Solar Pons.com

The first four collections were published during ‘the good years’ while the other four came after the break with the Derleth Estate.Solar Pons & the Devils’ Claw is a novel.

Basil Copper (1924-2013) was a successful British horror author as well as the writer of the Mike Faraday detective novels. Some of Copper’s work had been published by Arkham House (August Derleth’s imprint) and the Derleth Estate authorized him to continue the Solar Pons tales.

What should have been a happy relationship became a contentious one, with the Derleth Estate not publishing all of Copper’s submissions and Copper being unhappy with edits to many of those that they did.

Copper and Arkham House editor James Turner also edited The Solar Pons Omnibus, a collection of Derleth’s original tales. The Pons fan community objected strongly to sevceral decisions made by Turner, principally the “correcting” of Derleth’s original text.

(read Peter Ruber’s account of this affair)

It appears that the enmity continued (at least on Copper’s part) until the end of his life. While Copper’s stories are uniformly longer than Derleth’s (closer to short novellas than short stories), there is no denying that they are good Solar Pons adventures and worthy reading for any fan.

This page is under construction. 

The Dossier of Solar Pons

The Further Adventures of Solar Pons

The Secret Files of Solar Pons

The Uncollected Cases of Solar Pons

The Exploits of Solar Pons

The Recollections of Solar Pons

Solar Pons vs. the Devil Claw

Solar Pons: The Final Cases

(inclusion of the Copper Commentaries is a long term project)