By contrast, Salmon maintains that "Sherlock Holmes exists" is literally true, whereas "Sherlock Holmes was a detective" is literally false. According to Salmon, Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character, a kind of abstract entity, created by author Arthur Conan Doyle, and the fiction is a story, or a collection of stories, which are about that very character but are literally false. Holmes really exists, but is only depicted as a detective in the fiction. In the fiction, Holmes is a detective; in reality, Holmes is merely a fictional detective.