There is a precedent for resurrecting a literary hero &#8212-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle&#8217-s Sherlock Holmes. In The Adventure of the Final Problem (1893), Sherlock Holmes falls to his death during a violent struggle with his nemesis, Professor Moriarty. A public clamor then persuaded Conan Doyle to resurrect him.

Holmes archenemy and popularly-supposed nemesis was Professor James Moriarty (&#8221-the Napoleon of Crime&#8221-), who fell, struggling with Holmes, over the Reichenbach Falls. Conan Doyle intended The Final Problem, the story in which this occurred, to be the last that he wrote about Holmes. However, the outpouring of protests and letters demanding that he bring back his creation convinced him to continue. He did so with The Hound of The Baskervilles, although this was a case Holmes was involved in before his supposed death. His return in The Adventure of the Empty House had Conan Doyle explaining that only Moriarty fell over the cliff, but Holmes had allowed the world to believe that he too had perished while he dodged the retribution of Moriarty&#8217-s underlings.

Harry Potter will survive The Deathly Hallows.

© NewsFutures

Previous: Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls

Sherlock Holmes (the good) and Professor Moriarty (the villain) fell together in the Reichenbach Falls. Sherlock Holmes is thought to be dead. Many years later, he re-appears, to the astonishment of his Doctor Watson.

–&gt- Let’s say there were a prediction market on the Sherlock Holmes survival, which was bound to expire just after the Reichenbach Falls episode. It would have expired on the “no” side —although the ultimate truth was going to be that Sherlock Holmes was still alive.

UPDATE: The contract of the Harry Potter event derivative at NewsFutures may be flawed.

NEXT: THE FATE OF HARRY POTTER IN J.K. ROWLING’S 7TH BOOK, THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: prediction market vs. bookmaker + NEWSFUTURES JUDGES THAT HARRY POTTER IS STILL ALIVE AT THE END OF J.K. ROWLING’S 7TH NOVEL, THE DEATHLY HALLOWS.

Read the previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

• Many people twitter on prediction markets.
• Folks, when you have something important to say, write up a full post, not a comment.
• Prediction Market Journalism
• TechCrunch is 221 times bigger than Midas Oracle.
• Earthquake measuring 9.0 or more on Richter scale to occur anywhere on or before December 31, 2008
• Why Midas Oracle (and not TV news shows or print newspapers) will dominate the future.
• The Six Degrees Of Separation