The Roots of Steampunk -- Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles

On Thursday, we established that Detective Fiction is an important precursor to modern Steampunk because of its devotion to logic and deductive reasoning. As Steampunk is by and large a science fiction subgenre dependent on technology and science, this is a reasonable conclusion to draw. And no character recognizable to a contemporary reader is a more shining example of this archetype than one Sherlock Holmes.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced Sherlock Holmes to the world in 1887 with the tale A Study in Scarlet. Between that first publication and 1927, when the last Sherlock Holmes tale was published, Conan Doyle wrote four full-length novels and 56 short stories featuring the detective and his companion Doctor John H. Watson. All but four of the Holmesian catalog are narrated by Watson as opposed to the detective himself, and A Study in Scarlet includes lengthy omniscient narration of events not known to either Holmes or Watson.

The Hound of the Baskervilles, published in serial format between 1901 and 1902 in The Strand magazine, brought Holmes and Watson to the English countryside where the styles of Gothic fiction and Detective stories blend together. For Gothic fiction, we have the windswept moor and the out-of-the-way manor house; for Detective fiction, there's Holmes and Watson and all their scientific methods of teasing out the solutions to cases.

For those who don't know the story: The Baskerville family is cursed because of an ancestor, Sir Hugo, who lived life to all sorts of immoral excess. In particular, Sir Hugo kidnapped a yeoman's daughter and kept her locked in his bedchamber; when she escaped, Sir Hugo proclaimed he'd sell his soul to the devil if he could only overtake her in pursuit. Sir Hugo's friends found both he and the girl dead out on the moor, and a large spectral hound standing over Sir Hugo's body. The hound ripped out Hugo's throat and disappeared.

Fast forward several centuries later, and Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead in the yew valley because of a heart attack. For the safety of his nephew, Sir Henry, a Dr. John Mortimer summons Holmes and Watson to the moor to investigate Sir Charles's death. Watson takes the lead in this case, as Holmes is tied up in London with other cases. The good doctor accompanies Sir Henry to Baskerville Hall, where the majority of the action takes place.

Watson investigates, and uncovers a number of secrets and plots within plots surrounding the death of Sir Charles. Holmes eventually reappears, saying he wants to be nearby when the critical moment occurs, and together Holmes and Watson confront Jack Stapleton (who's a Baskerville himself), and was the one who managed to kill Sir Charles simply by virtue of frightening him to death. The eponymous Hound is an actual dog that Stapelton covered in phosphorus so it appeared like a ghost.

Holmes and Watson use their minds to see through the deception of the dog, and uncover a plot involving hidden marriages, lost cousins, and escaped convicts all in the same story. There's action and danger, and real fear out on the moor, but this story serves to show that logic and deduction can save the day in the end.

To Steampunk, stories like The Hound of the Baskervilles give a sense of scientific terror. By that, I mean it shows that logic can overcome the prehistoric terrors of ghostly figures and creatures beyond the world, and in the face of science there is always a rational explanation. One of the more famous Holmesian sayings is in fact, "When you remove the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Steampunk tales like The Affinity Bridge by George Mann can draw a direct line to the Holmes stories. The method of detection through logic and observation, and complete and total devotion to solving the case is what we can take away from the stories of Sherlock Holmes. Sometimes by any means necessary.

Tomorrow: Dystopias and the Bleakness of the Future-Past

The Roots of Steampunk -- Detective Fiction and a Devotion to Logic

Logic has been the guiding star of many a fictional detective: Sherlock Holmes, C. Auguste Dupin, Hercule Poirot. The list goes on and on when you consider the number of detectives who use their minds and not their fists to solve murders, burglaries, and all sorts of conspiracies before they destroy the government.

In 1841, Edgar Allen Poe wrote "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," in which he introduced Dupin and logical detection to the world. This story is the archetype for innumerable detectives since then -- Holmes, Poirot, and Nero Wolfe among them -- where the narrator of the story is a personal friend of the detective and the solution to the case is presented before the reasoning that lead up to it. Dupin was also the archetype of the brilliant, logical detective.

Dupin was the founding character of what would eventually become common tropes of detective fiction: the eccentric but brilliant detective, the bumbling constabulary, the first-person narration by a close personal friend. Contrary to some later detectives, Sherlock Holmes included, Poe sets up the Paris police as a foil to the detective -- law enforcement very much does not want Dupin's help in this tale. Poe himself called his Dupin stories "tales of ratiocination" as opposed to detective fiction, a term that would come into being later.

Across the pond in England, Charles Dickens added a mystery subplot to Bleak House, where a lawyer is murdered in his office and Inspector Bucket of the Metropolitan Police Force has to solve the crime. However, it's Wilkie Collins, a protege of Mr. Dickens, who's The Woman in White is considered the first great mystery novel. T.S. Elliot called Collins's The Moonstone (1868) "the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels ... in a genre invented by Collins and not by Poe."

Where Poe crafted the brilliant detective that's such a fixture of the genre, Collins added in several other characteristics that mark many twentieth century mystery novels:

• English country house robbery
• An "inside job"
• red herrings
• A celebrated, skilled, professional investigator
• Bungling local constabulary
• Detective enquiries
• Large number of false suspects
• The "least likely suspect"
• A rudimentary "locked room" murder
• A reconstruction of the crime
• A final twist in the plot

You'll notice that Poe and Collins share the bungling constabulary and reconstruction of the crime tropes of detective fiction. I think both of them are equally responsible for birthing the genre, but also agree with the historians who place the genesis with Poe and not Collins. That might also be an American-centric viewpoint (for which I apologize to my international readers).

And then, in 1887, we come to one Mr. Sherlock Holmes of 221B Baker Street, London. If anyone can be said to rocket detective fiction into the stratosphere, then Holmes is it. The brainchild of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes has become a by-word for the part of the brilliant outside detective who assists the police with solving crimes via his brilliant deductive reasoning. Conan Doyle stated that he based Holmes off Dr. Joseph Bell, for whom Conan Doyle worked as a clerk at the Royal Edinburgh Infirmary. Dr. Bell was apparently famous for drawing large conclusions from the smallest of observations.

What does this all offer to Steampunk? Well it depends on what you're looking for. In the case of George Mann's The Affinity Bridge, Sir Maurice Newbury and Miss Veronica Hobbes use their deductive reasoning skills to discern the whereabouts of a missing automaton, investigate the strangulations attributed to a glowing policeman, and battle a zombie plague in London's slums. The Affinity Bridge is Steampunk wedded to Detective Fiction in the tradition of Holmes and Dupin.

Much of Steampunk has a devotion to logic inherent in the tale. Victorian sensibilities abound with logical deduction and reasoning, at least in fiction, and stories like The Affinity Bridge carry it forward into Steampunk tales. Alexia Maccon, nee Tarrabotti, the heroine of Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series, is also highly devoted to logical reasoning when it comes to the underpinning conflict of the stories.

Logic and science fiction go hand-in-hand in other words. Logical underpinnings to the world, mystery subplots, and all sorts of clues and puzzles included in a story are the hallmarks of Detective Fiction and the class of Steampunk that owes its roots to the great detectives of Victorian fiction.

Tomorrow: A special guest blogger writes on Steampunk Fashion
Monday: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles