Today on Project Gutenberg: "The Diamond Lens"
Today on Project Gutenberg, we have…
The Diamond Lens by Fitz James O’Brien
Today we're going to talk about a subgenre I like to call “science Gothic.” This is exactly what it sounds like: you take Gothic fiction, and you make it sci-fi. While most horrors and evils in Gothic literature come from supernatural sources, the horrors in science gothic are inspired by the scientific advancements of the author's own time period. Frankenstein is undoubtedly the most famous example of this subgenre. Other examples include I Am Legend, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and today's short story, “The Diamond Lens” from 1858.
The author of today's story is Fitz James O'Brien, an Irish writer who emigrated to America and made a name for himself writing poems and short stories. Of particular note are his stories which we would now call early examples of science fiction. One is about a group of proto-robots rebelling against their masters, and another uses invisibility as a plot device, four decades before H.G. Wells did so with The Invisible Man.
For “The Diamond Lens,” O'Brien took inspiration from the developing field of microscopy. The story is as follows: Linley, a young medical student, has been obsessed with microscopes all his life, and he wants to create the perfect lens that will allow him to magnify objects to a level of detail not achieved by any other scientist. A combination of boredom and desperation eventually drives him to visit a medium named Madam Vulpes, who contacts—or at least claims to contact—the spirit of 17th-century microscopist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. The ghost of Leeuwenhoek tells Linley that the perfect microscope lens require a most rare ingredient: a 140-carat diamond. Despondent at the slim chance of obtaining such a treasure, Linley returns home and finds that his neighbor, Jules Simon, just so happens to be hiding a 140-carat diamond that he stole some years prior. Linley does not even stop to consider a possibility other than murder. One drugging and faked suicide later, he has his prized diamond.
Are you still with me? Good. This is where things get weird.
The diamond lens works as promised! In fact, it works a little too well. When Linley first uses it on a drop of water, he discovers a dazzling arcadian world hidden within, complete with what appears to be a living inhabitant. This microscopic creature takes the form of a beautiful woman, and Linley becomes entranced by her. His already unstable life falls apart completely as he loses all interest in the normal-sized world, spending all his time staring at the drop of water in his microscope—a drop of water that he doesn't realize is evaporating until it's too late.
“The Diamond Lens” is a fairly simple narrative. Man wants thing, man commits horrible sin to get thing, man eventually faces the consequences of his actions. Like many examples of Gothic fiction, it's a cautionary tale of murder, madness and obsession. But O'Brien's lively and detailed writing are what make it stand out. He does a particularly good job of getting inside his protagonist's head and making Linley a character that you love to hate. He cares more about being a “discoverer” than studying the microscopic world for its own sake, and he's more than willing to pass judgement on another man's actions while planning to commit murder. Oh, and he's really antisemitic. So when he finally does get his just desserts, albeit in an unusual way, it's a bit cathartic rather than wholly tragic.
I did not for an instant contemplate so foolish an act as a common theft, which would of course be discovered, or at least necessitate flight and concealment, all of which must interfere with my scientific plans. There was but one step to be taken—to kill Simon. After all, what was the life of a little peddling Jew in comparison with the interests of science? Human beings are taken every day from the condemned prisons to be experimented on by surgeons. This man, Simon, was by his own confession a criminal, a robber, and I believed on my soul a murderer. He deserved death quite as much as any felon condemned by the laws: why should I not, like government, contrive that his punishment should contribute to the progress of human knowledge?
O'Brien's descriptions of the microscopic worlds Linley discovers may not be scientifically accurate at all, but they're still beautiful, haunting and a highlight of the story. He takes familiar forms from nature—trees, clouds, fruits, etc.—and reworking them into strange new shapes and colors, he creates surreal dreamscapes that feel ahead of their time in an artistic sense.
On every side I beheld beautiful inorganic forms, of unknown texture, and colored with the most enchanting hues. These forms presented the appearance of what might be called, for want of a more specific definition, foliated clouds of the highest rarity—that is, they undulated and broke into vegetable formations, and were tinged with splendors compared with which the gilding of our autumn woodlands is as dross compared with gold. Far away into the illimitable distance stretched long avenues of these gaseous forests, dimly transparent, and painted with prismatic hues of unimaginable brilliancy. The pendent branches waved along the fluid glades until every vista seemed to break through half-lucent ranks of many-colored drooping silken pennons. What seemed to be either fruits or flowers, pied with a thousand hues, lustrous and ever-varying, bubbled from the crowns of this fairy foliage. No hills, no lakes, no rivers, no forms animate or inanimate, were to be seen, save those vast auroral copses that floated serenely in the luminous stillness, with leaves and fruits and flowers gleaming with unknown fires, unrealizable by mere imagination.
But with the beauty comes horror, and the horror comes from the revelation of how fragile these hidden worlds actually are. When the water droplet containing the microscopic woman evaporates out of its liquid form, everything living inside it is destroyed. The woman dies, and it is clear from Linley's description that she dies in agony. And there's no telling how many other beings like her perished in that moment, or how many similar beings have existed in other drops of water. The implication O'Brien seems to be going for is that this sort of mass destruction is happening constantly, with the subatomic humanoids being powerless to stop it or even comprehend what's happening to them. When you think about that for too long, you start to realize why H.P. Lovecraft admired this guy's work.
O'Brien's literary career was sadly cut short when he died in April 1862, a casualty of the American Civil War. There's no telling what he might have gone on to write had he lived, but I do think it's a shame that we don't have more work from him. ”The Diamond Lens“ is a fascinating piece that, while odd and simplistic, hinted at greater things in its author's future. I found the time to read this story in its entirety, and I suggest you do the same.
And that’s what we found today on Project Gutenberg! See you next time!
—Dana