The Dynamics of an Asteroid

The cover of The Dynamics of an Asteroid, from the 2011 film Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.

The Dynamics of an Asteroid is a fictional book by Professor James Moriarty, the implacable foe of Sherlock Holmes. The only mention of it in Arthur Conan Doyle's original Holmes stories is in The Valley of Fear (written in 1914, but set in 1888) when Holmes says of Moriarty:[1]

Is he not the celebrated author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid, a book which ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it?

Participants in the "Sherlockian game", where Sherlock Holmes fans elaborate on elements within Doyle's stories, have suggested other details about The Dynamics of an Asteroid.

  1. ^ Doyle, Arthur Conan (1929). The Complete Sherlock Holmes Long Stories. London, UK: Murray. p. 409. ISBN 978-0-7195-0356-6.