Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus

We recently received a press release announcing a soon-to-be-available "Steampunk Holmes" book app adapted from the first book in a new series featuring the famous consulting detective. Setting aside for the moment that we aren't quite sure what a book app is, we went in search of the source material.

This past June, Legacy of the Nautilus was published, a book we completely missed at the time. Based on the "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans", the story takes place in an alternative Steampunk universe (circa 1885), where the plans for Captain Nemo's mysterious Nautilus submarine have been stolen from the British Secret Service. There is only one man who can solve the case, Sherlock Holmes. With his bionic side-kick Doctor Watson, and his brilliant and lethal sister, Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock unravels a mystery that will shake the foundation of the British Empire.

The series website has more.

Steampunk Holmes is a mashup of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, characters, and stories from other 19th century works set in an alternative Steampunk universe. In the Steampunk Holmes Universe, a new, more compact and powerful steam engine has been invented, which powers everything from motorcycles to airships; computers, called Babbage Engines, are pervasive and critical to the information architecture of Victorian England; and the telegraph has evolved into a world wide network connecting Babbage Engines and people.

The adventures — Legacy of the Nautilus is but the first of several planned — will be published as interactive books; presumably this is where the "app" comes in, which we think is illustrated in the video embedded below. The publisher has kindly provided us with a copy of the (text-only) ebook; we'll take a look at it and let you know what we think.

— ♦ —

Legacy of the Nautilus
P. C. Martin
A Steampunk Holmes Adventure (1st)

The series starts in the year 1885, when Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson are called in by Sherlock's sister, Mycroft Holmes, to help find the stolen plans of a very advanced submarine, the Nautilus, recovered from the watery grave of the most notorious terrorist of the British Empire, Captain Nemo. Who stole the plans and what will they do with them? This is a job for the world's greatest Amateur Detective and his trusty bionic sidekick.

But this is only the beginning of a series of adventures that will take Sherlock, Watson and Mycroft all over the world, encountering technological miracles, geniuses and mad men originally created by the early masters of speculative fiction, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Mary Shelley, and others.

  

— ♦ —