Solar Pons

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Solar Pons is a fictional detective created by August Derleth as a pastiche of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

1 Approach
2 Character model
3 Legacy
4 Solar Pons books
5 External links

[edit] Approach

On hearing that he had no plans to write more Holmes stories, the young Derleth wrote to Conan Doyle, asking permission to take over the job. Conan Doyle graciously declined the offer, but Derleth, despite having never been to London, set about finding a name which was syllabically reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes, and wrote his first set of pastiches. He was to go on to write more stories about Pons than Conan Doyle did about Holmes.

[edit] Character model

Pons is quite openly a pastiche of Holmes; the first book about Solar Pons was in fact titled In Re: Sherlock Holmes. The similarities can hardly be missed: Like Holmes, Solar Pons has prodigious powers of observation and deduction, who can astound his companions by telling them minute details about people he has only just met, details that he proves to have deduced in seconds of observation. Where Holmes's stories are narrated by his companion Dr. John H. Watson, the Pons stories are narrated by Dr. Lyndon Parker; the two share lodgings not at 221B Baker Street but at 7B Praed Street, where their landlady is not Mrs. Hudson but Mrs. Johnson. Most strikingly, where Sherlock Holmes has an elder brother Mycroft Holmes of even greater gifts, Solar Pons has a brother Bancroft to fill the same role.

It cannot be said, however, that Solar Pons is merely Sherlock Holmes with the name changed, for the important reason that Sherlock Holmes also exists in Pons' world: Pons and Parker are aware of the famous detective and hold him in high regard, but where Holmes' adventures took place primarily in the 1880s and 1890s, Pons and Parker live in the 1920s and 1930s (when Derleth began writing the Pons stories.) Pons fans also regard Derleth as having given Pons his own distinct different personality, far less melancholy than Holmes.

The Pons stories also crossover, at times, with the writings of others, such as Derleth's literary correspondent H. P. Lovecraft in 'The Adventure of the Six Silver Spiders', and Fu Manchu author Sax Rohmer.

[edit] Legacy

After Derleth's death in 1971, further stories about the character have been written by the author Basil Copper.

A society, The Praed Street Irregulars (PSI), is dedicated to Solar Pons. The Irregulars were founded by Luther Norris in 1966 in the style of the better-known Baker Street Irregulars. A branch, The London Solar Pons Society, was established in England headed by Roger Johnson. The PSI produced a newsletter, the Pontine Dossier, which ceased publication in 1977. Thought it is not formally associated with the Praed Street Irregulars, publication of The Solar Pons Gazette began in 2006 and issues may be downloaded from the Solar Pons website below.