DATo wrote: ↑25 Jul 2018, 02:25
Lil Reads wrote: ↑24 Jul 2018, 05:53
ACD's estate has authorized some novels and short stories, including at least two in a series titled
Holmes for the Holidays a collection of mysteries from various authors set during the holiday season.
The fact that Doyle's estate has authorized the sale of his character(s) is absolutely meaningless to me. I have known personally and have heard stories of people who had spent their lives building a respected and profitable business only to have their greedy, talentless children run it into the ground or sell it outright for cash. The Anheusser - Bush family is a case in point. The fact that his estate is profiting from his work by accepting anything which puts money into their pockets, considering that they did nothing other than be born into the family to deserve this legal right, is really disturbing to me.
Holmes for the Holidays ???? .... Doyle must be turning over in his grave. It probably won't be long before some greedy opportunist creates a comic book series with Jesus Christ as a super-hero who fights crime and space invaders alongside Superman, Spiderman and Wonder Woman. There is no longer any respect. It's all about money. Anything for money.
The complex issue with ACD's canon is, depending of the copyright laws of various countries, sometimes the estate has no jurisdiction. For example, in the UK, everything ACD wrote is not protected under copyright so anyone can republish his work and anyone can adapt his work. However, in the US, the works that were published near the end of ACD's life are still protected under copyright so using ideas from those works, e.g. Holmes retiring to the countryside as a beekeeper,.
The BBC series had a problem briefly since they did use ideas from the later canon and it was going to be marketed to the US. The film
Mr. Holmes was another weird example - it is based on a combination of the ACD canon and work from an American author.
These and other weird cases have been covered by academics and raised some questions about how the ACD estate deals with future works. Some of these academics have theorized that the ACD estate is trying to control something that is in the public domain or will be soon; other academics argue that the loopholes in copyright law are the main problem especially because other canons have to deal with similar legal issues.
I mentioned
Holmes for the Holidays in particular because most of the stories allude to or reference one of the more well known stories in the ACD canon,
The Blue Carbuncle, which had a holiday setting and had Holmes letting the criminal go free since the case against the innocent man was flimsy due to weird circumstances.
It showed that Holmes did care about people, even when he usually denigrates people - usually the officers of Scotland Yard - for being less intelligent than him.
It also helps explain part of his moral code, as he was more concerned with solving the case and understanding the mystery rather than putting the repenting criminal in jail, especially when the main goal - letting the falsely accused man go free - could be accomplished right then.
Holmes was not concerned with police procedure, he just wanted answers.