover from Timothy Lantz, a beautiful Hammer Horror-inspired frontispiece by comic book artist Neil Vokes, a foreword from Leslie Klinger and at WFC San Diego in October 2009 we unleashed Gaslight Grotesque: Nightmare Tales of Sherlock Holmes into the world.
All of which brings us more or less up to date and leads directly to the genesis of Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes.
If you’ve ever wondered what might have set Sherlock Holmes on the path to becoming a detective, then you’re going to love our opening story from BAFTA winning screenwriter Stephen Volk. The Comfort of the Seine is a haunting tale of sorrow, wherein a young Sherlock Holmes takes a trip to Paris and finds an all too brief and unexpected romance that leads not only to poetic heartbreak, but also places him in the path of a mysterious and career-defining mentor.
In The Adventure of Lucifer’s Footprints Bryant and May author Christopher Fowler weaves a tight tale of military betrayal where the galloping ghosts of the wrongful dead come thundering out of a storm to seek their vengeance.
A ghastly grimoire, written in the blood of a madman, is stolen from the monks who have guarded its secrets for centuries. To stop a string of terrible and inexplicable murders they turn to Sherlock Holmes, but can even the Great Detective withstand the pull of these cursed pages? Find out in The Deadly Sin of Sherlock Holmes by Tom English.
The influence of H. P. Lovecraft rears its head and the odd tentacle in William Meikle’s The Color That Came to Chiswick — a pulpy tale of cosmic angst, alien invasion and beer. I can assure you that you’ll never look at a St. Paddy’s day pint in quite the same way after reading this one.
World Fantasy Award nominated writer Simon K. Unsworth returns to our pages with a classic country house mystery that is anything but cosy and traditional. There is terror afoot when we learn the secrets of the aged beekeeper in A Country Death.
The late Fred Saberhagen was, as mentioned earlier, one of the writers whose work influenced the direction of our Gaslight series, but due to his illness we never had the opportunity to commission a story from him for Gaslight Grimoire. He passed away in 2007. While we make a point of only publishing original pieces, as a tribute to Fred Saberhagen we’re very pleased to be able to reprint a short story of his, From the Tree of Time, wherein a certain Transylvanian Count comes to the aide of Sherlock Holmes.
One of the great perks of editing this series is that I get to work with authors whose books and short stories I’ve read and admired for many years. Yes, no question, I’m an overgrown fanboy and I’m not above abusing my position to squeeze more stories from some of my favorite writers. Gaslight Grimoire allowed me to work with Kim Newman, Barbara Hambly and Martin Powell. In Gaslight Grotesque I was able to work on stories by Stephen Volk, Mark Morris and James A. Moore. For this present volume I had the great pleasure of working with another of my heroes, Simon Clark. A ghostly voice, from a man long dead, rises along a telephone wire from the ocean floor in Sherlock Holmes and the Diving Bell.
I’m pleased to bring back the multi-talented (you should hear him play guitar and sing) Lawrence C. Connolly for another go-round with Sherlock Holmes. In The Executioner we finally learn the truth of how Sherlock Holmes managed to rise from his apparent death at the Reichenbach Falls.
Calgary writer Kevin Cockle’s Sherlock Holmes and the Great Game gives us a Sherlock Holmes who is not at all what one might expect from Watson’s reports. At times reminiscent of Hammer Films’ The Lost Continent the story is a rollicking and mystical adventure of Aztecs in the Arctic.
Paul Kane pits Sherlock Holmes against the most implacable foe ever faced by man and forces him to unravel The Greatest Mystery. Eliminating the impossible is definitely not an option in this story.
Vegas, baby, yeah! Tony Richards takes us to that Mecca of lost souls in this 21st century tale of the immortal Sherlock Holmes. Bodies drained of blood turn up in the desert and Holmes must venture into The House of Blood to find out why.
Our final entry has Kim Newman returning to the Gaslight series with another fine and fun novella in his ongoing series of Moriarty and Moran stories. The rascally Moran learns firsthand the price of obsession in The Adventure of the Six Maledictions when the Professor assembles a collection of not- so-desirable trinkets … and their owners come calling.
There you go, dear reader, twelve uncanny tales drawn around Sherlock Holmes and his weird world. I had a hell of a lot of fun bringing together these stories and hope you have as much enjoyment in reading them.
While the notion of combining Holmes and the supernatural seemed a might bit odd back in 2006, it appears to have caught on, as I write this in 2010. The big-screen film Sherlock Holmes (2009)had Holmes investigating an occult conspiracy, a cash-in film from The Asylum had him facing robotic dinosaurs and a villainous steampunk Iron Man, Wildstorm comics had Holmes saving London from a zombie apocalypse, and the follow-up series pits him against Dracula. A television series placing Holmes in modern-day London has been released, to great acclaim, by the BBC, and various other ‘fantastic’ projects keep coming. The wheel turns and Sherlock Holmes is once more enjoying a boom. Enjoy it folks, but remember who sent you!
Cheers,
Charles Prepolec
The Comfort of the Seine
by Stephen Volk
My Dear Lestrade,
It is not a huge deductive leap to know you are at this moment wondering why, upon my recent death, this document is presented into your hands, and not those of my friend and chronicler Dr. Watson. The truth is, I cannot bear the thought that he might construe my privacy on these matters for so many years as something of a betrayal.
After you have read it, please place the enclosed securely in the files of the Black Museum at Scotland Yard. The reason for my not wanting this “adventure” to come to public attention in my lifetime will become clear in the reading of it.
But now, as the evening light is fading, I feel a heavy debt not to depart carrying an unwritten chapter of history to my grave, and if my arthritic hand will hold this pen long enough, I shall put the record to right.
Read on, detective. For what could be of more peculiar interest than the solution to a mystery where it seemed no mystery existed?
—Holmes
Youth is a country visited fleetingly, at the time with the only intention of reaching another destination, but in which we later wish we had lingered longer, whilst our energy was boundless and our eyesight good, and the colors of the world less grey and circumscribed. One ventures near cliff edges. One climbs branches, unable to conceive
