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Michael Joseph Kurland (born March 1, 1938) is an American author, best known for his works of science fiction and detective fiction. Kurland lives in San Luis Obispo, California.
Kurland's early career was devoted to works of science fiction. His first published novel was Ten Years to Doomsday (written with Chester Anderson) in 1964. Other notable works include Tomorrow Knight, Pluribus, Perchance, and The Unicorn Girl . The Unicorn Girl was the middle volume of the Greenwich Village Trilogy by three different authors, the other two being Chester Anderson and T.A. Waters. (Anderson's book, The Butterfly Kid , was nominated for a Hugo Award). Kurland has also written two novels, Ten Little Wizards and A Study in Sorcery , set in the world of Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy, prefiguring his later success as a mystery writer.
Following the success of The Infernal Device, which was nominated for an Edgar Award (as was his earlier A Plague of Spies), Kurland turned his attention to detective fiction. Several of his subsequent novels have been sequels to The Infernal Device, and feature Sherlock Holmes's nemesis, Professor Moriarty. In this series, Professor Moriarty is an antihero (and sometimes a real hero) who resignedly tolerates Holmes's obsessively exaggerated opinion of his criminal empire, and is often brought into reluctant alliance with his nemesis in order to counter menaces ranging from threats to their associates to threats to the nation.
He has edited three themed anthologies of Sherlock Holmes short stories, My Sherlock Holmes (stories narrated by characters other than Watson or Holmes), Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years (stories set during the period in which Holmes was supposed to be dead) and Sherlock Holmes: the American Years (stories set in the time between Holmes' graduation from university and his meeting Dr. Watson).
He is also the author of numerous non-fiction works, including How to Solve a Murder: the Forensic Handbook and How to Try a Murder: the Handbook for Armchair Lawyers.
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—either professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a "consulting detective" in the stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation, deduction, forensic science and logical reasoning that borders on the fantastic, which he employs when investigating cases for a wide variety of clients, including Scotland Yard.
Professor James Moriarty is a fictional character who first appeared in the Sherlock Holmes short story "The Final Problem" written by Arthur Conan Doyle and published under the second collection of Holmes short stories, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, late in 1893. Moriarty was also featured in the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel The Valley of Fear, but never made a direct appearance in the story. Apart from that, Holmes mentions him in five other stories: "The Adventure of the Empty House", "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder", "The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter", "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client" and "His Last Bow". The character was introduced primarily as a narrative device to enable Doyle to kill Sherlock Holmes. Many adaptations and pastiches give him the first name of James. The first Doyle story to feature him does not give him a first name, whereas the short story "The Adventure of the Empty House" said his first name is James. Some pastiche novels and short stories have both Moriarty brothers being named James, but having different middle names.
Irene Norton, née Adler, is a fictional character in the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A former opera singer and intelligent opponent to Holmes, she was featured in the short story "A Scandal in Bohemia", published in July 1891. Adler is one of the most notable female characters in the Sherlock Holmes series, despite appearing in only one story.
"The Final Problem" is a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring his detective character Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom, and McClure's in the United States, under the title "The Adventure of the Final Problem" in December 1893. It appears in book form as part of the collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.
"The Adventure of the Empty House", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as The Return of Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in Collier's in the United States on 26 September 1903, and in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom in October 1903.
A mystery film is a genre of film that revolves around the solution of a problem or a crime. It focuses on the efforts of the detective, private investigator or amateur sleuth to solve the mysterious circumstances of an issue by means of clues, investigation, and clever deduction.
Lord Darcy is a detective in an alternate history, created by Randall Garrett. The first stories were asserted to take place in the same year as they were published, but in a world with an alternate history that is different from our own and that is governed by the rules of magic rather than the rules of physics. Despite the magical trappings, the Lord Darcy stories play fair as whodunnits; magic is never used to "cheat" a solution, and indeed, the mundane explanation is often obscured by the leap to assume a magical cause.
Everybody's Favorite Duck is a 1988 parody of classic detective fiction and sensational crime stories. This short novel by cartoonist Gahan Wilson pits the detectives Enoch Bone and John Weston against the Professor, a British Napoleon of Crime; the Mandarin, a Chinese mastermind, and Spectrobert, a French rogue.
Colonel Sebastian Moran is a fictional character in the stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle. An enemy of Sherlock Holmes, he first appears in the 1903 short story "The Adventure of the Empty House". Holmes once described him as "the second most dangerous man in London," the most dangerous being Professor Moriarty, Moran's employer.
Too Many Magicians is a novel by Randall Garrett, an American science fiction author. One of several stories starring Lord Darcy, it was first serialized in Analog Science Fiction in 1966 and published in book form the same year by Doubleday. It was later gathered together with Murder and Magic (1979) and Lord Darcy Investigates (1981) into the omnibus collection Lord Darcy. The novel was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1967.
Sherlock Holmes has long been a popular character for pastiche, Holmes-related work by authors and creators other than Arthur Conan Doyle. Their works can be grouped into four broad categories:
"A Study in Emerald" is a short story written by British fantasy and graphic novel author Neil Gaiman. The story is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche transferred to the Cthulhu Mythos universe of horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Gaiman describes it as "Lovecraft/Holmes fan fiction". It won the 2004 Hugo Award for Best Short Story. The title is a reference to the Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a 1939 American mystery adventure film based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes detective stories. Although claiming to be an adaptation of the 1899 play Sherlock Holmes by William Gillette, the film bears little resemblance to the play.
The Unicorn Girl is a science fiction novel by Michael Kurland, originally released in 1969, that follows the adventures of two men from San Francisco in the 60s after they meet a mysterious young woman looking for her missing unicorn. This novel is the second installment of the Greenwich Village Shared World Trilogy, with Chester Anderson writing the first book and the third volume written by T.A. Waters. Kurland, Anderson, and Waters wrote themselves as characters in each book.
Sherlock Holmes is a 2009 period mystery action film based on the character of the same name created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The film was directed by Guy Ritchie and produced by Joel Silver, Lionel Wigram, Susan Downey, and Dan Lin. The screenplay, by Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham, and Simon Kinberg, was developed from a story by Wigram and Johnson. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law portray Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson, respectively. In 1890, eccentric detective Holmes and his companion Watson are hired by a secret society to foil a mysticist's plot to gain control of Britain by seemingly supernatural means. Rachel McAdams stars as their former adversary Irene Adler and Mark Strong portrays villain Lord Henry Blackwood.
Sherlock Holmes fandom is an international, informal community of fans of the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. The fans are known as Sherlockians or Holmesians. Many fans of Sherlock Holmes participate in societies around the world, and engage in a variety of activities such as discussion, tourism, and collecting.
Professor James Moriarty is the fictional archenemy of Sherlock Holmes in some of the stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He has appeared in several forms outside of the original stories.
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