Retirement, dear Watson, is not for to be taken lightly. Great characters of literature don’t always die, they survive beyond the life of their creators, regenerated. With the new series of TV adventures underway, it’s no surprise that the greatest detective of all is given a new breath of life in a new library reprinting novels by contemporary writers who maintain the spirit of the original tales whilst adding new ingredients.

In these first two adventures, Holmes enters a world of psychics and the undead where murder seems to come beyond the grave. Seance for a Vampire (originally published in 1994) finds him investigating two seemingly fraudulent spiritualists who have been called in by Ambrose Attamount to make contact with his recently deceased daughter. A murder in the mansion only adds to the mystery, whether supernatural or not. But it means that Holmes can only solve the mystery with the help of his cousin, Count Dracula, encountering an undead Russian pirate and the mad monk himself, Rasputin. Fred Saberhagen, best known for his fantasy and science fiction tales such as The Swords and Berserker series, pens this dark detective tale and unites two literary greats. Indeed he also penned a whole series of Dracula/vampire tales popularising the bloodsuckers long before Twilight and True Blood. Perhaps it’s not surprising then that he divides the narrative between Dr Watson and the Count himself, which helps maintain the sense of intrigue. However, it has the feel of a more conventional mystery adventure rather than an assimilation of our favourite detective’s familiar deductive skills.

In complete contrast, The Seventh Bullet (originally published in 1992) is set in that favourite murder-mystery environment, the quaint English village, as well as in the bigger realms of America. In this instance, gossip writer David Graham Phillips has been assassinated. Someone obviously didn’t like their affairs being spread about; such a muck-raking individual was bound to create enemies with his revelations. Holmes is forced to interrupt his peaceful rural vacation as he solves the clues which reveal the motives for the murder and explain how seven bullets were fired from a gun that held only six. Could that mean the killer was silenced by another gunman rather than committing suicide? This volume is penned by David D. Victor and right from the start he’s determined to show an ageing sleuth who still lives with his extraordinary powers of perception. An enjoyably affectionate celebration of those original adventures.

Two very contrasting tales with equally varied styles, both proving that you can’t keep a good detective down.

Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Seance for a Vampire by Fred Saberhagen and The Seventh Bullet by Daniel D. Victor, Titan Books, pb, rrp £7.99 each. Rating: ***½

If you are signed up with BookCrossing, FantasyCon is a great opportunity to release a few books "into the wild" (and clear a bit of bookshelf space to make room for everything you'll be taking home from Nottingham...) and find them a new home with someone who'll love them just as much as you have. Just bring a couple along and drop them off when you get to Fantasycon.

Please do take the time to register any books you're thinking of bringing – it doesn't take long. Each book will be assigned a BookCrossing code (a BCID) which you then write (or put on a post-it, depending on how you feel about writing in books!) inside. This means you can track the book's travels on the BookCrossing site – and some have been known to go all around the world.

If you're not signed up, and you don't fancy creating your own account, we have a BFS account which members can use – just ask Louise Morgan (LouM on the BFS forums) and she'll send you the login details.

Likewise, if you pick up any books that have been registered and have a BCID inside, please go to the site and mark them as found – it only takes a minute or two, and again, you can use the BFS account if you don't have one of your own.

If everyone coming to Fantasycon registers and brings just one or two books, this could be rather brilliant. I can see it becoming a real highlight of the event every year...

Aliette de Bodard is a writer of both short and long fiction, whose love of mythology and history resonates through the many stories she has written. Winner of the Writers of the Future contest and finalist for the Campbell Award, her Obsidian of Blood trilogy is currently being published by Angry Robot. We caught up with her to find out more…

Your first book, Servant of the Underworld, was published by Angry Robot in January; what is it about and what ideas were behind it? How did you get involved with Angry Robot?

I wrote Servant of the Underworld because I wanted a good fantasy mystery. There are a lot of urban fantasy procedurals on the shelves currently, but I was disappointed by a row of them I read, which had only the trappings of mysteries. The investigation had obvious suspects or an obvious motive, and the plot never quite twisted enough for my taste (I love mysteries, and a good twist even more so). So I decided to write my own magical murder mystery. Because I’m a contrarian, a history geek and a general lover of all historical detectives (particularly Lindsey Davis’s Marcus Didius Falco and Robert Van Gulik’s Judge Dee), I decided to set the novel among the Aztecs in the 15th Century, basing it on a short story, “Obsidian Shards”, which had won the Writers of the Future contest.

