The Solar System, by Marcus Chown. Touch Press, 2010. For iPad.
Reviewed by Jennifer Ouellette
The BBC's hugely popular modern reboot of Sherlock Holmes recasts the world's greatest detective as a high-functioning sociopath (by his own admission) who augments his legendary detection skills with all the latest technologies. Oh, and Watson has a blog.
But his account of their first case together, "A Study in Pink," rubs the detective the wrong way, because Watson has the bad taste to point out glaring holes in Holmes' otherwise impressive encyclopedic knowledge — namely, he hasn't bothered to learn that the Earth revolves around the Sun. "It's primary school stuff, how could you not know that?" Watson marvels. An exasperated Holmes explains that his big fat brain is precious real estate and he just can't be bothered to store useless trivia; he has to focus on the important things that will help him solve real-world cases.
Watson: But it's the solar system!
Holmes: Oh, hell! What does that matter?! So we go around the sun! If we went around the moon or round and round the garden like a teddy bear, it wouldn't make any difference! All that matters to me is the work! Without that, my brain rots. Put that in your blog – or better still, stop inflicting your opinions on the world!
Let's not address Sherlock's somewhat antiquated notion of how memory works for now. (The computer hard drive analogy is soooo 2000.) I've got good news for the technology-loving consulting detective: now he doesn't have to store all that useless information about celestial bodies in his crammed-to-the-gills noggin, because science writer Marcus Chown and Touch Press have gathered all the essentials into a single iPad app/e-book: The Solar System. It's the follow-up to the publisher's impressive debut, The Elements (reviewed by Deborah Blum here).
Continue reading “The Solar System: It’s Elementary, My Dear Sherlock”