Sinopse
A young man's love for what he sees through the microscope drives him to madness -- The Diamond Lens, about a man who falls in love with a being he sees through a microscope in a drop of water; What Was It? in which a man is attacked by a thing he apprehends with every sense but sight; and The Wondersmith, in which robots are fashioned only to turn upon their creators. These three stories appeared in periodicals in 1858 and 1859.In his introductory essay Expanding The Lens , found in to the story in The Road To Science Fiction: From Gilgamesh To Wells, editor James Gunn writes: [The Diamond Lens] is the first known story in which another world is perceived through a microscope
[this story] opened up another world, not just for readers, but for writers as well. Gunn goes on to praise OBriens realistic treatment of the fantastic and says that The Diamond Lens may be the first modern science-fiction story.LibriVox narrator Corrina Schultz describes The Diamond Lens this way: This story has a bit of everything obsessive scientist, psychic medium contacting the dead, clever murder cover-up, racism, creepy stalker, college student shirking his studies, the painful results of pursuing forbidden knowledge, the noble savage
[About the Author]: Fitz-James OBrien, (born c. 1828, County Limerick, Irelanddied April 6, 1862, Cumberland, Maryland, U.S.) Irish-born American journalist, playwright, and author whose psychologically penetrating tales of pseudoscience and the uncanny made him one of the forerunners of modern science fiction.====http://www.sffaudio.com/the-diamond-lens-by-fitz-james-obrien/http://www.enotes.com/topics/diamond-lens