The novel is thus set in 1480 in Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire. A fragile balance of blood sacrifices maintains the sun in the sky and the earth fertile. My narrator is Acatl, High Priest for the Dead: his order investigates magical offences that might break this balance; however, Acatl himself is uncomfortable with his high position, wishing only to go back to his small temple and simpler tasks. But when his estranged brother Neutemoc is found in a room reeking of magic, his hands covered in blood, Acatl might have to use all his influence to get at the truth…

Lest you think it’s all mystery and murder, it also has ghostly jaguars, bloodthirsty gods, and fingernail-eating monsters. It’s the first book in the Obsidian and Blood trilogy, all of which will be released by Angry Robot.

I got involved with Angry Robot purely by chance: when I went to my first World Fantasy in Calgary in 2008, my return flight via Heathrow was cancelled, leaving me stuck in a small, out-of-the-way hotel on the outskirts of town. Since there wasn’t much to do, people converged towards the (equally small) hotel lobby, and that’s where I met John Berlyne (with whom I’d chatted the previous night), and Marc Gascoigne (whom I didn’t know at all). We fell to talking, whereupon – after telling me he was an editor – Marc said something to the effect of “we’re all stuck here, with nothing much better to do. Why don’t you pitch to me?” Which I did (after the first moment of blind-hot panic had passed), and they both looked still interested by the time I’d finished stammering through. I knew I was going to send them the manuscript at that point, so on the journey home I rewrote the entire beginning section of Servant (which I knew lagged a bit but had been too lazy to tackle), and submitted it as soon as I arrived. I was the first surprised when the whole thing turned out into a sale.

You’ve written many short stories with Aztec influences, what is it about that culture that inspires you?

It’s partly because, while I was a great mythology and history geek as a child, I never got too much into Mesoamerican cultures – thus researching them now as an author gives me the thrill of the new (it’s sad to say, but I’ve badly overdosed on Egyptian, Greek and Roman mythology to the point of not being able to enjoy them as I used to).

The other thing that’s always bugged me about Mesoamerica, and the Aztecs in particular, is how badly they have been treated by history. Not only were they exterminated by the Spanish, but they have a bad image even today. If you have a bloodthirsty religious culture somewhere in a book, chances are, it’s going to be modelled on the Aztecs. But, quite aside from the misunderstanding over the whole blood sacrifice thing (the participants were willing, and it wasn’t seen as cruel but rather as a necessity), the Aztec culture had elements that were more advanced than the culture of the West at that time period: a justice system that held the noblemen (with more freedom) to more responsibility than the commoners, a balanced if not quite equal treatment of men and women, and a social system that made it possible for commoners to be promoted to noblemen via feats of war.

You’ve also written stories influenced by other ancient cultures such as Ancient India and China, what appeals to you about them and which other cultures would you like to write about?

I spent six months in India as part of a humanitarian internship – before leaving, we were required to familiarise ourselves with the culture, and that was how I discovered Indian literature and mythology, at least the little that’s available in France in a language I can understand. I was fascinated by the feel of the ancient epics such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and when I started writing short stories, I tried to recapture some of that feel. I didn’t trust myself enough to write them in India, though, so I made up a pseudo-Hindu world, Lansara, in which I moved avatars and peasants, warriors and queens and demons.

In the end, though, I realised that Lansara was a mistake: people with no knowledge of history just assumed that it was Ancient India, even though a lot of things didn’t jibe. That’s the trouble I get for writing in unfamiliar settings, I guess. When I started out on Ancient China, I thought I was going to get it right this time – and stopped pretending to be writing in secondary worlds.

With Ancient China, the preoccupation was a little different: my mother is Vietnamese, and Vietnam has been fairly heavily influenced by Chinese culture. So a lot of things about China were familiar when I started looking into it – Confucian doctrine, for starters, as well as some of the beliefs, and it was familiar enough to keep me looking for more. I find it a fascinating country: the history spans millennia of fairly different time periods with pretty large variations, and the mindset is something I can relate to, at least partially. Plus, it’s also a welcome change from endless European-derived fantasies.

In general, what I find interesting about using a culture that is so distant from us is that mixture of the familiar and the alien: those people are human, therefore their thought processes must be like ours today, and yet their ideals and the mould in which they lived is something we have trouble imagining. I often say that you don’t have to go off Earth to find alien societies; I think it’s a healthy exercise to take some time, now and again, to realise that not everyone has the same ideals or the same beliefs, and that those deserve some respect, or at least a modicum of understanding without demonising. As a reader, I always enjoy stories that immerse me in something different; and as a writer, I try to provide that same experience to my own readers.

As to other cultures in my fiction… I don’t know. I feel getting this kind of stuff right can take years, and I don’t think I’m there yet, either with the Aztecs or the Chinese. Another culture I’d be interested in would be the Inca (my favourite alt-history candidate to form an overseas empire, given their high degree of organisation and territorial drive).

