While many Sherlockians engage in the mental gymnastics of “Playing the Game”, their efforts pale in comparison to the contortionists who have embraced the connect-the-dots style of game playing inspired by Philip Jose Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe concept. Taking his cue from the Sherlockian approach to dealing with Holmes as a real life personage, Farmer wrote his fictional biographies TARZAN ALIVE and DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE creating a unified family tree connecting most pop fiction heroes and villains since 1795 onwards in the process! In MYTHS FOR THE MODERN AGE: PHILIP JOSE FARMER’S WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE editor Win Scot Eckert pulls together 28 essays, by a variety of Wold Newton fans, and reprints a few Farmer pieces as well, expanding on the concept. While only one of the included essays deals specifically with Sherlock Holmes, the heavy interconnectedness of the concept means you’ll find references to Holmes, Moriarty, and various other ACD characters scattered throughout almost every essay in the book. Unfortunately the quality of writing varies dramatically from piece to piece, Rick Lai’s The Secret History of Captain Nemo and Fu Manchu vs. Cthulhu essays stand head and shoulders above the rest, the book is a wildly uneven read at best. Recommended only to those with a familiarity, or appreciation of, the Wold Newton concept, or anyone that really gets a kick out of stretching the patently implausible to the breaking point. ( )