Solar Pons

[AWD Pontine]: Private detective with strong similarities to Sherlock Holmes. He was born ca. 1880 in Prague to a British diplomat. He graduated from Oxford and served in British Intelligence in the First World War. In the 1920's and 30's, he lived in London at 7B Praed Street with his friend, Dr. Lyndon Parker, who chronicled his cases. During the Second World War, he served in British intelligence again. He wrote several monographs on varied topics including criminology, anthropology, and chess. His brother Bancroft had a behind the scenes, but powerful, role in the British government.

At the time of "The Adventure of the Six Silver Spiders," Solar Pons said of the Necronomicon, Cultes des Ghoules, De Vermis Mysteriis, and Liber Ivonis that "All these books have a precarious existence only in the writings of certain minor authors of American origin, all apparently followers, in a remote sense, of the work of Edgar Allan Poe." [AWD Six] Thus, Pons may have regarded the Cthulhu cult also as a literary fiction. "The Adventure of the Six Silver Spiders" apparently took place in 1930, just a year prior to the publication of An Examination of the Cthulhu Cult and Others. [See Robert Pattrick's "A Chronology of Solar Pons," in August Derleth, The Reminiscences of Solar Pons, Manchester, NH: Bellanger Books, 2018.]

However, James C. O’Leary has pointed out that Pons made this statement in 1930, before Cultes des Ghoules, De Vermis Mysteriis, or Liber Ivonis had been mentioned in any published stories. So it is not clear how Pons could have been familiar with these titles. Also, a year later in 1931, Pons published the monograph An Examination of the Cthulhu Cult and Others. Previously, in 1905, he had published another monograph called An Inquiry into the Nan-Matal Ruins of Ponape. [AWD Who] The latter work is suggestive because Ponape is associated with the cult of Cthulhu and the Deep Ones.

O'Leary suggests that in AWD Six, Pons and/or his narrator, Lyndon Parker, may have decided to simply pretend that these elder tomes (Necronomicon, etc.) are unreal. [See James C. O’Leary, "How Deep Did the Amworthy Hoax Go?" in Bellanger, Derrick (editor), The Pontine Dossier: Millennium Edition (Volume One, Issue One. Winter/Spring 2020). Bellanger Books.]

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