How have your travels influenced your stories? Are there any places you would like visit, either current day or historic?

I’m a huge history buff, so anything with ruins and a bit of a decent guidebook can keep me busy for a while. I don’t consciously use travels for research, but I do find a lot of stuff I can use, whether it’s the layout of houses, or odd little customs, or a great art piece that begs its own story. It takes time, though. I visited Andalucia in 2001, and it took me three years to actually write a novel related to the Alcazar in Sevilla (said novel was a journeyman effort, totally unpublishable, but that’s another matter).

Places I would like to visit: too many to mention… I’ll stick to Mexico (where I firmly hope to go someday), and to Japan (I have a number of friends in Japan and have always been fascinated by the idea of going there, as it’s one of the only First World countries that’s not of Western descent). As far as history goes, a lot of the places I’d like to go would have been fairly unpleasant for a lone woman, so I’ll stick to Ancient Egypt.

The complete interview will appear in Dark Horizons #57, to be sent out to members early in September. The issue will also feature interviews with Mark Charan Newton and Allen Ashley.

For more information about Aliette de Bodard and links to an excellent selection of her short fiction, hop on over to http://aliettedebodard.com

Competition!

If you would like to win a copy of Servant of the Underworld, all you have to do is answer the following question:

Where is Servant of the Underworld set?

Send your answers to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it by November 30 and the high priests will select one lucky winner.

Jim Fuess, cover artist of Dark Horizons #53, has updated his website (www.jimfuessart.com) with eight works in the new collision series from the Sticks and Stones show at the Watchung Arts Center, including Collision #8, Collision #3, The Brain in Color, Wave #5, Orange and Purple Abstract and Jump.

The show was organised by the New Art Group.

A story of fate, passion, jealousy, suicide, bullfighting and translation from 1950, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman takes place twenty years earlier in Esperanza, on the coast of Spain, but its story begins centuries before that. On trial for an appalling crime, Hendrick van der Zee blasphemes most dreadfully and is cursed by God to wander the seas of the earth until judgment day. There's a way out: every seven years he gets to spend half a year among men, to find a woman who could redeem him, a woman willing to give up her life for him.

Pandora Reynolds understands unreasonable demands, since she makes them of others: she tells one suitor that she will not consider his advances unless he pushes his car off a cliff, but considers their deal broken when he recovers it from the ocean. She's a drama queen, a vicarious thrill seeker who, unfulfilled by her life, chooses "fury and destruction", as the Dutchman says. Meeting, they are overwhelmed by their mutual need, though knowing what must result he resists as long as he is able.

For a restored print, it's a bit scratchy, and the colour is very variable – traces perhaps of why it required restoration in the first place. Despite that, the beauty of the film shines through: each shot resembles a carefully composed oil painting, often with symbolic intent – when Pandora and Hendrick kiss for the first time, and in other crucial scenes, his ship is visible in the distance, hanging over them, predicting their doom. The narration is sometimes rather on the nose, with the actors comically appearing to act in response to the narration, but the performances are otherwise excellent, James Mason and Ava Gardner in particular being quite wonderful as the Dutchman and Pandora.

Though Pandora's depiction in the film is unflattering, a feminist reading is possible, by which she is frustrated by the limitations of her times, and forced to live through the men in her life. "Happiness lies in the simple things," says Stephen Cameron, her rather aged suitor, but given his determination to break the land speed record it's clear the maxim is for wives rather than husbands. Given the opportunity, Pandora might have found fulfilment and drama behind the wheel of her own racing car, rather than in the arms of a tragic ghost of times past.

It's a remarkable film, and one whose re-release is well-timed to appeal to fans of modern films of supernatural romance – though given its tragic conclusion, and the way that conclusion is presented as heroic, beautiful and inevitable, it's perhaps the last thing maudlin, love-struck teenagers should be watching...

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, Albert Lewin (dir/wri), Park Circus, DVD/BluRay, 1hr58.

Peter will be attending FantasyCon 2010 on SUNDAY September 19 Britannia Hotel,
Nottingham visit www.fantasycon.org.uk for further details.

Peter F. Hamilton was born in Rutland in 1960. He began writing in 1987, and sold his first short story to Fear magazine in 1988. He has also been published in Interzone and the In Dreams and New Worlds anthologies, and several small press publications. His first novel was Mindstar Rising, published in 1993, and he has been steadily productive since then.

Peter lives near Rutland Water with his wife Kate, daughter Sophie and son Felix. Visit www.peterfhamilton.co.uk to find out more about Peter's books.